Page 86 of Wicked Witch of the Wolf

I’d never been so far underground. The weight of the world above me was impossibly heavy. There were no words capable of expressing the feeling of compression. My head filled with pressure, my body compacted, my bones ached. Fear covered me like skin.

My fingers curved, and I reached up to dig in, to slow my progress. It hit me then.

It wouldn’t help. Nothing I could physically do would.

Where I was, the rules of the human world didn’t apply. Learned magic wouldn’t help me, either. I wasn’t in control here. That kind of thinking was what had kept me from fully connecting to my magic. I needed to rely on what made me strong—what made meme.

My bond with the soil.

Mother Earth,I put my heart, my magic, and my life in your care.

I immediately stopped moving.

I trust you to take care of me the way you took care of my mother, her mother, and the Lennox witches before them.

He yanked and jerked on my legs, but my body was stubborn and held still. Finally, he released me and moved up until we were face to face. His body was too close and more than anything, I wanted to shrink away, but I stayed right where I was.

I will trust you.I relaxed into the promise.I do trust you.

Desmond’s cursed, powerful voice rang like a gong in my head.

“You think you’ve won? Look at me. I’m not the feeble dirt witch your mother once chased off her soil. Not the weak witch you openly disdained. I am bursting with power.”

“With what power?” I asked, sending my voice into his head. “Dark magic? Demonic?”

“That’s your weakness, earth witch.”His sneering tone raked over my nerves.“You believe the only path to power is through your element. It was what limited you to a powerless, empty, trailer-trash existence.”

It could’ve been the implied threat of the past tense, as if my demise was a done deal, or it might’ve been him calling my life empty and powerless. It was definitely the trailer-trash crack, because elitism pisses me off, but it wasn’t only that.

It was, I realized, that I was very tired of being viewed as weak. By my mother, by this fool … by me.

The soil cradling me began to steam.

“What is that? Stop. You don’t control this place. I do.”

The steam formed a scalding vapor that hit my skin with a kettle-whistle hiss. It was alive, filled with power, and the cells of my body drank it in.

“Stop.”Desmond wrenched away from me.

I pursued him upward, catching him by the ankles. Again, the cells in my body connected to the minerals surrounding me. Power roared through my body, and though I hadn’t moved a single muscle, I knew I was near the surface.

If the trip down had taken under a minute, the trip up took a tenth of that time. I dragged Desmond with me, his body dangling like a rag doll in my grip.

He chanted words I didn’t know in a language I didn’t recognize and sent a series of symbols straight into my brain. It was a spell so ancient it was best represented by a collection of wedge-shaped marks, like the symbols on mage runes.

At any other time, a spell that old would’ve terrified me. I knew Desmond had absorbed magic from a cursed book with the blood of goddess knew how many witches soaked into its binding. He wasn’t a good earth witch. He’d just discovered a shortcut to power through dark magic.

But I had power, too. And here, beneath the soil, mine was stronger.

He swam up, kicking his feet in an attempt to free himself.

Again, I relaxed into my trust in the soil. The symbols in my head scattered like sand in a desert windstorm. The spell had no effect on me.

I tightened my grip on Desmond’s ankles.

He slashed at the soil, kicking, boosting himself until his head finally broke through the surface. Two sets of tiny feet stampeded in his direction and he screamed.

Blood soaked into the soil.

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