I could feel their expectant eyes on me now, waiting for a miracle.

I stomped my foot again, this time in desperation, and the web beneath me bowed and rippled outward. Startled, I instinctively stomped once more.

This time, the web broke.

A web of pure, blinding white lay below it, and the tingle in my skin exploded in a wave of raw power. No. Awareness. Every blade of grass, every flake of snow, every needle of pine I felt with such an intensity that I stumbled backward, breathless. Célie caught my arm. “Lou?” she asked in alarm.

I didn’t dare open my eyes. Not when the web below offered so much more. I tracked each pattern eagerly, feverish with possibility. I’d thought my magic infinite before. I’d thought it limited only to my imagination.

I’d been wrong.

My magic had flowed through the land, but this magic—it was the land. This land. The Triple Goddess hadn’t merely bestowed her form. She’d bestowed the heart of our entire people. My finger twitched, and the web rippled outward, connected to my every thought, every emotion, every memory. My ancestors’ too. I didn’t just feel the grass. I was the grass. I’d become the snow and pine.

“Lou, you’re scaring me.” Coco’s sharp voice cut through my wonder, and unbidden, my eyes snapped open. She stood directly in front of me. In the brown of her irises, my skin reflected back at me, bright and burnished. Luminous. “What happened?”

“I—” The ache in my chest towed me forward through the trees. I couldn’t resist its pull. “I’m fine,” I called over my shoulder, chuckling at their wide eyes and parted mouths. Reid had drawn a knife from his bandolier. He regarded me with open suspicion. I couldn’t bring myself to care. “I can hide everyone. Follow me.”

Coco rushed after me. “How?”

I grinned at her. “White patterns.”

“Like the one at the blood camp?” Her hopeful expression fell. “The one that led you to Etienne?”

My smile slipped, and I shuddered to a halt, suddenly unsure. “Do you think it’s Morgane?”

“I think we should consider the possibility. Your patterns have never been white before, have they?”

“You’ve never been La Dame des Sorcières before either,” Beau pointed out. Though Coco and I both glared at him, it was too late. The damage had been done, and Reid’s menacing presence loomed behind me.

“You’re La Dame des Sorcières?”