Chapter 50
Clare
When Clare awoke, she was surrounded by fog. No longer in Massacre Manor but somewhere else. Somewhere she knew well.
Her childhood home, though it looked different. Less worn, less cold. It appeared…lived in. A screeching sound came from the door, startling her backward. It was Trystan. But no. It was Trystan of the past, maybe six years old, she realized as the boy ran out to the garden.
“Hear ye, hear ye! As king of our club, I decree that from this day on, no one is allowed to steal peonies from Mrs. Lalula’s garden. I’m looking at you, Tatianna.”
Tatianna had followed Trystan outside, her little arms folded in indignation, her small face and round cheeks making her look like a doll, especially paired with the poofy pink monstrosity that appeared to be a dress.
“Hello?” Clare waved, trying to make herself known, to not scare them.
Had Mo opening that book sent her back in time?
Tatianna turned and smiled, running straight for Clare and then straight through.
Clare’s middle disappeared in a smoky plume for a moment before it reappeared.
If she’d had a stomach right then, it would’ve emptied.
“Clare!” Tatianna yelled, and her head spun so fast toward her name. She wasn’t prepared to see herself. Her smaller self. She was four, perhaps. All the days of her childhood usually blended, only marked by occasions instead of dates.
See this scar on my upper lip? It happened when I was trying to rescue a cat from a tree. This hole in the side of the house? It happened when we tried to make muffins with six different colors of sugar.
There was nothing remarkable to clarify this day. Trystan was there, and Alexander, Malcolm scurrying behind them, and Clare… Little Clare and little Tatianna were just ahead, leading them to some newly found play spot. A story to be acted out, a game they’d made up.
Gods, she missed this.
But it was gone. These moments wouldn’t come back to her. It was time to stop living for them.
“This was a lovely existence. But it’s not mine anymore,” Clare whispered.
And with the words, her body jerked. The house that was a fair distance away was warped until it was in front of her, the door open, an invisible force dragging her in.
“I’m certain he’s showing signs of it already, Amara.
Isn’t this exciting?” Her father’s young face was there.
Alive. Expressive. Full of joy. She missed him so much she couldn’t help but rush for him, but once again, he walked right through her.
Clare wasn’t permitted to be a part of this memory a second time. Except she had not seen this…had she?
It wasn’t her memory.
“I’ve written to Benedict. He needs to know.
” Amara was sullen, less sharp than Clare had always known her to be, her dark hair pulled tight in a bun that tugged at her features.
Her black eyes were so like Clare’s and Trystan’s, except they weren’t kind.
“I hardly think this is any cause for celebration, Arthur.”
Clare’s father frowned, rubbing at his long red beard. “Whyever not? Trystan having magic is a blessing. All magic is a blessing.”
Amara was grim when she turned away, folding her arms. Her mother looked younger, it was true, but there was a lack of youth in her even here, a lack of joy that Clare often wondered about after.
Had it been lost by some great tragedy? Or had her mother simply been born without it?
“Yes, well. We can’t all share your optimism. ”
Arthur was indulgent, doting on her mother with practiced skill. “Amara, dear. If I am right, then Trystan will be revered. Don’t you want that for him? I know I do.”
“I still can’t understand why you’d be so bothered either way by his future. You’re not his father.”
Clare flinched in time with her father. Gods, had her mother always been this cruel? Yes. She had no memories of her being any other way.
Arthur took the rebuke as well as he’d taken everything. “No, I suppose I’m not. But that doesn’t change my affection for him.”
Amara rolled her eyes, pouring herself a large glass of red wine.
“Yes, I know. You’re a paragon of virtue, giving love to children you did not even sire.
How can anyone compete with such goodness.
” The door creaked open, and Clare was surprised to see a young Alexander meandering in, appearing comfortable in the home, albeit careful.
“Prince Alexander, may I help you with something?” Amara offered coolly.
“N-No thank you.” Alexander stuttered the words out, eyes darting for the kitchen. “Actually…may I have a cup of water?”
Amara’s smile didn’t appear at all friendly, but Alexander followed her into the kitchen anyway. Clare remained, watching her father’s face with such sharp pain, she had to cross her arms, grabbing hold of each shoulder, a latticework to keep every bit of her from spilling out.
It worsened when he stalked to the other side of the room and pulled a large book from the desk drawer. A book Clare knew.
Gasping, she followed her father, peering over his shoulder, surprised to realize she could smell the herbs coming from his skin, days spent finding medicines for the sick, solutions to pain.
Her father had inspired Clare to work with magical plants, though it had become obvious to her over the years that she didn’t share his gift for easing pain. She seemed more adept at causing it.
Her father flipped a page, then another, and another, all blank, save for one, and this one he kept open. “Oh, Trystan,” he murmured. And when Clare saw what her father did, she understood.
The etching on the page was Hickory Forest, but it was not. Endless lines of tree stumps scattered about the page—sparse forest floor, dead wilted flowers, with a cursive line of text beside it that Arthur read aloud.
“All must be destroyed before it is undone. To end is to begin, to lose is to gain. Rennedawn will be forever changed.”
The voice Arthur used to read the passage was the same he’d used at bedtime, for stern talks, and for advice.
It was the safe authority of a parent you knew had your best interest at heart, who did not merely love you, but liked you, too.
Clare reached for him, her hand going right through his shoulder, her heart clenching when her father turned his head, touching the spot, smiling to himself.
