Page 30 of Summertime Hexy
And lately, every time Hazel laughs, every time she stomps into a room with glitter in her hair and a firestorm in her eyes, another bar bends.
I don’t know when it started.
Maybe when she looked me in the face with tears she wouldn’t name and told me she was scared.
Or when she threw a sigil at a raccoon cult and shouted"solidarity or chaos!"like she was rallying a revolution.
Maybe it was always there, waiting—just like the thing I buried.
Him.
I walk to the edge of the training field, the one past the northern boundary where no campers go. Where the magic feels older. Thinner. Like the past lives just under the surface.
The wind picks up, threading cold through my coat.
I sit on the moss-covered bench we built afterhedied.
Rowen.
My brother.
The one I turned too late.
He was seventeen. Bright. Reckless. So full of hope he used to carry it in his pockets, dropping bits of it everywhere he went. He believed in love, in redemption, inme.
And I failed him.
I didn’t make it in time. The vampire who took him was fast, cruel, deliberate. I drained what was left of that thing’s body until it turned to ash—and when I finally bit Rowen to try and save what I could… it wasn’t enough.
He came back—but wrong.
Too hungry. Tooempty.
I held him until the hunger took over. And when I realized he couldn’t stop—when I saw what was happening in his eyes—I made a choice.
I ended it.
I drove a silvered blade through the chest of the only person who ever loved me without condition.
And I’ve hated myself for it every day since.
I ran after that. From the coven. From the world. From anything that looked like affection.
Because lovekills.
Lovecosts.
And I swore I’d never feel that again.
Until her.
Hazel Blackmoore, chaos witch extraordinaire, with her half-broken magic and her snack hoarding and her dumb jokes and the way she makes space for everyone—even when she’s falling apart.
She talks too much. Laughs too loud. Wears her heart like armor and her fear like perfume.
And gods help me, I can’t stop wanting her.
It’s not just desire. I’ve known desire. It burns fast. Dies faster.
