Wildfire Witch (The Cursed Coven of Spells Hollow)

5. Nix

NIX

“Royce!” I shouted at his fading presence.

My hand flexed, curling around solid fingers. I returned to my body and time suddenly to see the fading rays of the blood moon lending orange-tinged light to warm Ceridor’s curls. Instead of my brother, he sat beside me, eyes shut and face scrunched with concentration.

I was hot. Burning up, in fact, but the fae pushed cool air into my palm. If I’d had an episode while in the midst of my visions of the past, he’d suppressed it. Thanks to him, I was alive. And because of my brother’s visit…I was as whole as I could be. A complete puzzle once more.

The centuries had not been kind to Ceridor. I matched the fae husband I’d once had to the colder, more closed off version I’d just become reacquainted with. There was no easy charm and carefree grins anymore, his joking softness replaced by frost and nearly dashed hopes. He’d found me, but it’d been what…close to three hundred and fifty years?

But he had found me, and still called me wife despite everything. My heart threatened to melt in my chest. I fell a little more in love with him, even though he was a stranger.

No, not a stranger.

Yes…ugh. My head hurt. Who was I, really? How would I go on, knowing who I was, everyone I became, and the restored version I was now?

“Cer,” I whispered, giving his arm a shake. My magic was stable for now.

His grip on my fingers loosened and he turned to look at me. For a split second, I saw the fatigue and weight of age in his shadowed eyes, tarnished from the pure silver they used to be. I’d been so overwhelmed by his continuing fae beauty to understand just how heavy a burden it must’ve been to chase after my many incarnations.

“Ver?” he replied, taking in my straightened spine and the subtle nuances that made me who I was…no, am. I wavered, confused. “Firefly?”

“Yes. I think,” I murmured.

He breathed a little joyous laugh, eyes watering again. I reached for him first, grabbing a fist full of his curls and planting a kiss on his soft lips. This was no tentative test, but a reigniting of passions. Our breath mingled in heated pants. His tongue pushed past my teeth while he pulled me to him, crushing me to his chest.

This was how he kissed me every time he returned from the Wind Court, with the edge of desperation that only came about from long separation. We had merely been separated for a longer time…to the point he was so different, now.

As my enthusiasm for the kiss waned, he pulled back to nip the sensitive skin under my ear. “You remember me now?” he whispered. I shivered from the hot wash of his breath. If I closed my eyes, it was my husband returning to me in the night. Liquid heat pooled between my thighs while I moaned aloud from another nip.

“Yes,” I said.

He cupped my hip and squeezed with just the right amount of pressure. “You remember our time together?” he asked.

Swallowing, overwhelmed by how easily he jumpstarted my desire, I nodded.

“Let me hear you, love.” He pulled back to see my face, taking away the cool sensation of his magic meeting mine, skin to skin. I felt overheated, face flushing.

“I do remember,” I said, voice husky with the flames and smoke of the rest of my restored memories. “We were handfasted within a year of our meeting. You called it fate, and swore vows in…”

I drifted off, looking at the back of my hand. Free of the symbol that’d appeared during our handfasting, but mottled with a couple minor patches of burn scars. “Where…?” I breathed, so confused I was starting to feel dizzy.

“I swore vows to you in the universal language of the fae, unbreakable by anything but death. And after all this time, due to your curse, you have not truly died.” He layered his hand over mine and his icy skin shimmered up to the elbow with the effect of a glamor disappearing. A beautiful, but faded, pattern of elemental symbols appeared. I traced the puff of a cloud on his inner wrist and he inhaled sharply.

“That one was my favorite,” I said. By the way his gaze smoldered, he was well aware. “But if you are still bound, where’s my mark?”

The apple of his throat bobbed. It took him a moment to reply. “I am hoping it will return when we lay together again.”

“Worth a try. But there’s something else I need to do first,” I said with a forced, playful lilt. I just wanted to distract him from the memories he was dwelling on, so I kissed him again. It felt good to stop thinking about what’d happened to us and feel him open up without hesitation. He tasted a little like his magic, the distantly familiar tingle of the air element dancing on my tongue.

He squeezed my ass, lifting one of my legs as I lost myself to his lips, his long-lost presence so comforting and yet, strange. With a little encouragement, my jeans-clad slit was pressing against the erection that strained the front of his pants. I shut my eyes and rolled my hips against him with an eager sigh.

Our kiss broke and I remembered why I’d initiated it in the first place. “Three hundred eighty-six?” I guessed breathlessly.

His lust-darkened eyes widened. “What?” he asked, before licking his lips. Our earlier deal, fulfilled. “Yes, that’s how old I am.”

I stopped grinding against him, feeling a spark of awe. “Gosh. That’s so old,” I said in a completely candid, Nix moment.

Our panting breaths filled the night. The lust in his expression was fading, rapidly replaced by the weight of his lingering melancholy. He pushed me out of his lap and adjusted himself. “It has been quite the long day. Why don’t we rest, and discuss what you saw of your memories in the morn?” he suggested.

“Cer, wait…” I protested.

“Do you truly remember me as your husband?” He pierced me with his stare. “Or am I still a stranger to you?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want him to hurt anymore, and that was what the truth would do. But he had to realize I was still lost, torn between versions of myself. Nothing truly made sense right now. “You’re both. You’re neither,” I admitted. “I’m not…I don’t know for sure.”

His breath stuttered for a moment, before he wrapped his arms around me. This time, he tucked my head under his chin and held me. His voice, full of soothing air, vibrated against my cheek. “I don’t want to take advantage of you. We’ll do nothing else until you’re sure.”

