Chapter 40
VALANCE
My eyes opened as a balmy evening breeze licked at my face. Open drapes at a large window billowed, moonlight flooding the bedroom I found myself in.
Slumped against a wall, blood on my tongue, on my hands, all over me. Time passed, maybe some days, sun and moon, death and fury.
Because… Because of me. The bits of skin under my fingernails were from the slaughter I’d undertaken in Summer Palace. Killing so many because of my curse.
I sat up straighter, rubbing the back of my neck. My limbs ached, as did my heart. It called for Kormac, the bond requiring his presence like air to lungs.
He is close…
Was he? Was the sensation of him coming for me nothing but wishful thinking?
“Where am I?” I said aloud, slowly getting to my feet.
This was an opulent room, red and gold. A room at the top of the tallest tower of Summer Palace—Sovereign Tower.
My mother lay on her bed, locked in her wide-eyed slumber. Her silver hair pooled beneath her, her skin still as lovely as moonlight, her chest rising and falling as it always did. The words of my grandmother echoed in my mind, telling me to think of my mother so I’d kill her once and for all.
If I managed to get this far. And I had. Only my mother was alive. I must have passed out before I tore her apart.
I listened for voices, for any hint of commotion outside the door. Nothing. Only the night’s breeze and the rolling waves of Summer Ocean.
My clothes were saturated with blood, my pale skin drowning in scarlet.
How many dead? How much rage had I inflicted upon my home? I couldn’t open that door to find out. If I stayed in here, I wouldn’t have to. But that was a dream made of lace. At some point, I would have to leave.
“Mother?” I said.
As always, she showed no signs of life.
“Oh, Mother,” I continued, walking over to be by her side. She was so beautiful, so regal even in this state. “I wish you could hear me.” I went to take her hand, remembering the blood and skin tainting mine.
She was another family member not having much care for the runt of the litter that was me. But at this moment, I wanted her to wake up. To break the surface of her grief over my sister’s death, to say something loving to me.
Sorrow rolled over me. I had no family, no blood relatives on my side. They all offered their love and loyalty in other directions, never mine. And, by Danu, it hurt. I wanted the love of my family in that moment. To hear those three magical words in my ear, to know I wasn’t alone.
“Why can’t you wake up, Mother?” I asked.
Her breathing was as soft as her features.
“I need you, even though you were never really within my reach.” I shook my head.
“But that doesn’t just change my love for you.
I will always carry you in my heart, dream of a day when you hold me, when you tell me I’m not the burden on this family I have always been made to feel.
” A long, heavy sigh. “Please wake up and start being my mother. I’m your only child left now.
We are the only ones left. Let’s take this opportunity to rebuild, to retain what is left of the Rosestar name.
Come on, Mother. See me. Open your heart to me like you did for Jehanne, even for Daire.
I’m begging you. Please wake up.” Tears once again. “Please.”
But nothing changed, not even a flutter in her eyes. My mother would never return from this. She would only fade or spend her eternal life in her bed. Never changing. Never being mine.
“I’m so alone,” I whispered, staring down at her.
“You’re not alone.”
I spun to see him, my heart racing.
The soul bond seemed to have forgotten itself for a moment or was cloaked by my pain. Either way, it failed to alert me to Kormac’s presence in the doorway just as my ears had failed to pick up on the sound of the door opening.
The soul bond sang with joy, filling me with relief, with a special form of happiness.
“You’re here?” I said.
“I’m here, Valance.”
I ran to him, falling into his huge human arms. I didn’t need the return of the soul bond to make me hold him like this.
“Oh, Kormac…” I whined, sobbing into the crook of his neck. I clawed at his cold, oily clothing. “What are you wearing?” I didn’t surface from his neck.
“Don’t worry about it now,” he soothed, stroking my back tenderly.
I pulled my face away from his neck, my hands on his shoulders. “I lost it all. My grandmother… She wished me…” It took me a few moments to find the words to tell him what’d happened.
His sapphire eyes widened for the briefest of seconds before he took my face in his rough hands. “We can fix this. We can find a jinn and wish your power back.”
“But the consequences…”
“We have no choice.”
Were there consequences for my grandmother?
“She’s heading for Winter,” I said.
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
I looked back at my mother. “I think I may have killed the jinn like everyone else.” I faced him again. “Did you see anyone alive?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “How… How did you get here?”
“Brigid helped me.” He explained his journey, his strange clothing, the giant’s transformation. “Lord Cullen is waiting in the water to take us back. Come on, there’s nothing left for us here.”
Eyes back to my forever sleeping mother. She would never tell me she loved me more than anything, that she was sorry she didn’t tell me more often. That we could make up for wasted time, be mother and son.
I closed my eyes. “No. There isn’t.”
Kormac’s fingers curled into mine. A beautiful sensation, the callused pad of his thumb caressing my thumb.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s make this right.”