Chapter 31 #4
Me: Has our lead agreed to get you into the Pellans’ Laboratory?
The three dots flashed in and out of the screen, and it was a good minute before my friend replied.
Mela: He’s unwilling to help.
Me: Have a word with Evelene Wychthorn.
Mela: You think?
Nelle’s older sister, Evelene, was a force to be reckoned with.
And her betrothed, Corné Pellan, had learned it the hard way.
Fire and retribution burned within every inch of Evvie when she put him in his place, on his knees before her.
If there was anyone who could and wanted to get back at the Pellans, it was her.
Me: I do…just don’t tell her it came from me.
Mela: Not your biggest fan?
Fuck no. Evvie and I were united briefly for one moment during her betrothal celebration. Now I was sure Evvie hated me just as much as her scumbag fiancé. Probably more.
Me: Who is?
Mela: You really need to learn how to play nicer. Maybe then you’ll have more friends than just me.
Mela: And thanks, Gray.
Me: Goes both ways. Anytime you need me, I’ll be there. See you tomorrow.
Plucking the Glenfiddich off the table, I refilled my glass with amber liquid, then wandered back to the hearth where Jett sat nearby, sulking in the armchair. The rest of our siblings had left, and it was only he and I remaining in the library.
Heat radiated in blistering waves, and smoke churned upward.
I’d been with Mom in the limousine before my entire world had been obliterated.
I flexed my fingers wide. Staring down at my palm and the hills of skin rough with calluses, a tingle of memory warmed my flesh.
I could almost feel the touch of my mother’s skin on mine as she threaded her fingers through mine and squeezed.
Her green eyes glistening with unshed tears and the watery smile she gave.
Telling me how proud she was of my actions, defying the Horned Gods in the hope of saving a young girl, her voice was broken yet strong.
I stared at the flames devouring the logs, at the hypnotic way the fire undulated, disappearing and reappearing. My mind sifted through memory after memory, searching for anything that could make sense of that day.
When my mother visited Ascendria, she often met up with a friend for high tea at the Monarch Tower overlooking the lake.
Sometimes it was Marissa, occasionally Aunt Rosa, or friends from when she’d worked as a servant for the Deniauds, like Oswin or Beckah.
As for the other Matriarchs, they weren’t eager to spend time in my mother’s company.
She’d risen to a role and position others felt she should never have been allowed to.
My father hadn’t cared for our world’s traditions with its strict unions between upper-class families.
He’d fallen in love with her years before, and despite her attempt to dissuade him because of their difference in ranks, he wasn’t the type of person to give up on something easily, or in this case, someone he wanted.
In the past, it hadn’t gone well for other Houses that had tried to break with tradition.
Hells, that was why our family had stepped down from Great House because my forefather had fallen in love with the wrong person.
Not from the wrong class, but because she had come from outside our sinister organization altogether.
And my ancestors had suffered for the choice.
History could have repeated itself, but for one factor—Sirro.
Sirro had given my mother and father his blessing to marry. He explained his reasons to no one.
Gulping down a mouthful of whiskey, I rotated the glass between my fingers as I pushed through my memories of that fateful night when my mother was abducted.
I tried to recall what she’d been wearing. She had been casually dressed before I’d left with Dad and Kenton for the Novaks’ that morning…but when I’d been picked up from the Novaks’ estate, she wore sophisticated and formal attire. The type of dress she would wear to meet someone important.
The simple lines of her dress, its dark navy color, and her sleek updo, which showcased her swan-like neck, made her jewelry stand out.
As she sat beside me, she unconsciously toyed with her necklace.
Not the pearl pendant my aunt had given her as a gift years ago, this one sparkled with large yellow diamonds set in a chain of rose gold.
Matching yellow diamonds glittered in her ears and were draped around her wrist. It was a jewelry set my father had commissioned for her, and she’d worn it for him on their wedding day.
Specifically yellow diamonds, a reminder of the sun and its brilliance, because she was his summer.
I dragged a thumb across my bottom lip, deep in thought. Why that particular collection of jewels? Was it a statement to whomever she’d gone to meet that day?
I turned away from the fireside, letting its heat wash over my back. Jett petted Flossie, and he picked up my blunt, blowing out a mouthful of smoke.
“Did you feel anything the day Mom was stolen?” I asked him.
Jett angled his head. He studied me, brows inching together over heavily lidded eyes. Licking his dry lips, he cleared his throat. “It’s taken you a long time to ask me anything about Mom.”
There had been nothing to ask because I’d been with her.
Afterward, my father and aunt asked me what had happened.
I’d explained it over and over again until my voice grew hoarse, going through every single detail.
Jett was briefly asked too, but he was young, confused, and utterly devastated.
He’d been nine years old, and our mother was his heart.
He barely spoke a word for many months afterward, and spent most of his time in his bedroom, weeping or crying out in agony when they tortured her.
And me, I retreated inside myself the moment I’d failed to protect her.
Jett’s gaze darkened with memory. “I felt her injuries from the car crash, but they were an abrupt, shallow kind of pain. There and gone.”
“Earlier in the day, I mean. Did you feel anything unusual? Had she been hurt while she was visiting Ascendria?”
He blinked, somewhat confused by my question. But I got the feeling it wasn’t the question he was startled by—it was me asking.
