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  Harris grabbed their arms and yanked them under the covering of a large redwood.

  “What was that?” Trajan asked.

  “QSD. You know, Quiet Shadow Death, the owl?” Harris guessed.

  “It’s day. He should be asleep,” Nim said.

  “We’ve seen him in the daytime before.”

  “Dark One.” The words floated through the trees. “Dark One.”

  “Definitely QSD,” Nim said with forced cheerfulness. She’d never said it, but Harris had realized it bugged her to be referred to that way.

  “Dark One,” the owl called again.

  “I’ll go,” Harris said.

  “We’ll all go,” Trajan corrected.

  “Maybe Nim should go to the cave.”

  “No, I need to go find out what it wants.”

  Together they made their way through the forest, which after more than a month living there they knew well. The great spotted owl was perched on the tall stump, black eyes watching them approach.

  “Dark One,” it said again.

  “Greetings, Quiet Shadow Death.” Nim was deferential, but not welcoming.

  The owl tipped his head to the side, and Harris fought the urge to mimic the movement.

  “Your time here ends,” QSD intoned.

  The forest fell quiet and a cloud passed in front of the sun.

  “Fuck that.” Trajan inhaled noisily. He exhaled, the wind rising, and the low clouds started to move away, the sunlight brightening.

  “How will my time here end?” Nim asked.

  “How it is meant to. How it should.”

  “Could you be more specific?” Harris asked.

  “You need the fire man. You need to seek the medicine. You need truth from your companions.”

  Harris tensed. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “It is not you who has secrets, tree caller. But you will join her when she seeks the medicine.”

  “I don’t understand what you’ve said.” Nim’s words were slow and deliberate. “But I hear you. I will remember.”

  Quiet Silent Death spread its wings.

  “Wait, please,” Nim called out. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Ask, Dark One.”

  “The darkness, is it still in me?”

  “It fills you. It is you. Your time here will end.”

  Nim closed her eyes. Dust kicked up as QSD’s great wings beat at the air, lifting its massive body into the sky. Once the owl was out of sight, Harris whirled. There were a lot of things QSD had said, but one that made Harris see red.

  He grabbed Nim, pulling her against his chest. She was shivering, and tucked her head under his chin. He looked at Trajan. “You have two minutes to tell us whatever truth the owl was talking about.”

  Trajan crossed his arms. “You’re not seriously going to believe a big talking bird over—”

  Thorny vines shot up out of the ground, wrapping around Trajan’s legs.

  Trajan bared his teeth and slashed a hand through the air. The trees whistled and Harris braced for impact. Nim whispered something and the ground trembled. Dust rained down on them. The impact from the wind never came. She’d pulled up a six-foot wall of soil to protect their back, the force of the wind hitting it sending dirt into the air to rain down on them.

  For one horrifying moment Harris wondered if this had all been a lie—if Trajan was only pretending to be with them. Maybe turning to stone had broken something in him.

  Trajan held up his hands. “Everyone calm down. Harris, get your thorns away from my balls and I won’t smack you upside the head with a gust.”

  They both looked at Trajan’s crotch. There was a vine suspiciously close to the apex of his thighs.

  “I am sick of almost getting stabbed through my dangly bits in this place,” Trajan grumped.

  Nim let out an uncharacteristic nervous giggle, but stopped when Harris squeezed her. He retracted the thorns. “What did the owl mean?”

  Trajan ran a hand through his hair. “It’s nothing bad.”

  “If it wasn’t bad, you would have told us,” Harris shot back. He was tormented by the memory of that morning, of looking down into Trajan’s eyes as they fucked Nim in tandem. The intimacy of that moment seemed a mockery.

  “That’s what I did.” Trajan rubbed the back of his neck, looking ashamed. Not defensive, or like he was lying, but ashamed.

  “Huh?”

  “I told someone the truth. About us, about this.” He gestured around. “Can we please have the rest of this conversation inside?”