That was only right, even though my chest tightened with disappointment. I nodded in agreement all the same. I was still cursed, still a damaged soul with baggage I couldn’t begin to air out in full. But since he had the misfortune of being bound to me, I would try to let him in.

Like a phoenix, I would rebuild my life anew, but with a space for him in it. I’d give myself a chance to fall in love with him again.

I slept deeply, slipping into a deep morass of fractured memories that chained together to form nonsense. I was the kind of person who forgot her dreams upon waking, but these stuck to my headspace once I opened my eyes to broad daylight outside.

Fuck, I’d slept in. I needed to get out of Seattle, but at least now I knew to head to Spells Hollow. Wherever that was in present day—the east coast somewhere?

“Ceridor will know,” Aodhnait said. She sounded as clear and present in my life as always.

“Goddess. Where’ve you been?”

“Experiencing memories of my own. I’ll have you know I’ve lived more lifetimes than you.”

I ignored the snooty way she said that, too glad to have her back after re-experiencing my lives without her warm presence there with me. “Welcome back. Learn anything that may help us?”

“Plenty. Why don’t you investigate those delicious smells while I tell you, though?” she suggested. Someone, probably Seth, was making a hearty breakfast. I cracked my eyes open again to take in my surroundings. I was sprawled on their couch, with a soft pillow under my head and my body tucked into a fleece blanket. If it weren’t for the grumbling of my belly and the pressing need to evade the fire bros, I could rest in comfort for a few more hours.

Ceridor stood by their kitchen table, sipping from a steaming mug. Probably tea, he was always partial to herbal teas. Though I used to make sachets for him with custom blends, who knew what he drank nowadays. He was showered and dressed in a change of clothes, while I got up rumpled and groggy.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” Seth was cooking away, also in a change of clothes that fit his toned body unfairly well. At this point, I figured he could model anything and I’d call it cute.

I mumbled something back. Ceridor immediately put the handle of his mug in my hand and I sipped it, brows raising. It was a strong matcha, full of zinging energy. “What time is it?” I repeated more coherently.

“’Bout ten. We were about to wake you,” Seth answered.

My eyes bugged wide. I’d intended to be on the first bus out of the city by now. But now wasn’t the time to go rushing off, not since I needed to convince Ceridor to help me get to Spells Hollow.

“And the cute water witch,” Aodhnait put in.

I tilted my head. Seth had no reason to come with us, except for the fact he knew about my fire magic and seemed to like me.

Ceridor fixed a new mug of tea and replaced the one I held, nodding. “I’ll be in my room, if you need anything,” he said, bending to press a soft kiss to my cheek.

“You’re packing?” I asked.

He pointed to the heap of my things, still piled up beside the couch. “Yes. Wherever you intend to go, I shall be there with you.” His fingers lingered atop mine for a moment as he fixed me with a devoted look. It’d been a rare wonder that he’d never tired of me, when we were first married. But after this long? My heart fluttered and I flushed like the virgin I was in this current incarnation.

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said.

Then he left, shutting the door at the end of the hall behind him while Seth plated up a hearty breakfast for us both. “He wanted to give us a chance to chat,” he said, setting the plates on the table across from one another.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, distracted. I wasn’t sure why Ceridor wanted me to spend any one-on-one time with another man.

“I do,” Aodhnait volunteered.

Seth had made eggs, sausages, and hash browns, practically a feast’s worth. “Cer doesn’t want any of this?” I asked.

“Not today, apparently. More for us.” Shrugging, he dug in, and I did the same.

“When we were just figuring out our curse in our second and third lives together, we delved into a concept attached to the symmetry of magic unique to our curse. Our magic is unstable, prone to killing us,” Aodhnait explained.

“Horrifically so,” I agreed.

“The earth element in your green magic is being forced into a transmutation loop to become pure fire.”

I chewed thoughtfully. All my experimentation with fire had resulted in failure. It often left me with burns, rather than any closer to controlling it. It made sense that it continued to be that way, though now it triggered an overload of heat, which led to us inevitably burning to death. The curse had ruined my internal symmetry.

“Correct. To work magic that you can control, you have to transmute all this fire into a different element and then cast your spells. Otherwise, we grow hotter and hotter.”

“That makes sense. But how will I do that?” I mused.

“And there is where Ceridor and Seth come in. We theorized that, if we had a connection to a person aligned to a different element, we can borrow stability from them.”

It was coming back to me, now that she mentioned it. We never got to test the theory before we forgot it, due to the nature of the curse. A mate bond with a person who drew on earth, air, or water would balance out my unstable magic.

“And a mate bond with one of each would make us fully stable,” Aodhnait added.

I nearly choked on my matcha, spitting it back into the mug and coughing. Seth reached over to pound on my shoulder. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I sputtered, while demanding of my phoenix, “What? I can’t just marry three men! It’s unheard of.”

“It’s not. Melisande had nine men, and the supernatural community allows mating circles and polyamory with no judgment.”

She wasn’t wrong. But I’d been alone for so long, I’d assumed I wasn’t a powerful enough witch to be able to forge a mate bond with more than one man.

“You’re the Alchemist of Spells Hollow, a learned woman of science and nature. Why wouldn’t you have more than one partner?” Aodhnait reasoned.

Being overlooked for those traits in my first life came to mind. But it wasn’t the 1600s anymore; women were allowed to be smart, driven, and a little sarcastic now. Some men liked that, even.

“I’m sure the man in front of you would, if you’d just look up and talk to him,” Aodhnait suggested. Seth was picking at his meal, glancing over at me occasionally as my face followed the emotional path of my internal conversation with her. He probably thought I was a weirdo. “Just talk to him, Nix.”

“Um, hey,” I said, waving across the table. He smiled a bit and waved back.

“Smooth,” she commented dryly.