Placing the open book on the table with a tight shut of his eyes, Arthur swept from the room, following a crashing sound outside.
Clare made to follow as well, but the book’s pages fluttered so quickly she worried it would take flight, like a hummingbird’s wings.
But the page it stopped on was the first, the inside cover.
A sentence was etched there that made her halt, made everything halt.
Including her mother, who had reentered the room and now was walking around the sofa to stare at the same page that had caught Clare’s attention.
To my dearest friend, Fate. May all our years together be as fruitful as every story we’ve made together. Endings exactly as we will it.
And below that…
To my dearest friend, Destiny. May all our years together be full of happy endings and joyous times. Where color peeks through to save those from grayest nights. Endings exactly as they’re meant to end.
That wasn’t the part that shocked Clare. It was the claw marks over Fate’s name. Angry. Vicious-looking.
Fate and Destiny were once dear friends. But something changed, something went wrong.
Amara interrupted her reading, stalking for the door, and when she wrenched it open, Clare gasped, falling through furniture until she was stumbling to her bum.
Evie’s mother stood at the door. Her father, too. As they entered the space, so did a third figure: Benedict. There was a small infant in Nura’s arms with a shock of dark, curly hair.
Evie.
“You’re sure about this, Griffin?” Nura asked shakily. She was twenty-odd years younger, a perfect amalgamation of both Evie and Lyssa. So startlingly similar that Clare blinked, rubbing her eyes to ensure what she was seeing was real.
“What is the alternative?” Griffin reasoned, taking the baby from the woman’s shaking hands and crossing the room to Arthur, who was already on his feet, greeting them with a grim expression. “Arthur. I thank you for what you’re doing for my family.”
Arthur’s eyes were downcast, and Clare waved a hand in front of him before peeking at the baby in his arms. Only a few days old, with dark mist playing in the soft curls around the infant’s face.
No. Oh no. This was it. This was the moment where they’d changed fate, where they’d changed everything.
Renna Fortis entered next, carrying a familiar plant. The memory flower. They were going to take Evie’s magic and—
Little Trystan sprinted inside, wide-eyed and startled when all the adults in the room turned to him.
Arthur looked ashamed, a hand washing down his face, tugging at his red beard.
Their warm home didn’t appear warm any longer, chilling further when Amara crossed her arms, nodding at the newcomers.
Either she’d been expecting them or she was incredibly composed in the presence of several new faces, including the king of their land.
“Shall we get on with it, then?” Amara asked, sounding far too blithe for the act she was about to commit. “Trystan, come here.”
Trystan didn’t move. He looked at Nura Sage, who was huddling in the corner, her dark eyes watering with unshed tears. Tugging a yellow handkerchief from his pocket, he handed it to her with a small smile. “For you, my lady.”
Nura took it the way one would take hold of a butterfly’s wing, unable to look at the little boy whose life she was about to permanently alter. “He’s a dear boy, Griffin. How can we—”
“It’s him or Evie, Nura,” Griffin snapped. If the man had a thread of patience, it was now gone.
“Be calm and worry not, Mrs. Sage,” Benedict declared with a practiced smile—one he knew would put his people at ease. “Trystan’s born Core Healer magic will eventually destroy the darkness from your daughter’s. We’re merely taking her out of the equation.”
Little Trystan walked toward Arthur and pulled at his hand. Arthur wouldn’t look at him, and Clare wanted to scream. The infant cried when Renna held the flower over her, an ugly sound coming from the mist now extracting itself from the small body.
“Stop! You’re hurting her!” Trystan’s small voice called, and he ran for Benedict, appearing to understand nothing but the pain the baby was experiencing.
But Arthur caught him about the waist. “It’s all right, my son. I promise you. It will be all right.”
The scene froze, and a voice called from somewhere at Clare’s right ear, a whisper, the way doubts crept in. “You can stop this, you know,” the voice said.
“What?” Clare whispered back. “Stop it? How?”
“Wish that it never happened. That their fates were never switched, that their paths were never meant to diverge here. Wish it, and it shall be done.”
Clare’s lips parted, and she gasped. Wish it all undone? That Trystan had never become The Villain? That their family had never splintered? That she had never made the mistakes she’d made to get here?
How different their lives would all be.
It was tempting. So, so tempting.
So Clare shocked herself when she said firmly, “No.”
“No?” the voice questioned.
“I love my brother,” Clare whispered, “and as much as I wish he’d never had to feel the pain of this…he did. To erase it, to undo it—by the gods, what a hypocrite I’d be all over again.”
“You’re certain?” the voice asked.
Gods help her, she was. “My love is not contingent on his never having done bad deeds. I will take my brother exactly as he is now. I should not like to change anything about him.”
The voice was not attached to anything Clare could see, but she was certain she heard it smile. “Congratulations, Ms. Maverine. You passed.”
And when Clare awoke with a jolt, a cold sweat beginning behind her neck, she felt lighter than she had in years. She stared at Moira, who was smiling, glowing, waiting for Clare to piece it together.
“You’re no librarian,” Clare started, with two fingers hovering above her mouth.
Moira nodded, then gestured to the others, who were wrapped in leaves and vines sprouting up from the open book, eyes closed. Clare knew each was in their own test, which only they had the power to get themselves out of. “What am I, Clare Maverine?”
Clare breathed.
“Fate.”