  Harris released him, and they followed Trajan back to the cave. No one spoke until they were settled in the seating and work area they’d created in the center of the cavern—a round slice off the top of the massive stump, which was propped on stone pillars Nim had created to make a table. Nim’s futon had been reassembled, as had her chair.

  Harris and Nim sat on the couch. Trajan first leaned on the table, fists braced, head hanging, before he straightened and came around to sit in the chair. “When your covens taught you the laws, about not using your magic except in your own territory, no magic in neutral cities, did they give an example of what could happen?”

  “Of course,” Harris replied. “There could be earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes.”

  Trajan shook his head. “No, I mean a specific example.”

  “Yes,” Nim said. “I remember because it was romantic.”

  They both looked at her.

  “In a horrible way,” she amended. “Like Romeo and Juliet. Practitioners from different cabals fell in love. They wore dampeners, and thought as long as they did that it would be okay. But one night they forgot their dampeners. Their magic reacted and it caused a storm that had both tornadoes and carried a plague of mice. The mice destroyed crops, and the tornadoes destroyed whole towns. People died.”

  Harris nodded. He remembered this story now. “Yeah, I remember, and it was recent—I didn’t hear it until I was a teenager. We looked at pictures of what had happened to the farms. There was video of the mice running across the fields, so many of them they looked like a gray wave, and then pouring out of the silos. They couldn’t stop them, they just had to wait for them to start dying once the food was gone. Horrible.”

  “And the practitioners,” Trajan prompted. “What happened to them?”

  “They were hurt…but not by the storm.” Nim shrugged. “I don’t remember much more than that.”

  “This part I remember,” Harris said. “The reaction reverse-blinded them. Made it so they were always using their sight. That drove them mad. They weren’t punished because they both went insane.”

  Trajan let the silence hang before he shook his head. “Not totally blind,” he said. “Just one eye was affected.”

  “Wait, this is true?” Harris asked.

  Nim sat forward. “There were rumors that the girl was from the Dixon coven—that explained the tornadoes. That she had been incredibly beautiful, but was disfigured and crazy.”

  “She’s still beautiful.” Trajan smiled, but the expression faded quickly. “The story is very true. My cousin Iris fell in love with Rowan Laveau.”

  Harris whistled.

  “They were, are, both powerful and smart. They thought they could find a way to make it so they could be together without swearing off their magic or always using dampeners. They were researching that, meeting in secret and using dampeners so they could touch. Then one night they forgot. That’s all, they forgot. Their passive magic fields, fed by their strong emotions, were enough to cause the massive reaction. The storm, the mice.”

  “All that from their passive fields?” Harris asked.

  “What about the rest of it, is it true?” was Nim’s question.

  “Iris has white hair, like we all do in my coven, except for a streak of black just here.” Trajan touched his head. “She has a scar over one eye, and it’s black—not dark brown, but totally black. She spent a few years locked up, unable to stop herself from us
ing her sight, which made her…unstable.” He shifted in the chair. “I’m going to tell you something no one outside my coven knows…” He took a deep breath and then said, “She still loves Rowan.”

  “Oh. Oh no,” Nim whispered.

  “What?” Harris asked, feeling like he’d missed something.

  “She still loves him, but can never touch him. People died because she loved him, which had to make her feel incredibly guilty, plus the trauma of having her sight always on…” Nim shook her head.

  “Exactly,” Trajan replied. “So I told her about us, about this place. I told her that we were able to touch each other. Use our magic in front of one another.” He popped out of the chair, pacing. “Actually, if it had just been that I wouldn’t have said anything, because clearly we did something extremely weird and fucked up.” He gestured to their gold-and precious-gem-filled cave. “But we were able to use our magic near Robert, and he used it when we were close that first day. There was no reaction.”

  “You think she might be able to use the forest to figure out a way to touch the man she loves.”

