Chapter 36: Shampoo-Meets-Exorcism

Maria had just phoenixed through a forest, delivered a forty-word-per-second monologue about a priestess’s meltdown, referenced her brother bench-pressing a goddamn canoe, and was standing there in singed fern residue like this was completely normal.

"Also, putting it on the table, your hair is floating. Very goddess chic. Shampoo-advertisement-meets-exorcism. Because it looks like you’re underwater. And the fire, when you walked away? The priestess tried to relight it three times. Three. It just sat there. Cold. Like you took it with you. Did you take it with you? I’m asking genuinely because I don’t know how any of this works."

Maria paused. The motormouth stalled. Her eyes, bright and warm were just now noticing the tears Nova was trying to hide.

"What’s wrong?" she asked.

Nova couldn’t find the words. They were there, somewhere between her chest and her throat, stuck in traffic behind eighteen hours of adrenaline and fear and gratitude and grief and a priestess who told her she wasn’t worthy and a fire that may or may not have disagreed and a prince with a clicker and none of it could fit through the exit at the same time.

When she opened her mouth, a hiccup came out. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her glowing hands and tried again. Another hiccup. Worse than the first. Her face was wet and her hands were wet and everything was wet and illuminated and she couldn’t stop any of it.

"I can’t figure out how to stop glowing," she finally managed.

Maria stared at her for one full second. Then she started laughing. The kind of laugh that starts in the stomach and climbs through the chest and exits the mouth with enough force to scatter birds. It bounced off the trees and filled the trail and it was so loud and so genuine and so completely inappropriate for the gravity of the evening that it cracked through every wall Nova had left.

Nova laughed. A wet, hiccupy, tear-soaked, barely-qualifies-as-laughter laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. It felt like setting down something heavy that she’d been carrying since before the sun came up.

"STOP IT! The glow looks good on you. The Emberclaw fire is supposed to be the showstopper and you walked through mine like it was a curtain and came out the other side looking like THAT. My therapist will hear about this, Nova."

Nova laughed harder. The tears were still falling but they were different now, traveling over a smile instead of a blank face, and the combination was confusing her body but she was going to allow it because Maria Emberclaw had abandoned her own destiny to make a glowing girl in a forest laugh and that deserved every confused tear-laugh Nova’s face could produce.

"Maria, don’t you have a fated mate to find?" Nova wiped her cheek with a glowing knuckle. "I have a feeling you have one."

Her feeling was based on the fact that Maria’s flame had burned the brightest silver out of every silver she’d witnessed at that fire. Brighter than Celeste’s. Brighter than any princess before or after. The kind of bright that the Goddess uses when She’s already picked the groom and is decorating the venue.

Maria clapped her hands together so fast the sound echoed off three separate trees. "Did the Moon Goddess tell you that?"

Nova shook her head. "I don’t think the Moon Goddess wants me anywhere near Her sacred ceremony."

"Disagree. She is making you glow right now. Did she speak through you? Your voice changed there for a moment."

"I’m not sure," Nova managed.

"Well, we don’t need all the answers tonight. I came back to get you." Maria’s voice softened by exactly one degree, which for Maria was the equivalent of a whisper. "The ceremony can’t continue to the next contestant until you come back. But I want you to know that I was coming to get you either way, regardless of if that ceremony continued or not."

Nova wiped her eyes. She opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it again and the words that came out were smaller than she wanted them to be.

"I don’t think I am welcome there, Maria."

Her shoulders shook. Why was she this upset. She was furious at herself for being this sensitive, for standing in a forest leaking from her face like a busted faucet. Being judged was hard in general and every girl today had faced it. She wasn’t the only one who got rejected. She understood that. Hundreds of women had walked this same trail tonight with wet cheeks and empty hands. She had watched them. She had cried for them. She didn’t get to act like her rejection was heavier than theirs just because her version came with special effects.

"The issue is the fire won’t come back on." Maria chose her words the way you choose footing on a bridge you’re building while crossing it. Carefully. "The other priestesses have tried. There are women behind you who haven’t gotten their color yet."

Both of them knew what color meant. Color meant a chance. Color meant the Goddess looked at you and decided you were worth burning for. The absence of color meant the opposite and every girl still waiting in that line was standing between hope and a twenty-mile walk home and the fire that was supposed to answer them was cold because Nova had left with it like an uninvited guest who stole the centerpiece on her way out.

"Oh," Nova said. The syllable carried the weight of a girl who had been so consumed by her own rejection that she hadn’t considered the collateral damage of her exit. "I didn’t know that." She paused. "I don’t have control of the fire or any of that, though. I realize the optics might suggest otherwise."

Maria started laughing so hard she doubled over with her hands on her knees. The sound ricocheted off every tree in a thirty-foot radius and startled something in the canopy that wanted no part of princesses or comedy.

Nova laughed again. Wetter than the last one. Her eyes were still leaking and her chest was still doing the hiccup thing but laughter and crying were apparently roommates tonight and neither was willing to move out.

"The OPTICS," Maria wheezed, one hand on her stomach. "The optics are in a coma. We are well past optics."