He sighed, tapping ash from the blunt into the ashtray balanced on the arm of his chair.
“I spent a good while picking apart that day trying to figure out if anything out of the ordinary had happened beforehand… I was with Caidan in the training pits with our Weapons Master getting the shit kicked out of me. I wouldn’t know if my pain was her pain. ”
“Do you have any idea if she was going to meet up with someone in the city?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I wasn’t ready to share what I was beginning to suspect about my mother, that she had a secret life in Ascendria, one that involved a Horned God. Nor the suspicion she’d met with someone from another House.
It could be something, or it could be nothing.
My silence drew a response from him. Annoyance flecked his voice. “I don’t know. The last time I saw her was over breakfast, and she was wearing one of her sundresses, like she does when she spends the day running errands for the staff.”
I frowned. What did that even mean? When we were kids, it was something adults said to us all the time—I’m off to run errands.
My brother continued speaking. “Maybe she was off wandering around the garden centers like she always did. And if not that, she could have been walking the lakeside trails. Maybe she did end up having lunch with Marissa. I don’t know… She probably wanted some alone time.”
Mom often went to the city with one of us, and sometimes Aunt Valarie would go too, but there was one day a week she’d go alone. Our aunt looked after Ferne, and Dad always had business to attend to with the Novaks, and the rest of us had lessons with our governess or Weapons Master.
Except for Jett, who was glued to her hip, my siblings and I grew bored with the hours she spent endlessly at the nurseries fussing over new plants and flowers.
Sometimes she’d stroll around the lake, talking to the gardeners and hearing about their landscaping designs, the changes they implemented every season, the shifting of plantings, and ways to sculpt space with greenery.
So we were quite happy to stay at home during those visits to Ascendria.
The day before everything happened, she’d tripped over Caidan’s skateboard, fallen down the grand staircase and fractured her back.
Lying on the floor recovering, she tried to get my shy aunt to agree to come along with her to the city the following day.
She hadn’t arranged to see Marissa. I remembered that.
So, on the day she’d been abducted, it seemed to be a genuine visit to Ascendria for herself.
Yet…
That day in question still didn’t add up.
It was there.
Hidden in my brain.
She’d been up to something, or perhaps it had come upon her unexpectedly.
What I learned from the memory long buried inside my head, resurfacing from its murky depths, was that I’d been five years old when my mother had visited a Horned God. And the golden threads of magic wavering in my recollection meant she had healed someone.
First, you need my help. I came as fast as I could, Florin.
“There was something that day,” Jett said slowly.
He had his head tipped back on the armchair, staring deeply up at the glass-stained mural, his brow creased in reflective thought.
His fingers rapped a beat on the armrest. “I dunno… I was so hot and sweaty and tired from duking it out with Caidan in the training pit. After lunch, I passed out for a few hours.” He took a hit from the blunt, letting the smoke wisp from his mouth like mist. “You ever fall in your dreams? Like that rushing feeling of physically falling and you jolt suddenly awake?”
“Yeah.”
“The way I woke up was like that. But it wasn’t falling…
It was this swift electric shock that went through me, like lightning, I suppose, stuttering my heart.
I’d put it down to Caidan and his asshole roundhouse move, repeatedly slamming me in the chest with his kick.
” His eyes narrowed. “But now…thinking about it, it was like a faint echo of what it’s like when Mom’s tortured with fire, or ice shreds her skin, or her bones are stretched and quaking. ”
My mouth went bone-dry.
Jett didn’t speak very often about what was happening to Mom. He kept the specific pain she was enduring at any given point in time to himself.
He lowered his gaze, met my horrified one, and startled. Swallowing thickly, he realized he’d said too much.
“And today?” I asked quietly, my pulse racing.
There had been beads of sweat on his brow in the Great Hall this afternoon, and his hand had been trembling. Which meant our mother hadn’t been okay.
His jaw tightened as his gaze swept downward to his fingers holding the blunt, streams of white vapor coiling through the air.
There was a strain in his voice when he replied.
“It’s brief moments, nothing big or overwhelming, a dull ache if you will.
Like she’s tired and recovering from…” He glanced toward the fire, and his eyes blazed with hatred as he stared at the flames licking its stone belly.
He suddenly rose from the armchair. Flossie jumped to the floor and scurried beneath the table.
His tone was sharp and cold as he stalked past. “She’s alive. That’s all that matters.”
He yanked the library door open and slammed it shut behind him.
Amber light stretched and flickered over the pocked and blackened hearth where I stood, rolling everything around in my head.
Had Jett picked up on something that had happened to Mom while she was in Ascendria?
She seemed fine when she arrived at the Novaks’ to escort me home.
I remained there for a while longer, finishing the whiskey, wondering how Mom was, how I was going to uncover what she’d been up to in Ascendria, what the fuck Sirro was up to with this Yezekael…
When a sensation, irritated and dry-scaled, slithered down my spine.
Earlier this evening, at the top of the tower, when Aunt Addie and her entourage arrived, I’d felt something similar then too, a warning that something was off. At the time I assumed it was because of Nelle cruelly taunting the fuck out of me.
But now, as I stood beside the library’s fireside, that same sensation scratched my nerves and hackled all the fine hair on my body.