“I’m happy to oversee,” Sang says, “but she did all the work.”
“Sang, if I’m going to practice with other witches, are you sure you don’t want to get back to your studies?” I turn to Mr. Burrows. “You brought him out here to study botany and do research, not train with me.”
“I think I’ve got a few more sessions in me,” Sang says, and I give him a grateful look. I want him to do his research and study what he loves, but I’m not ready to train with someone new.
“Then it’s settled,” Ms. Suntile says. “Mr. Park, come with us. We need to create a new training schedule. You know more about Ms. Densmore’s capabilities than we do.”
Ms. Suntile drops her squash to the ground, as does Mr. Burrows, and they walk off the field together, talking over each other.
But the memory of my fight with Sang—and what came after—has yet to fade, and we look at each other with the same need. The same want.
“Later,” he whispers, kissing me softly before he follows Ms. Suntile.
The squash I gave him is tucked safely beneath his arm, and the way the image undoes me lets me know I’m in deeper than I should be.
Because if I’m wrong, if I’m not in total control of my magic, it will find him.
And I’ll be powerless to stop it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“When in doubt, plant something.”
—A Season for Everything
It’s six thirty in the morning. Early enough to have the campus to myself, late enough to hear the birds chirping and animals waking. Every day, there are new blooms to look at and different scents in the air, longer grass to step through and thicker hedges to walk around.
Training is going well, and Ms. Suntile is beside herself with what I can do. It scares me, her belief that I can steady the atmosphere and keep witches from dying of depletion while we work with the shaders to heal the Earth.
I think about Alice’s quote, about making sure her magic was worth something. And I know that I have made sure mine is.
Each time I use it, each time I call out-of-season magic, the hope inside me grows that I’ve found my control. That my magic will never hurt another person ever again. The hope is so thick, so full, it’s as if my organs are wrapped in ivy, as if climbing hydrangeas have made their way up up up until my entire body blooms with it.
But a new thought, a darker one, finds me in moments of fear and uncertainty: if I don’t have control over my power, if Sang will never be safe as long as I’m a witch, I could still stay for the eclipse. I could get stripped of my magic. And Sang and I could be together, knowing he would be safe.
It’s a selfish thought, one I don’t dwell on, but it’s there, lurking in the back of my mind. And it brings with it a question that hurts so badly it steals my breath each time I think it: If I weren’t a witch anymore, would Sang still want me?
I exhale. I need to outrun the thoughts that refuse to quiet.
I follow the path in the woods, far from the center of campus. I have the trail to myself, though I’m sure Paige is out here somewhere, her feet pounding into the wet dirt, her breathing heavy. She’s been a runner as long as I’ve known her, waking up before the rest of campus and running for miles, regardless of the weather.
A low layer of fog hangs in the trees. It’s uneven, giving way to tree trunks and brush in the distance. The fog is one of my favorite weather conditions. Most of the time, witches are the ones to greet the weather. We pull the clouds down closer to us or form our own. But fog is the atmosphere’s way of greeting us, getting low enough to the ground that we can touch it, feel it on our skin and breathe it in our lungs.
Everything is calm. Peaceful.
I run over roots and rocks, and ferns reach out and nip at my ankles. The trail begins to incline, and I climb with it, my breath coming faster than before. The higher I get, the colder the air becomes, a refreshing chill that pushes me farther. The fog gets dense, and I run through it until I’m higher than the clouds. Then the thick mist is replaced by sunlight that cuts through the branches and coats the air with lines of gold. The distinct sound of sighing carries on the breeze, the way flowers sound when they bloom. It gets louder and louder, and I run toward it until I see a clearing in the distance.
The trail is poorly defined now, and I jump over branches and push through underbrush until I escape from the cover of the trees. The clearing is large, several acres, and the half closest to me is covered in wildflowers. Bull thistle and baby blue eyes, Woods’ rose and bloodroot, trillium and chicory cover the dirt like paint on a canvas. Pinks and blues and whites and reds float atop green grasses and damp earth. Sunlight drenches the field in yellow, drying the sweat from my skin. I stop and put my hands on my hips, letting my breath slow.
In the middle of the field, a large white birch tree rises up from the sea of flowers. Bright-green leaves hang from its branches and rustle in the breeze, and I know without a doubt that this is our birch tree. Sang’s and mine—the one that grew when I used his magic for the very first time.
It’s larger now and covered in leaves, but it’s ours.
I knew he had uprooted the tree and replanted it somewhere else, but I can’t imagine how he possibly got it all the way up here.
I want to go to the tree, touch it and prove that
