Chapter 10 (Magnolia): My Bravado

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Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

After opening the door to Magnus, I just looked at him. Didn't say a word. Didn't glare. Didn't sneer. Didn't even try to kick him in the balls. I just looked at him blankly and waited for him to say something.

"Noli," he said, and those two syllables sounded choked. Rough.

"Can I help you?" I asked coolly, much like you'd ask a stranger at your door trying to sell you pest prevention.

"I'm so sorry," he said, and the words burst out of him as if he'd been holding them in for...six months.

"OK. Is there anything else you needed?"

His eyes were confused. Magnus had probably spent the last six months imagining this moment of confrontation and I was sure in all of the scenarios he'd run through, I was furious, raging, yelling, lashing out at him.  

"Can we talk, please?"

"To what purpose?"

"Noli, please, I know I hurt you, and I'm so sorry about that."

"Magnus, when you accidentally step on someone's toes, that's hurting them. What you did was so beyond I know I hurt you it isn't even funny. You cracked my heart open, and you didn't even care that what you were doing would break my heart."

With a motion of my hand, Magnus sucked in a breath, his face horrified but he came barreling into my house, taking me by the arms. "Oh, my God, Noli! Noli!"

He was seeing an illusion of my chest torn open, my heart ripped in two, blood pouring from it and pooling onto the floor.

"What the actual fuck?! What the actual fuck is happening?"

I moved my hand again, and the illusion ended and Magnus stepped back, so confused. 

"That was a visual of what you did to me. That's how I felt when I saw you with her. Ripped open. Torn apart."

I made another slight motion with my hand, and just that fast, Magnus drew himself up, tense, wired and ready for battle.

"What the fuck is she doing here, Magnolia?" he asked as Lamia walked in from my kitchen.

"Oh, Lamia? She called and said she was close, so I asked her to stop by so we could compare notes."  

"Get the fuck away from Noli," he snapped at the illusion, brushing past me to get at her. I wasn't sure of his intentions, but had she been real, she would have been terrified in the face of the palpable rage he was barely holding in check. Was he going to throw her bodily out or something? 

"Get the fuck out of here!" he yelled in her face.

With another flick of my hand, she disappeared and Magnus spun in a circle looking for her, thoroughly confused.

"What the hell's going on?"

And I wondered, from a certain tone in his voice, if he was beginning to connect some magical dots and his question was just the verbal acknowledgment of that. I knew that he'd been given glimpses of me with Tahvo -- Rosemary had explained beforehand that if I went there with Tahvo, Magnus seeing us having sex was the balance the magic required. Very simply, since I'd seen Magnus with Lamia, then Magnus would see me with Tahvo. I realized very quickly that even though they called it turning of fate, the fae lived according to Newton's Third Law of Motion -- for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

"I don't know what you mean," I said innocently.

"Your chest torn open. She was just here and now she's not. And I saw you while you were gone with that little blonde fucker, too."

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