Chapter Nine: Choosing Her Anyway
Elle would spend two of the longest days of her life waiting for a single text message, and would learn, when it finally arrived, that some answers were worth every agonizing hour it took to receive them.
That was Thursday afternoon, warm and golden and utterly unlike the fear that had preceded it. First, there was the silence.
Jasper hadn't come to school Wednesday, a fact Elle had catalogued with rising dread throughout a day she barely remembered attending, and his texts, when they came at all, had been short and noncommittal — still thinking, sorry, need more time than I expected — offering nothing for her to hold onto beyond the bare fact that he hadn't disappeared entirely.
She'd thrown herself into family strategy sessions instead, partly because the house needed her focus and partly because it gave her something to do besides stare at her phone. Vincent, Dante, and Marco had spent both days in near-constant conference, maps and old family records spread across the study's long table, piecing together everything they knew about the Cross family's likely next move now that Elle's magic had been confirmed beyond any doubt.
Sofia had noticed her distraction too, in the particular unfiltered way of an eight-year-old who hadn't yet learned to pretend not to see things. "You keep checking your phone like it's going to bite you," she observed, settling onto the couch beside Elle during one of the rare quiet moments between strategy sessions. "Is it about the boy?"
"It's about the boy," Elle admitted.
"Uncle Dante says boys who run away when things get hard weren't worth keeping anyway." Sofia delivered this with the solemn authority of someone repeating gospel truth. "But I don't think your boy ran away. I think he's just thinking really hard, because thinking hard takes grown-ups a really long time for some reason."
Elle found herself smiling despite everything, ruffling Sofia's hair with more gratitude than the small comfort probably warranted. "I hope you're right."
"They will not attack directly," Vincent said Thursday morning, tracing a finger along a hand-drawn map of the city's old industrial district, where family intelligence suggested the Cross family kept its primary base of operations. "Not yet. What they witnessed on that street was proof of concept, not the endgame. They will want to understand the shape of your power fully before attempting anything more aggressive, which gives us a narrow window to act first rather than simply waiting for their next move."
"How long is the window?" Elle asked, trying to focus on the map instead of the phone sitting silent and heavy in her lap.
"Days. Perhaps a week, if we are fortunate." Vincent's jaw was tight. "The Cross family has waited twelve years for confirmation. They will not act recklessly now that they finally have it. But they will not wait forever either."
"Act how?" Elle asked, looking up from the notes she'd been halfheartedly pretending to take.
"There is an old working," Dante said, sliding a considerably more weathered book across the table, its leather cover cracked with age. "Buried in the family archives, from before the curse was even placed on us. A binding rite, meant to formally and permanently sever a curse from its intended bloodline, rather than merely suppressing it the way your magic seems to have done twelve years ago. If it works the way the old texts describe, it would not simply keep the curse dormant. It would end it entirely, beyond any possibility of it ever waking again."
"Why haven't we done this already, then? Twelve years ago, even?"
"Because the rite requires a willing sacrifice of something considerable from the one performing it," Vincent said grimly, "and because we did not, until three days ago, fully understand that the curse remained a threat worth that particular cost. We believed, wrongly, that it was already finished."
Elle studied the ancient text, dense and difficult even in translation, her mind already spinning through implications she didn't fully like the shape of. "What kind of sacrifice?"
"The book is not entirely specific," Dante admitted. "Old magic rarely spells out its costs plainly. But every reference we've found suggests it draws deeply on the caster's own life force, their memories, something essential and personal rather than simply physical strength."
"The book is not entirely specific," Dante admitted. "Old magic rarely spells out its costs plainly. But every reference we've found suggests it draws deeply on the caster's own life force, their memories, something essential and personal rather than simply physical strength."
He turned the book carefully to a page marked with a faded ribbon, dense old script filling the margins alongside a hand-drawn diagram Elle couldn't fully interpret, circles within circles, old symbols she didn't recognize from anything she'd been taught. "The last recorded use of this particular rite was nearly two hundred years ago, by a woman who severed a curse laid on her own children. The record says only that she 'gave willingly of what she treasured most,' and that afterward she did not remember her children's father, though she remembered raising them perfectly well. We do not know if that is the typical cost, or simply what it cost her specifically."
"Like what happened to Papa's name," Elle said slowly, understanding arriving cold and unwelcome. "The Cross elder who cursed this family originally. Whatever he sacrificed to weave that curse in the first place."
"Precisely." Vincent's expression had gone heavier, older. "Which is why I have not asked this of you, Elowen, and do not intend to unless every other option has been exhausted first. I would rather face the Cross family in open, ordinary conflict a hundred times over than watch you pay a price like that one."
