“There’s a witch stationed outside this room,” Mira said. “She can send fire messages to Mary.”
“I know. But I can’t get better without practice.”
Every time I’d tried to send a fire message so far, I’d burned the letter with my elemental fire magic instead of sending it to the intended recipient with my witch magic. It was a medium-level spell—Mira still hadn’t succeeded with it, either—but our phones wouldn’t work outside of the Earth realm. And we needed to be able to communicate no matter where we were. Especially because we had no idea what was in store for us in Ember.
So I was determined to master this spell.
Put an imaginary barrier around your elemental magic, I remembered what Harper had said during our lessons. Focus only on your witch magic.
I stared at the paper and recited the incantation.
Magic tingled up from my core, traveled through my arm, and released out of my palm.
A small flame engulfed the letter, then disappeared.
No ashes remained on my palm.
“Yes!” I smiled. “I did it.”
“Good job.” Ethan nodded with respect. “This will be useful once we get to Ember.”
“Thanks.” My heart fluttered at the compliment.
Stop it, I told myself. It was just a compliment. And he didn’t even look me in the eyes when saying it.
I needed to get him alone so I could propose my idea about both of us taking memory potion to forget about that kiss. It would be best for all three of us—me, Ethan, and Mira. Because the kiss never should have happened. And if neither me nor Ethan remembered, it would be like it never had happened.
The guilt I was carrying would disappear. Ethan’s, too.
I wasn’t sure which Haven witch would help us out, but surely Mary could point us in the right direction.
At the thought of Mary, she opened the door and joined us in the tearoom, the letter I’d sent to her in hand. She looked back and forth between me and Mira and held it up. “One of you sent this?” she asked.
“I did.” I smiled. “It was my first successful fire message.”
“Well done.” She walked over to one of the colorful chairs and sat down. “I assume you received an audience with Hecate?”
“We did,” I said, and the three of us sat down as well and filled her in on what we’d learned.
She listened attentively, and from her calm expression, I had no idea what was going through her mind.
“There are two realms with portals to Ember,” Ethan said. “Mystica and the Otherworld.”
Of course, I knew about both realms from my studies. Mystica was the realm of the mages, and the Otherworld was the realm of the fae. The mages of Mystica kept mainly to themselves. But the demons had recently launched an attack on the Otherworld, so now the Otherworld was allied with Earth’s supernatural kingdoms. The alliance was new—and apparently very tense and complicated—but at least it was something.
“None of us have ever been to the Otherworld,” I continued. “So we can’t use our keys to get there. We were hoping—”
“I can’t guarantee what kind of reception you’ll receive from the fae,” Mary said before I could finish the sentence. “But I do have what you need to get to the Otherworld.”
9
Gemma
In all the weeks we’d spent with Ethan since getting our magic, he hadn’t told us anything about his home realm. So, for the rest of the day, he prepared us for what to expect when we got to Ember.
At least, he told us what he could, since he’d left Ember when he was a small child. Most everything he knew about his home realm had been told to him by his father.
“We’ll take the portal to Ember,” he finished. “And then, I’ll lead you to the kingdom. Well, what’s left of the kingdom.” A shadow crossed his eyes at that last part.
“But since you’ve been there before, you can use your key to go straight to your people,” Mira said. “You can literally walk in the front door and be there. So why don’t you go alone, get the Crown, and bring it back here?”
“Because it’s my duty to protect you,” he said. “I can’t do that from another realm.”
“We’re safe in the Haven.”
“We were supposed to be safe in Utopia, too.”
She frowned and said nothing.
“Nowhere is safe,” he continued. “But we have our keys. As long as there’s a door nearby, we have a way out of whatever situation we find ourselves in.”
And what if there’s no door nearby?
I kept the thought to myself, since I didn’t want to upset Mira.
“Fine,” she said, still frowning. “But I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap.” She used her key to exit the tearoom—presumably to go to her room.
Ethan watched her leave, his expression hard.
Whatever he was thinking, I couldn’t read him. And I didn’t know why I thought I’d be able to. He was one of those people who was near impossible to read.
But I could almost always read my twin.
“She wants you to go after her.” I motioned at the door.
“She does.” He sighed, then looked to me.
My chest tightened. Because this was the moment I’d been waiting for.
Time alone with Ethan to ask him the question that had been on my mind for days.
“Wait.” I took a deep breath, glanced down at my feet, and spoke as quickly as possible. “I think we should take memory potion to forget about what happened in that room.”
I nearly smacked myself. Could I have been any more generic?
I forced myself to meet his eyes, and he looked… amused.
It was the first time he’d looked me in the eyes in days. My breath caught at the intensity of his stare.
Why did his gaze have so much power over me?
“You mean the kiss?” he asked.
“Yes.” My voice nearly got stuck in my throat. “That.”
“No.”
“What?” I startled.
“You heard me. No. I won’t take the potion.”
I froze, unsure what to say. In all the times I’d rehearsed this conversation in my mind, I’d never imagined he’d say no—and especially not so quickly.
I shook myself back into focus. “Why not?”
“Because it happened,” he said quickly. “And, memory potion or not, we can’t change that.”
“But we’re the only people who know. If we take memory potion, it’ll be like it never happened. And that would be easier—for all three of us.”
“What if I don’t want to forget?”
Confusion rushed through me. Confusion… and a small thrill of happiness.
No.
I couldn’t be happy about this. What we did was wrong. I wouldn’t let myself feel anything else.
“We agreed that Mira should never know,” I said.
“We did,” he agreed. “But just because Mira will never know, it doesn’t mean we have to never know.”
“Why does it matter?” I asked. “It meant nothing. The only reason you snapped out of it was because you thought I was Mira.”