A Little Green Magic (The Little Coven #1) - Isabel Wroth Page 0,59
immediately to hug me.
“You whispered in my ear that everything was going to be okay, and you held my hand the whole way to the dormitory. When we got there, you shut the door behind us, and I remember thinking it seemed so cold and sterile compared to the warmth of my bedroom at home.
“You sat with me on that narrow, lumpy mattress and told me we were going to be friends, and not just because we were orphans. I was grieving for my parents. I wanted to go home so badly, and every day you brought fresh flowers in to cheer me up.
“I barely talked, but you chattered on about all the different plants growing in the greenhouse and what they were used for while you arranged them in pretty jars.
“I'll never forget the day I heard June Barrows whispering to Farrah that you were such a shitty witch, you couldn't even light a candle without a match. I was so mad, but I didn't say anything to you about it. I asked you what kind of flower you would use if you wanted to make someone shit themselves.”
Ivy blinked, then busted a gut laughing. “That was the first real conversation we’d had since your arrival. I remember June having the most embarrassing incident in the middle of the hallway for all to see. What did you say to her when we walked by?”
“Who's a shitty witch now?” Rowena giggled, leaving Ivy in stitches. “It was so terrible of me, but I wasn't going to let June talk bad about you, and I'm certainly not going to tolerate you talking bad about yourself now.
“So, you're not one hundred percent witch. What the hell does that matter? Neither is Astrid, and yeah, her parents look completely normal, but I’m not convinced that Chaos itself didn’t birth Juliet.
“You have Fae relatives, but they're not your family. Their blood doesn't define who you are. You're my sister, my friend, and this is our home.”
Ivy leaned over and met Rowena in a tight hug. “I love you, too.”
“We're strong together. Don't forget.”
“I won't.”
“Good. I'm craving peach cobbler tonight. Let's go pick some fruit from the orchard.”
The peach harvest yielded over fifty pounds of fruit, half of it ripe and ready to eat. There were apples too, plums, the berry bushes full to bursting.
Rowena wound up calling the whole coven out to pick fruit. Juliet brought music, Astrid brought sun hats, and they had a little harvest party. There was nothing better than eating sun-warmed fruit fresh off the tree.
The summer solstice was just around the corner, a time of year when Ivy had always felt most centered and happy. The summer solstice was the perfect time for fairy magic, which might explain a few things, such as why the ritual to call in the Goddess always felt so natural and powerful to her during that time.
When Uriah finally came to get her, he found Ivy in the kitchen surrounded by piles of fruit. They stayed to have dinner with the coven, and in a show of defiance for anyone who might be watching them, Rowena insisted on bringing the dining room table out into the back yard, draping it with gauzy white sheets.
The lions who guarded them were invited to join in, drinking sweet peach tea, nibbling on peach salad, apples drizzled in honey and wrapped in prosciutto, and pork chops marinated in blackberry vinaigrette. A summer feast.
Ivy sat at the table with her head resting on Uriah’s shoulder, looking around at the laughing faces of her coven sisters. This was her family, and she belonged here.
*****
At home, Uriah told her neither he nor the lions had been able to pick up the scent of anything irregular in the forest. They'd patrolled both properties and hadn't found so much as a scuff in the dirt to lead them to whoever had been right there on the edge of the protective boundary.
Ivy stood in the living room, chewing on her thumbnail as she stared out into the peaceful landscape of the back yard. So much beauty. Ivy could feel the hum of life, a soft melody that resonated with unbelievable power.
She could sense the birds that nested in the trees; the roots of those trees dug deep down into the soil, the rush of water spilling over the rocky riverbed. The decaying leaves that enriched the soil, the insects churning it all up, little bunnies and lizards, fish and frogs. She could feel the