Chapter 34
Someone shook my shoulders. “Rumor? Rumor, wake up.”
The pain. Even before opening my eyes, all I could recall was the excruciating pain that spread over my entire body. Agony mixed with the memory of Twenty’s face, his wide eyes, the fear behind his expression.
It felt like when I watched Riot’s stag die by the fangs of a wolf—a lycanthrope.
One’s familiar dying or being in physical pain shot a direct link of the sensation to their magical partner.
The anguish Riot felt that day, and felt over and over, with the cycle of death his white stag went through, was now something I knew the feeling of.
Twenty wasn’t only my familiar, though.
Twenty was my friend.
And he was hurting.
I shouldn’t have left him alone. When I hadn’t found him behind the back garden gate, I should have gone searching for him. Regret clawed at my consciousness. Now that Twenty was in peril, my mind flitted to Trinket. I hadn’t seen her that day, either. What if the same fate befell her?
All of that mixed with the reality that my sister was still lost to the Underworld…
my chest constricted and tears burned in the corner of my eyes.
I put my hands over my face to hide from whichever Blackthorne boy had taken me to his room.
For someone supposedly so tough, I sure did cry a lot around them both.
Hands tugged at my wrists. “It’s okay, come here,” a woman’s voice said.
Wait. A woman?
Jerking my arm from my face, I sat up quickly and inched backwards, reaching to my hip for my dagger.
My soul froze behind my ribs. Kind eyes stared back at me, as young as the day we lost her.
Soft black curls framed her face as she knelt in the grass, shielding her brow from the sun as she beheld me.
“Rumor.” She smiled. “Everything is going to be alright. At least you remembered your dagger this time—”
Without a thought to if this were real or not, a mirage, a fever, or whatever—I flung myself forward into Matri’s arms. She caught me without hesitation or falling backwards.
As strong and ready as ever. Warm and real.
Even her smell of salt and sun enveloped my senses.
If I were hallucinating, then this was a damn good one.
Hot tears streaked my cheeks, and I struggled to speak into her shoulder.
The same shoulder I’d cried in so many times as a child. “Are you really here?”
Matri rubbed the back of my head. “Well, more like you’re really here. But, yes, it’s real. You chose the pink door, huh?”
I nodded, pulling back, still clutching my matri’s arms tightly, as if she could float away at any moment. “What is happening right now?”
Matri reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a small, white seashell, just like the ones her and mother imprinted into our hearth back home. She tucked the shell in my palm and closed my fingers around it. “You’re coming into your gifts. It would seem your magic is finding you.”
“My magic has caused nothing but trouble. I wish I had you with me; I wish I had you to talk to.”
“My love, you have everything you need within yourself.” Matri tilted her head and brushed the hair from my face.
Her compassionate eyes lingered slightly on the white strands that now covered half my head.
“And, it would seem you’ve also found your soul’s pairing.
That’s what your mother and I always wanted for you and your sister.
” Matri looked over her shoulder. “We don’t have much time. ”
“Prism is in the Underworld. She’s trying to bring back her mate…
her soul’s pairing, who I—it’s my fault he’s there.
He’s not human, though. He’s a… he’s a wither, I mean, an archdemon, and his soul and body, I’m told, cannot connect again even if she does manage to find him.
Do you know anything about how I can bring her back?
Or, maybe, how I can bring them both back? ”
Matri’s eyebrows raised. “They have her, then.”
“What does that mean? Please, Matri, what do I do?”
“You’ll need assistance… you’ll require help of the worst sort.”
“Who? Who can help us?”
Matri stood, her stance that of a hunter, even in death… or whatever realm this was. “There is one… there is one who has done what you and Prism seek. They are—”
A flash of white interrupted us. A scream wretched through my throat as I reached out for my matri. Darkness and shadow swirled around me then, and when I opened my eyes, I was back in my old bedroom in the Blackthorne castle.
“What the hell just happened?” A blurry Riot leaned over me and looked to his brother.
Spade shook his head, his face pale. “I can’t be positive until I can talk to her.”
Riot squeezed my hand. “Rumor, we have you. We won’t let whatever just happened happen again. These rooms are warded better than the library was.”
“Can you try to tell me what you experienced just now? Did you… see anyone?”
I tried to sit up, but the room spun, so I lay back down. Opening my mouth to speak, nothing pushed forth. Panicking, I opened my mouth again… nothing.
Confused, I gestured to my mouth and shook my head.
“Shit,” Riot said. “Her voice is gone? What does that mean?” His usual teasing tone was absent.
Where he typically would have made a joke about how nice it was that I had finally shut up, the only thing that remained was the sound of his worry.
Whatever had just happened to me must have really spooked him.
From the look on Spade’s face as he assessed me like a fallope caught in a trap, he was concerned too.
“It can happen sometimes if…” Spade’s eyes locked with mine. “You saw someone who has passed on, didn’t you?”
Tears welled in my vision as I jerked a tiny nod. Spade took my hand. “Rest… I fear you’re dearly going to need it.”
“Why? What do you mean by that?” Riot asked, still holding the edge in his voice. “It’s not the goddess damned time to be cryptic.”
“I feared her search, her desires once they shifted from killing the wither to bringing it back, would lead her here. The magic within her is relentless in achieving its goal. Though, this quest will not be a simple one.” Spade glanced at his brother and then back to me.
I wished I weren’t lying in bed unable to speak. Helpless, all I could do was listen.
“This is unfair for you, and in a perfect world you’d have more time; however, it is upon us and you will have to decide, Rumor,” Spade said lowly.
Decide what? Etched across my perplexed brow.
Spade took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to choose. In order to move forward with this journey you’ve set your mind to, you’ll have to make a decision.”
I shook my head, still not understanding.
Spade answered plainly. “Who will it be, Rumor? It’s time to choose. Me… or Riot.”
“Spade or me,” Riot said.
“Who will it be?” Spade asked. “Time to choose.”
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