There was a tiny crease between his eyebrows. “Don’t you wonder why your power gave you that nudge? It seems like a weird thing to do, doesn’t it? According to the Rules, you’re supposed to stay away from other witches, and yet it wanted you to come to us. What if it’s trying to tell you the Rules aren’t working? What if it’s saying the same thing to other witches? Maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that you bumped into Hilda back there. I know there are real risks to witches gathering together, but if you ask me, it seems like magic, the force that binds you all together, doesn’t want you to be alone.”

This hit Mika right in the heart. Over the years, when there had been nobody and nothing else, she and magic had always had each other. But what if they both wanted—needed—more?

What if that wasn’t possible?

“I can’t transform the world, Jamie. The world’s too big and too messy and too stubborn.”

“Who said anything about transforming the world?” He shrugged. “What about just making it a little better? And then a little better? And then a little more, until, one day, maybe long after we’re gone, it has transformed? You deserve more than what you’re allowing yourself to have.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, a flimsy bit of protection from the weight of her feelings. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of the heartbreak when I fail,” she said simply. “Of rejection. Of wanting too much. Of discovering again and again that I’m unlovable. All those nannies came and went, and not one of them loved me. And, thanks to Primrose, not one of them remembers me, either. People are usually like the sea, a constant, unerasable part of something bigger, but I’m more like a single wave that washes over the shore, ebbs away, and doesn’t leave a trace behind.”

He swallowed, his knuckles almost white on the wheel.

Mika looked away. “I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.”

It was quiet for so long that Mika wished she could take the too-reckless, too-honest words back, but then she heard him, rough and uneven and so quiet she almost missed it:

“It’s a little late for that, I’m afraid.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Six chocolate bars, three speed spells, and thirty minutes later, they stopped in the woods again. Jamie didn’t pretend to understand why the Winter Solstice was more powerful than the days before or after it, but he did know that it mattered to Mika. So when he saw the sign for the woods, he followed it.

“Jamie, we really don’t have to—”