The conversation had continued for another hour, strategies and contingencies stacking up without ever quite settling into a plan Elle felt confident about, and it was nearly four in the afternoon, sunlight slanting gold through the study's tall windows, when her phone finally buzzed with the message she'd been waiting two agonizing days to receive.
Can you meet me at the park? The one from before. I know that probably sounds like a weird choice given everything, but I want to talk somewhere that isn't your house or mine. Somewhere that was just ours before all of this.
Elle's heart hammered as she read it twice, three times, searching for some clue in the careful, neutral wording about which way this conversation was going to go, and found, in the end, that there was only one way to actually know.
I'll be there in twenty minutes, she typed back, and went to find Marco.
The park looked entirely ordinary in the late afternoon light, no frost, no strange grey dimness, just spring grass and distant kids on the swings and Jasper sitting on their usual bench, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, watching her approach with an expression she still couldn't fully read.
"Hey," she said, stopping a careful distance away, unwilling to close the gap without some sign it was wanted.
"Hey." Jasper studied her for a long moment, and then, slowly, patted the bench beside him, an invitation Elle accepted with a rush of relief so intense it nearly buckled her knees. "I've spent two days trying to figure out how to say this properly, and I don't think there's actually a clean way to do it, so I'm just going to say it messy instead."
"Okay."
"I was scared. Genuinely, completely scared, not just of the men in that car but of the whole size of what you told me — that you're not human, that your family is involved in things I still don't fully understand, that apparently there are people out there who would hurt me just for knowing you." He exhaled slowly, gathering himself. "And I spent about a day just sitting with that fear, letting myself feel however I needed to feel about it, because I didn't want to make you some kind of promise I wasn't sure I could actually keep."
Elle's chest ached, bracing for whatever came next, though something in his tone didn't quite match the shape of a goodbye.
"But here's the thing I kept coming back to," Jasper continued, turning to face her fully now, his expression open and certain in a way it hadn't been since the confrontation. "Every single memory I have of you, before any of this happened, is just... good. You, laughing at terrible vending machine jokes. You, asking me a real question about a painting when nobody else in that class cared enough to actually look at it properly. You, standing between me and two dangerous strangers without a single second of hesitation, because some instinct in you apparently decided protecting people is just what you do, magic or not." He reached over, carefully, and took her hand. "I don't fully understand your world yet. I probably won't for a long time. But I understand you, Elle. I've understood you since that first day in the hallway, and nothing that happened this week changed the fundamental fact that you're the best person I've ever met. I'm choosing you. All of it. The magic, the danger, the family that apparently runs background checks on library books. All of it."
Elle felt something enormous and warm break open in her chest, relief and joy tangled together so completely she couldn't have separated them if she'd tried, and closed the remaining distance between them to kiss him, soft and certain, spring sunlight warm on both their faces, two full days of fear finally, fully releasing into something steadier.
Elle felt something enormous and warm break open in her chest, relief and joy tangled together so completely she couldn't have separated them if she'd tried, and closed the remaining distance between them to kiss him, soft and certain, spring sunlight warm on both their faces, two full days of fear finally, fully releasing into something steadier, more solid than anything she'd let herself hope for since watching his taillights disappear around that corner.
They stayed on the bench a while longer, hands linked, watching the ordinary business of the park continue around them, kids shrieking on the swings, a dog chasing a ball with single-minded joy, and Elle found herself, for the first time in days, simply breathing easily, the specific relief of having survived something enormous with the person she cared about still choosing to stand beside her.
"I have to tell you something else, though," she said, once they'd broken apart, foreheads still resting together. "Something my family is considering. A way to end the curse permanently, so nobody ever comes after either of us again."
Jasper pulled back slightly, searching her face. "That sounds like the kind of sentence that has a difficult second half."
"It might cost me something big. We don't fully know what yet." Elle held his gaze steadily, wanting him to hear this honestly, the way he'd just been honest with her. "But if it means you're actually safe, permanently, I think I'm going to do it anyway."
Jasper's hand tightened around hers, worry and fierce, protective love warring visibly behind his eyes. "Then I'm coming with you. Whatever this is, whatever it costs. I just got you back, Elle. I'm not spending the whole thing standing safely on the sidelines while you pay for my safety alone, not after everything we've already survived together this week."
Elle looked at him for a long moment, this boy who'd spent two frightened days sitting with an impossible truth and chosen her anyway, and felt something settle deep and certain in her chest, a quiet resolve that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the simple, stubborn fact of being chosen, freely and completely, by someone who'd had every reasonable excuse to walk away instead.
"Okay," she said finally, lacing her fingers more firmly through his. "Together, then."