  Trajan nodded in reply to Nim’s comment.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  He stood. “Because it’s not fair of me to ask you two to lie to your families while I tell our secrets. But I asked for something in return.”

  He quick-stepped it across the cave, then brought back a box bearing the label of a twenty-four-hour print shop. “Iris scanned and faxed me everything our coven has on breaking curses. Robert went and picked this up, brought it in with our last set of supplies. I’ve been reading, studying, taking notes.”

  Trajan started laying the papers out on the table. “You’re right, Nim—I think the spell you had worked out to use your death to end the curse, sort of take it with you, will work.”

  She rose to wander over to the table, Harris following her.

  Trajan looked up. “But you’re not going to die. I won’t let you.” He took a deep breath, and a faint breeze made the papers rustle. “I love you, both of you. I won’t let you die.”

  Harris’s heart clenched and he reached out to take Nim’s hand. She backed away from the table, holding her other hand out to Trajan. He took her fingers in his, the marks on their hands lining up. Harris held out his spare hand to Trajan.

  “You should have told us,” he said as Trajan grasped his wrist.

  “I know. I wanted to have the answer. I wanted to know that…know that I wouldn’t lose you, both of you.” Trajan swallowed, and for a moment it looked like he might cry. Big, strong, sarcastic-in-the-face-of-danger Trajan was on the verge of tears. “I’ve watched Iris die a little inside every day she’s not with Roman. I don’t want that for us, any of us.”

  Nim was crying, silent small tears tracking down her cheeks. “When I die, stay together, you two. Remember me.”

  “You’re not going to die.” Trajan’s words were hard, almost angry.

  “I’m not going to die in vain. I’m going to save my family, save my sisters.” Her eyes started to glow, and Harris’s hand tingled where his skin touched hers. “And maybe what we did here, what we have, that will help you two find a way to help people like Iris.”

  “No, I won’t let you go.” Trajan squeezed Harris’s wrist. “We won’t let you go.”

  “I love you,” Harris told them. He had so many thoughts and feelings rolling around inside, but he couldn’t name them all. All he could do was speak this one simple truth. “I love you.”

  “And I love you, both of you.” Nim drew in an unsteady breath. “For however long I have left, I love you.” She let out a watery laugh. “I will love you for the rest of my life.”

  “That’s not funny, Nimue,” Trajan snapped.

  Harris stopped paying attention. He was staring down at their linked hands, while the owl’s words rolled through his mind.

  * * * *

  Several months later they were lounging in the cave as a storm raged outside. They’d set out fat white pillar candles, adding a warmth to the otherwise cool light in the cave. Their living area was cozy, furnished with things Robert had brought them or which Nim and Harris had created with their magic. Trajan’s magic wasn’t good for making much, but Harris grew him some reeds, and Trajan had made several baskets—a skill he’d learned from some school project, and which he remastered over the course of a dozen baskets. His first pitiful attempt held the place of honor in the middle of the table. It was full of oranges and apples from their small orchard.

  The pounding of the rain was just barely audible. Harris was dressed but had a towel around his neck, his hair still damp. The crazy man had insisted on going out to make sure all the trees were well-rooted, and the forest undergrowth was sufficient to prevent too much soil erosion.

  Trajan stared at the papers in front of him, excitement and relief making him lightheaded.

  “I’ve got it,” he declared, grinning.

  Nim and Harris both looked up, Nim from a stack of papers, Harris from an article about medical cannabis. They set aside their reading and hurried to the table.

  He pointed to several pieces of paper. “We can mute the curse. It’s a Sleeping Beauty spell.”

  “You’ll wake me with love’s first kiss? We might be in trouble with that ‘first’ part.” Nim leaned against him, her body warm and soft.

  “No, in the Aurora version, not the creepy rape one, she doesn’t die the way she was meant to—she falls asleep. They muted the curse from death to sleep. We could do that for you. Instead of dying, you’ll sleep. Trick the curse. Then we kiss you to wake you up. If that doesn’t work, we make like the creepy rape version and fuck you awake.”

