Bombshell (Monstrous Ink #2)

Prologue

61 years before our story…

The sisters had been whispering to each other all night.

It definitely wasn’t anything good, that much was obvious. I always knew when they were talking about something serious because they were using their branches rather than their mouths.

I also knew it was about me because I was the only one in the entire grove who didn’t have branches to talk with.

They were all tree nymphs, one of the oldest species of supernatural in the world. Sister Madrone, who was the proudest of the sisters, always made sure to repeat that we weren’t just any nymphs like the other elements that thrived along the coast of California. No, we’d been given an ancient name long ago that many rarely ever used anymore: dryads.

But it didn’t really matter what they were called. Dryad or nymph. I wasn’t like them. I was different.

Unlike the sisters—who were actually my aunts—my skin was not made of tree bark. Actually, I didn’t take after the many species of trees that lined the coastline. I didn’t grow leaves from my head, nor did my eyes have the same upturned shape like those of my aunts. I was different, and up until a few months ago, it hadn’t really bothered me. Not until the word mule was tossed out one evening when one of the sisters grew frustrated with me.

Despite knowing who my mother was, they always talked about how absurdly human-like I looked. My skin was pale and soft, almost smooth save for the freckles that grew the tiniest of clover buds. Like my aunts, my hair was green, but stringy and fluttery. It didn’t sway in the wind or make crackling sounds the same way their leaves did.

The only part about me that was even close to looking like my aunts was the long vines sprouting from my back. Eight of them to be exact. Aunt Oak, who detested anything creepy and crawly, sometimes shuddered when she saw them and told me that I looked like a spider only to be hushed by Aunt Willow who was always on my side.

She’d been the closest to my mother before my birth had ended their millennium-long sisterhood forever.

I was the strangest thing living in the beautiful grove we called home. The only thing close to being as odd as I was, was little sister Lilypad who’d been born between a water nymph and a tree nymph and still looked like a little baby despite being nearly my age.

But at least Lilypad hadn’t killed her mother.

Nymphs could mate with other nymphs with ease—even if it was generally frowned upon—but a human and a nymph?

That had never been done before.

One of the earliest memories I had was one of my birthdays and Aunt Oak devolved into piteous sobs about the loss of my mother Elowyn and how it should never have happened.

Abomination . That was what she called me, and while I didn’t know what the word meant at the time, I knew that it wasn’t a good thing. I added it into the words that they called me when they thought I wasn’t listening to them. Abomination, mule, halfling, science experiment, and more.

“Effie belongs here. With us,” Aunt Willow insisted, speaking for the first time since they’d started their argument fifteen minutes ago. I perked up from where I was seated on one of the great roots of one of the grandmother trees and peeked around her massive trunk just in time to see Willow withdraw the branches that made up her hands away from Aunt Oak and Aunt Alnus.

“She cannot stay with us forever, Willow. Even you must see that she grows faster than her peers. She should be with her own people,” Aunt Alnus, who was the oldest and wisest of the sisters, murmured just loud enough for me to hear. “Besides, her father wants her. Does he not have a right to his daughter?”

Her words made a pit of unease form in my stomach. The word ‘father’ was foreign to me.

There were no men within our grove. Nymphs did not require them to procreate amongst themselves, so the only ones I’d seen were the ones who brought supplies up the mountain for me as I couldn’t live off of sunlight and rainfall like my aunts could .

The aunts had mentioned this father more and more over the past few months and I couldn’t help but be curious.

I barely looked like the nymphs, so would I resemble him at all? Did I want to resemble him? I just wanted to belong and up until this point I thought I did belong with the sisters. They were my family and they always talked about how family was supposed to stick together and protect one another.

But now as they spoke I realized that I’d never fit in with them. Not completely.

“That man is no better than a mad scientist—” Aunt Oak was cut off by the rest of the sisters shushing her.

The grandmother tree I was sitting on pulsed under my hands, telling me that it had probably been her that had warned the aunts that I was nearby and could hear them.

Nymphs didn’t age. At least not in the way that I was told that human people usually did. They could live forever, but even then time still eventually affected them too. As the sisters aged their bodies would start to grow in size and their mobility would lessen until their legs became roots and they became one of the trees in the forest.

