Do Your Worst

by Rosie Danan

Clark was prone to emotional bruising.

“I’m not a witch.” She didn’t practice magic, she tussled with it. There was a difference.

his soaked denim work shirt had plastered itself to his chest like it paid for the privilege.

No matter how many times she pushed him, how many ways she tried to prove she didn’t want coddling, he always found a way to be careful with her.

She was an agent of her own destruction. As reckless as he’d said.

Why did a false endearment prick at her like nothing else? Because she’d never had a true one, probably never would.

Holding Clark’s gaze felt like staring at the

sun, risking permanent damage for the chance to know so...

that sometimes the hard thing, the thing that seems impossible, is the only way out.

It was kinder to be ruthless, to cut to the heart of the issue, leave no ambiguity, so the worst part could be over as quickly as possible.

Hadn’t he been drawn to her—a moth to a flame—the first night they’d met? Was it any wonder, then, that in trying to touch her he’d gotten burned?

It was a collection of lines scraped into the iron cage that looked like they might be…tally marks?

Bho a bilean, bàs

From her lips, death.

He’d gone his whole life thus far believing he had to be useful in order to be wanted.

Riley had assured him the curse couldn’t impact free will, but his attraction to her certainly felt otherworldly, almost mandated.

some kind of malevolent matchmaker?

“Her name was June, and she was born in rural Appalachia. Into a small mining community.”

“I’ve always found Appalachia fascinating.” The bedrock of the mountains was 480 million years old. It was one of the most ancient and mysterious geological artifacts in the world. “Do you know those mountains predate the dinosaurs?”

“My mom likes to remind people that her hometown is older than Saturn’s rings when they sass her about her accent.”

she’d give them a tonic or balm like the salve I gave you, something simple with ingredients mixed to bring healing or comfort, to soothe or fortify.

“Twelve men, some of them still boys, really, were slowly suffocating under miles of rocks and soot. Helpless, they screamed into the earth their anguish, their anger. And as each of them perished, their pain became a curse—whether they’d meant to create one or not.”

“The land around the mine began to change after they died,” Riley said. “The soil turned black, frozen. Nothing would grow.

You can’t fight a curse with rifles or fists. So they did what they’d always done—came to Gran and begged her to fix it.”

she’d gathered all the loved ones of the lost. Took them to the entrance of the mines, where they’d laid their joined hands upon the ground and repeated her chant. All the love those men had lost, the comfort they sought in their final moments, poured back into the earth—a ritual to mirror the curse’s origin. Gran said everyone felt it, the moment

They were each trapped by fortune’s cage, the bars constructed of legacy and obligation, aptitude and determination.

a longing to be accepted. Only unlike him, rather than courting approval, Riley spat in the face of societal norms.

They were at an impasse bigger than a contrast in temperament or working style. It was like she could see colors he couldn’t, and Clark only knew how to follow his own eyes.

hope was an exceptionally mortal concept. A belief in better, knowing that your ability to effect change was limited.

Hope. It was the exact right word for Riley’s particular brand of determination and persistence.

Hoisted by her own petard?

The gesture felt like flowers before a date—no, actually, better. It felt like someone caring about her comfort. Like Clark wanting her to know she was worth the effort.

Undressing the enemy was a callback to ancient custom. A way to show they came together without weapons on their person, concealed or otherwise.

The smell of wood smoke, sweet in her nose, comforting and familiar.

he’d be just as lovely soft and rounded. It came down to the way he held himself. The strength in it. Patience in his stance.

Despite Clark’s repeated claims that she loved risk, she really didn’t. Sure, she was impulsive, but that was

different, action without thought. Risk was calculated. Riley had never been any good at the thinking part.

“I’m attending you.”

“To show I don’t hold myself superior.”

the jar of rowan she’d prepared. Clark would eat from her hand, a symbol of trust—since

“Next time try something less peated and you’ll enjoy it more. The flavor is richer, caramel instead of smoke.”

“You raised me to be a researcher.” Had fed him and Patrick both on a strict diet of logic. Built their household at the altar of science.

“But you’re an archaeologist. You know fact is nothing but our best approximation of the truth.”

“It simply seems to me like spectacular arrogance to assume that anything I can’t prove is impossible.”

Apparently, for archaeologists, “pulling out the big guns” meant “using your academic credentials to get access to a university’s rare books

America had a lot going for it, as far as she was concerned, but man, Europeans

really took the cake when it came to old stuff. And gun laws. But that was a different story.

This place, this room, kept so many centuries of knowledge—it hurt her heart that she only got access for a few hours.

“He was probably terrified at first, of how caring for her, wanting her, put him at her mercy,” she mused. Two things are bound into repetition, Gran had written, history and curses.

“From her lips, death,” Clark said, “of all he knew, all he was.”