Page 75 of Summertime Hexy
The ley lines erupt.
Theyscream.
Power erupts from the ground like geysers—light crashing into sky, lighting up the trees from the inside out. Bark glows silver. Leaves shimmer like glass. The canopy becomes a dome of light, a living cathedral of magic breathing in sync with us.
The wind howls.
And so do I.
Not in pain or fear.
Infreedom.
My hands rise without thinking. My blood, my magic, myself—it all surges up like a wave with no shore in sight.
“Hold the boundary!” Thorn shouts somewhere behind me.
“On it!” Milo yells, his voice cracking with strain.
Derek says nothing—but I feel him behind me, solid and steady, like the weight that grounds a storm just before it swallows the sky.
I step into the center of the circle.
Magic curls up around my boots like tendrils of smoke, thengrabsme—lifts me three feet off the ground in a burst of raw force that would’ve terrified me a week ago.
Now?
I lean into it.
I openeverything.
“Take it,” I whisper. “Take all of it.”
My hair lifts like flames. My veins hum. Every breath tastes like ozone and ash and possibility.
Symbols blaze across my skin—not tattoos, not burns. Justtruth.Old spells and forgotten runes, curling over my arms, across my throat, down my ribs. Iamthe circle now.
The Grovesees me.
And I don’t flinch.
I offer my hands.
I offer my heart.
The air crackles, and Iscream—half spell, half defiance—as I channeleverythingthrough me into the ground.
“HAZEL!” Milo shouts, but it’s distant now. Everything’s distant.
The Grove is inside me.
And it’shungry.
Images flash through my mind like dreams ripped into daylight: the first witches, bleeding into stone. Monsters bound in bark. Love stories written in root systems. Sacrifices burned into the soil.
I amall of them.
And none of them.