The sisters called it the final transition, and once it happened the former sisters were now grandmothers and with it, the ability to speak with their mouths was lost.

The grandmother tree underneath me had transitioned within my lifetime. Aunt Fir had been mischievous and always liked to carry me on her shoulders high above the grove, pointing out the glittering ocean in the distance and the little tiny town that lit up like magic during the night.

Next to Aunt Willow, she’d been the closest to me, and now outside of little pulses, I couldn’t talk to her at all.

“Euphemia,” came Aunt Willow’s patient voice, telling me that hiding behind the grandmother tree’s massive trunk wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

With a heavy sigh, I stepped away from the grandmother tree and into the clearing. Standing awkwardly, one far too-human bare foot on top of the other, I waited for them to reprimand me.

Aunt Willow’s long vining hair swayed around her hips as she crossed to me, the grass and flowers straining to touch her brown bark-like skin in a way that they’d never bothered to do for me—I could sometimes make a stray flower bloom but none of them ever yearned for my touch the way they did for the other nymphs.

“Now, Effie, what have I told you about eavesdropping on conversations?” she chastised gently as she lifted me into her arms with ease even though I was already half of her height.

“If you didn’t want me to eavesdrop then why did you talk out loud?” I questioned, my little mouth struggling with the big word.

Aunt Willow’s laughter was warm as she held me even more closely. “Your tongue is just as sharp as your mother’s was. ”

I tucked my nose into her rough neck and inhaled the sweet scent of flowers that always wafted off of her, ignoring Aunt Oak’s snort as I was carried back into the circle.

“Euphemia, child, look at me.” Aunt Alnus’s voice was soft but carried the kind of authority that I never dared to defy.

Slowly, I pulled my face from Aunt Willow’s neck and stared at her. Aunt Alnus was now the tallest amongst the nymphs of our grove, standing a few heads taller than the rest of the sisters gathered around her. The bark of her skin was also far paler than the rest, making her stick out as she gently pulled my hand into hers. It was the most contact I ever remembered having with her.

“Child, would you like to meet your father?” she asked, a soft smile on her lined face. “Because he would like to meet you.”

I could almost feel Aunt Willow’s frown directed at Aunt Alnus, but I was too busy thinking about her words to care.

Did I want to meet him? What was having a father like, anyway?

I had so many questions, but the one that came blurted from my lips was one that I always thought about whenever the subject of my father came up.

“Does he look like me?”

There was a tittering somewhere off in the crowd as Aunt Alnus’s smile dropped a bit. “There is no one who looks like you, Euphemia, you are the only one of your kind.”

My shoulders sank as I deflated a bit, upset by her words .

“ But ,” she continued. “You do resemble him more than you do any of us and as do the supernatural creatures that reside down in Port Haven.”

“Port Haven?” I asked, confused.

“The town by the ocean, Effie,” Aunt Willow provided and when I turned to look at her I found her green eyes round with sadness. “That’s where your father lives.”

So close! I thought with surprise, thinking about how Aunt Fir used to always point it out and whisper that it was protected by a very old shield. I never quite understood what that meant.

“If he was so close, then why couldn’t he come see me before?” My voice sounded snotty even to my own ears.

Aunt Alnus’s gaze shifted to Aunt Willow. “That is because some here felt that you were better off growing up here amongst your mother’s family. But your needs require more than we are used to giving, such as clothing and food.”

The other sisters began to murmur their agreement and I heard Aunt Oak mutter about having to bathe me so often.

My throat felt tight as an emotion I’d never felt before filled my chest. I felt bad, I realized as I continued to cling to Aunt Willow. It was my fault that they had to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Just by being alive.

But the grove was all I’d ever known.

“Do I have to go with him?”

“Not if you don’t want to, Effie,” Aunt Willow reassured me quickly, her lips making a scraping noise as she pressed them tightly together .

Aunt Alnus gave my hand a squeeze. “All we ask is that you meet him, child, no more, no less.”

Two days later, I was watching as a tall man with dark hair appeared in the middle of the clearing in a blaze of white light.

“Alexander,” Aunt Alnus greeted him coolly as he straightened the clothing he was wearing and stepped up to meet the line of sisters that had been waiting for him to show up. “We were wondering if you got our message.”

