Just before McCain could buck forward and throw Max off with a bellow, I turned the knife around in my hand.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted a future where McCain went back to the past, where he lost his abilities, where he returned to Mary, back to the way he’d once been. And Max? I wanted Max to stay. I wanted him to be healed, finally free of the Shadow McCain’s grip.
Yeah. That’s what I wanted, and nothing was going to hold me back.
The dagger had to be split.
Hello, I wasn’t in a foundry, and I hardly had the tools at hand to split a dagger, let alone a magical one.
That didn’t matter.
All I had to do was get at the soul inside the dagger.
McCain finally bucked Max off. Rather than try to finish off his other side, McCain threw himself at me.
There was a definite look of pure fear flickering through his gaze.
It was as if he suspected what I was about to do.
The fireflies were still dancing through my vision, though they were thoroughly under my control. They were still magic, though. Still powerful.
Though I’d come to a new understanding of them and they were under my control for now, with a whispered thought I knew I could break the dam holding them back and let them surge through me with their sense of inevitability once more.
McCain had wanted me for that inevitability. He’d wanted me, not just for my ability to travel into the past, but for my ability to create the future.
And now, I’d give him that inevitability. All of it.
Just before McCain could reach me, Max pivoted on his hip and threw his leg out, catching McCain across the knees and sending him tumbling into the gravel.
Though he fell face-first onto the ground with a rattling thump that felt like an earthquake, that didn’t stop him from immediately scrabbling forward and reaching a hand out to me.
I stared at the hand, took a single step back, and closed my eyes.
In a split second, I let it flow out of me. All of it. All that inevitability. I pushed it into the sacred dagger, right down the middle as if I were trying to split it apart.
Because I was trying to split it apart. And it would split apart. It was inevitable.
As I threw myself into the height of my power, once again I felt it try to lock me in place as that inevitability climbed me like jungle vines.
With a still heart, I ignored it and plunged the rest of my power – all my magic – into the blade.
I heard McCain scrabble forward, felt him lock a hand around my ankle.
I didn’t jerk away, didn’t break my attention.
“No,” he screamed.
I paid him no heed.
“No,” he bellowed once more, voice pitching with pure distress.
He’d been waiting for so long for me, hadn’t he? So long for me to break him free of his prison in the past and buy him a new future.
And I would deliver on that dream, just not in the way he wanted.
McCain had lost himself to power. It had narrowed his world. It was time for me to open it up.
As his grip tightened around my ankle in one last ditch wave of desperation as he tried to climb me, I pushed the last of my power into the blade.
And it broke. In an echoing split that I swore shook through time itself, the dagger split apart.
The metal didn’t splinter and blast through me.
No. Instantly, it turned to light.
Two, white-hot, pulsing globes of light.
McCain’s grip on my foot slackened, his fingers falling as one ball of light shot into the center of his chest. It knocked him away from me, and he fell on his back with a rattling thump.
One of the balls of light shot toward Max, too. It plunged into his chest and sent him shaking to his knees.
Just before he could fall backward and pass out, he made eye contact with me.
Enduring eye contact. He also whispered, “Thank you.”
Then Max, my Max, rocked back and lost consciousness.
All around the dump, magic was popping like balloons that had strayed too close to the fire. The magic soon returned to the ground in hissing wisps of colored steam. Witches were also pulling themselves out from behind cover.
… It was over.
No, not yet.
It was time to get both these boys back home to where they belonged.
I pushed down on one knee and placed a hand flat on McCain’s chest.
I’d pushed almost all of my magic into breaking the dagger, but there were several fireflies left, waiting to be used.
And use them I did. Concentrating with all my might, I willed a vision of the past to flow through me.
I felt the grass beneath my feet, the sun on my cheeks, the wind in my hair.
And I opened my eyes.
There I was, back in that pastureland.
I smiled as I tipped my head back and stared at the expansive blue sky above.
Beautiful didn’t do it justice.
It was right. For everything had turned out right.
Before I could turn and use the very last of my fireflies to travel back into the future, I heard someone calling my name.
Mary.
She pushed over the top of the hill, her skirts swaying around her legs as she ran down toward me.
Her hair bounced around her shoulders, a red halo lit up by the sun.
As she neared, I saw her eyes pulse wide at the sight of Max.
It wasn’t fear, wasn’t hatred. God no, it was love.
“Oh my,” she stammered as she reached us and dropped down to one knee, her
