Page 180 of A Winding Wave of Magic
To know thyself
Somehow, I obeyed, but I saw nothing more but the swirling darkness, the opaque effects of bodies on bodies, memory on memory, trauma on trauma.
Then, in the back, two glowing stars. Sage green and vibrant, casting a light that gradually revealed a face, sharper than the rest.
My chin was tilted up, and that face was there, looking down at me.
“I’m here,” he told me. “I’ve got you.”
Then he kissed me.
Open for me. That voice cut through the thoughts and chaos.
And the second I did, quiet descended. The visions vanished, and my voice returned. I sensed him first, then myself. The ends of my fingers, gripping the lapels of his jacket to pull him closer. The ends of my hair, whipping around both our faces.
The end of my tongue, tangling with his, tasting the awe, the love, the complete and total dedication of this being holding me up.
I Saw his name, then my own.
Jonathan. Cassandra.
Together as they were meant to be.
Water had always meant freedom to me. But this kiss meant safety.
Minutes—or maybe hours—later, Jonathan broke away, panting. His eyes still glowed, but only of night, not lost souls. It was just the two of us now, standing between the rocky burial mounds. The past had been vanquished. And miraculously, I was still whole.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he cupped my face with one hand and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “I shouldn’t have…it’s just that you were so…” He sighed. “It was the only thing I could think of that might help distract you. So we might find where they stopped and you…begin.”
“And did you?” The words choked out as I only just managed to keep myself from pulling him back to me even though it felt excruciatingly, indeliblywrong. Why,whydid I crave him so? “Did you find where I begin? Did you find my…shape?”
I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to be the final piece of that puzzle or not. What kind of fate would that be, to deliver hope to me that I couldn’t have? Especially from a man who didn’t want me anyway?
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But when I kissed you…I think perhaps you borrowed mine.”
I looked around as if somehow I might See the mental boundaries that Jonathan had supposedly lent me. But there was nothing, of course. Only grassy walls of the mounds, the crooked fences of the stacked limestone just beyond, the thickets of herbs and flowers growing through the cracks
“Well, of course, she did.”
We both jerked at the sound of my cousin’s voice and turned just as he strolled around the corner of one mound, followed by the girl he’d been dancing with earlier.
“A bú,” he said, followed by instructions to meet him at his cottage. She left, and Caomhán leaned against the side of themound and examined his nails. “Jonny. Heard you might be makin’ a show this Bonfire Night.”
“Don’t,” Jonathan bit out. “Turn around and go.”
“I will not.” Caomhánjust looked at Jonathan with something like disgust. “You should all be ashamed. She has a right to know.”
“There’s nothingtoknow,” Jonathan snapped. “And it’s none of your affair to begin with.”
“It is when I’m her only family left,” Caomhán replied in a tone that sounded casual but was most assuredly not.
“She’s. In. Training. And hasn’t manifested yet, not that it’s ever meant anything to you lot.”
“Says who?” Caomhán glanced between us. “Aoife and my mam both manifested. Me cousins too, not to mention I have. And that’s with knowing the feckin’truthabout ourselves, not hiding it from our young like sweets they can’t have.”
“She’s different.”
“She’s also right here,” I snapped. I turned to Caomhán. “What do you mean by that? Hiding what? And why would ‘of course’ I borrow his shape?”