“The branches of the oak outside of my bedroom window shattering the glass would have alerted someone blind and deaf, Alnus.” His voice was deeper than any of my aunts’ and everything about him seemed sharp, almost angular.

The aunt’s bodies were smooth and curvaceous and they’d explained to me over the past couple of days about the differences between men and women—something I’d never stopped to consider before.

Dark blue eyes shifted down to where I was hiding behind Aunt Willow’s leaves and I watched as something flashed across the man’s face before his expression flattened again.

“Euphemia, come and greet your father,” Aunt Alnus called but I continued to hide until Aunt Willow gently ushered me forward until I was standing right in front of him.

He towered over me, looking down his long, large nose before a great sigh left him and he crouched down so that we were at eye level with each other.

I blinked with surprise as I took in the features on his face because Aunt Alnus told me I would not look like him, but even I could see that the shape of my eyes and lips were the same as his.

He also had a smattering of freckles across his nose like me. Though, they were brown unlike my own green ones.

“I’ve been wondering what you would look like,” he said gently, reaching out to touch me but I flinched away from his hands. “You look almost human, just like me.”

One of my vines snaked out and pushed his hand away and I watched his mouth open in an O of surprise. “Though I don’t have any of those, I’m afraid. I see the little green nubs on your back when you were an infant have also grown.”

“You saw me as a baby?” I asked, completely surprised.

“Yes, but only briefly before your aunts came to take you away.”

There was a huff from behind me from Aunt Willow. “You didn’t fight me very much on it, Alexander.”

Alexander glowered at the woman, his blue eyes cooling as he glanced up at her from over my shoulder. “My wife had just died, Willow, so you’ll excuse me if I was struggling.”

“We dryads do not recognize marriage, Alexander, you knew that when you decided to court one of our kind,” Aunt Alnus cut in, her voice firm.

“But Elowyn did call herself my wife, so if she recognized the marriage, you should have too.”

The attention had gone from me so completely that no one noticed when I stepped away from the man in front of me and hid behind Aunt Willow’s legs .

“Elowyn did something that went against our laws and she paid the ultimate price for it,” Aunt Alnus’s words boomed through the clearing as the air sizzled with energy. All of the grandmother trees in the clearing began to creak, as if answering her call. Then, as if it had never existed, the energy disappeared and things were calm again as my aunt continued to speak. “But, I will be the first to admit that insisting the child live with us as one of us was somewhat short sighted. As you can see, she is not a true nymph.”

“And what makes you so sure that she will fit in with a coven?” Alexander asked, his gaze finding me again as he looked me up and down.

Alnus’s green eyes glanced over at me and she gestured for me to step forward again. “All you need to do is touch her and you will understand.”

Alexander held a hand out to me and I stared at it with distrust.

Then his expression softened and he offered me a smile—the first I’d ever seen him make since his arrival. “It’s all right, Euphemia, I won’t hurt you. Can I take your hand?”

I stared at his hand and then his face before nodding and slowly reaching out to put my much smaller hand in his.

Warmth began to spread from where our skin touched and it continued to heat up until I yanked my hand away with a yelp and turned to rush into Aunt Willow’s waiting arms.

“She has magic,” Alexander said, clearly surprised .

“She does,” Aunt Alnus confirmed, reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder. “And not strictly the type we as dryads carry. She is truly the first of her kind, just as you wished for when you came to seek out our sister.”

Alexander’s eyes began to glitter with excitement as he reached for me again, pulling me from Aunt Willow’s grasp without asking and perching me on one of his forearms.

I wanted to protest the sudden change, but the complaints died on my lips as I looked at his face.

Alexander looked at me as if I was the most important thing in the world to him.

No one had ever looked at me that way before.

“Will you come with me, Euphemia? Will you live with me from now on?”

I worried at my lower lip with my teeth, glancing from him to the sisters. Everyone looked encouraging save for Aunt Willow who looked upset as she was gently pushed to the back of the crowd.

“I’ll go,” I finally said, pleased when Alexander—no, I would need to call him father now—when father pulled me in for a tight hug.

Maybe if I went to live with him, then I would finally find the place where I belonged.