  Harris barked out a laugh and then hug-tackled Trajan. “You’re brilliant, Dixon.” Harris kissed him.

  Together they turned to her.

  Nim’s joy faded. “But if the curse thinks I’m dead, it passes on to my sister.”

  They stopped celebrating. Trajan cupped her face. “You’d be alive, and we’d have time. Time to find a way to really end the curse. We’ve got the forest—maybe there’s something else here we haven’t found yet that we can use. As long as you’re alive, we have options.”

  Harris took her hand, squeezing it between both of his. “You asked us to stay with you. What if we ask you to stay with us?”

  *

  Nim’s heart broke. “I can’t. I can’t trap you here with me. As long as I’m alive, the forest is alive, and you can’t go home.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Trajan insisted. “There’s no guarantee that if you…if you die, we could leave.”

  Nim pulled away from both of them, forcing herself to ignore the hurt she saw in their eyes. “If I did this…if I chose my own happiness at the cost of cursing my sister, I would be dead. Maybe not my body, but my heart, my soul.”

  Trajan turned away, stomping to the edge of the cavern, up the stone steps she’d created, and out into the forest.

  Harris turned away too. “I understand, but it’s hard to hear.” He followed Trajan.

  She watched them, heart breaking. Time was almost up. Her birthday was a month away. There was no cure, no escape, except to take the curse with her.

  This was the way it had to be. But in the darkness of the night, when they slept beside her, she dreamed of a future with the men she loved.

  Chapter 22

  Six hours to sundown.

  Nim hung up the phone, passing it back to Trajan with a shaking hand. Her face was wet with tears, and Trajan and Harris both looked like they too were close to tears after listening to her say goodbye to her mother and sisters.

  “Baby, come outside. Get some sunlight.” Harris wrapped his arm around her.

  They emerged from the cave into the afternoon sun. The small cooking area they’d set up outside was well organized and newly stocked. Robert was sitting in one of the small folding chairs. He rose when he saw her. Over the past five months, he’d grown comfortable enough with the forest that he
now came to the cave. They still met him at the border and used magic to help transport the heaviest things, but he’d usually spend the afternoon with them.

  It had been several weeks since he saw her, and she caught his horrified expression before he could mask it. The owl hadn’t been kidding when he said she was darkness. Nim’s skin was now covered in inky black lines, almost as if the original black scar lines had grown, sending offshoots and branches out to cover the rest of her skin. She looked like someone had doodled roots or tree branches on every inch of her exposed skin. Her face was mostly untouched, except a long line streaking up her right cheek. Nothing like this had happened to her aunts or cousins before they died, so this physical manifestation of the curse was just another side effect of the forest.

  Robert gestured to a box he’d placed on their small folding table. “I brought you a cake, for your birthday. I know it’s not a, uh, happy birthday, but…I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Thank you, Robert,” she said. “Will you…will you check on my family? Just drive by the houses, make sure everyone is okay?”

  “Of course. Did you…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask.”

  “Did I say goodbye? Yes. I told them I’m going to try and take the curse with me, but that I’m not sure if it will work. My sisters were…they were upset, but trying not to be. My mother is resigned. She’s been preparing for this since my cousin died.”

  Robert looked between them. “What do you need? Want me to stay and hang out and take everyone’s mind off it until, uh…”

  “Sundown,” Trajan snarled. “We only have her until sunset. Then she dies.”

  Nim stopped herself from looking at the sky. She didn’t want to know where the sun was. Not today.

  Harris’s grip on her waist tightened, and she could feel the impotent fury and fear pouring out of him. Trajan turned away from them, hands forming fists at his sides.

  “Control,” Harris snapped.

  Since the lines appeared on her skin, working any sort of magic filled her with searing pain. In solidarity, Trajan and Harris were trying to limit their use of magic, unless they were working a spell.