Page 109 of Shifting Winds
Oh yeah. I had no hands.
This would be funny if it wasn’t happening to me.
I rued the day I’d gotten caught up in the fae. I’d been too trusting, too open, too willing not to tell them to fuck right off and go play in the trees and mounds from whence they came.
But if I hadn’t done the things I’d done, would I have met Caelan or realized my mom and dad had sacrificed so much to keep me safe?
Would I have known a tender touch from a lover or met Rowan and grown apples in the greenhouse?
Would I have made Seymour or laughed with Simone? Made a giant Jacaranda to piss off a Shifter Lord?
Accepted the parts of myself that terrified me and allowed me to become the person I needed to be to survive?
Granted, this wasn’t technically surviving, but I was still conscious. And that meant there was still a way out. I just had to find it.
My thoughts wandered to Moira and how she’d healed me when nothing another fae had done. Was that the key? I wasn’t in tune enough with my fae side to know what I could or couldn’t do, but if my father couldn’t counteract this magic, what hope did I have to do the same?
But I wasn’t just fae, was I?
A thought occurred to me, something so outlandish and wild that I spent the next…
Sigh. Time. I could have been here for a hundred years, and I wouldn’t know it, would I?
Let’s just say I spent a long ass time working the plan out.
And you bet your ass, I had a plan.
Chapter
Thirty-Six
MOIRA
Sometimes Hazel pissed me off. The witch was good at what she did, but the way she went about it made me want to chew my own arm off.
She was so goddamned slow. How many times did she have to mortar and pestle herbs to get the right consistency? Goddamn woman, get a food processor or a coffee grinder.
For fuck’s sake.
I was barely keeping my shit together while Hazel was humming to herself as she set up the boundary surrounding the tree. Did all the candles have to be white? Couldn’t we just go to the dollar store instead of ordering some stupid European beeswax candles ‘soaked in the light of the first Monday’s full moon.’
Witchcraft felt like being punked. Did any of this shit actually matter, or was there some massive conglomerate full of white dudes wearing suits and expensive cufflinks in the shape of dollar bills laughing their ass off while they tricked the masses into purchasing shit that didn’t matter?
Power was inherent. Power was everywhere, all around us in the air and ground. We were made up of atoms for crying outloud, and the forces around us fueled those atoms. We could all become supernovas if we put our minds to it.
And Hazel was over here worried about spring water pulled from a virgin’s tears.
Kill me now, please.
Even Caelan was twitchy. His claws kept retracting and sliding from his skin, and he looked like he wanted to bite Hazel’s head off like the last part of a lollipop.
“Staring at me won’t make me go any faster,” Hazel said primly as she added a touch of probably something stupid to the cast iron bowl in the middle of her wooden table.
“How is this going to help?” Caelan asked, his voice barely understandable. Eyes of burnished gold cast a light over the area.
Ash was seated cross-legged on the ground, his eyes closed, though I could feel his amusement. He always thought it was funny when I got annoyed like this. The dryad had seen my temper and didn’t flinch, so I wasn’t afraid for him to see my annoyance.
I kept my temper mostly hidden from Evie, though when she got back, maybe I’d be more open about myself. She deserved it.
