23. Chapter 23
Chapter 23
I strode into the living room, full of righteous fury. ‘Am Bam? Are you okay?’ Benji asked apprehensively as I stood in front of him, glowering with my hands on my hips.
‘I am very angry, but not at you. I am angry with Benjamin. Come out, you bastard, and talk to me.’
‘Why Miss Amber, I declare that is not the nicest way to address me,’ Benjamin said. ‘Though technically, as I have no mother or father, I suppose they cannot have borne me in wedlock and thus the description may be technically correct.’
‘You told my mum to give a piece of herself to the bloody harkan crystal!’
‘Ah,’ he said urbanely. ‘That. Yes, well. It was the only solution to her particular problem.’
‘She added to the harkan,’ I spat in horror. Her confession made me sick to my stomach; she had killed someone and used their life force to add to the damned crystal.
‘She did, but not in the way in which you are imagining,’ Benjamin said. ‘She found a terminally ill patient called Diane on a crossover ward and explained what she needed to do and why. The elderly lady agreed to help her. She checked herself out of hospital and came to our Coven. She wanted her death to matter. And truly, it did.’
‘No matter which way you dress it up, Mum killed someone. And she used their death in her magic.’ I felt sick.
‘Yes, she did,’ Oscar said softly. ‘And it ate her up inside to the point that she went back in time to try and undo it. She used the portal to go back to persuade Diane not to go with her. She went back to a time a few hours before she’d met with her, explained what would happen, begged Diane not to do it. Diane smiled and nodded, and when the then-present Luna came and told her of her plan, Diane still went with her anyway.’
The wind went out of my sails. ‘ That was why she used the Third realm?’
Oscar nodded. ‘She went back to try and stop what she’d already put in motion. But you can’t change what has already happened.’
‘The fixity of time,’ I muttered.
‘Indeed.’
Mum had made some poor decisions. Wiping my memory, killing Diane and adding to the crystal… I should have been furious with her but, truthfully, she had already been punished enough. Giving a piece of herself to the crystal was foolhardy – surely she could have found another way? But it was done and could not be undone. Mum’s jaunt through time was evidence of that.
I had thought that the first verse of the prophecy was so clear, but those thrice-damned seers – with them nothing was ever quite how you thought it was.
Through the veils of time, a mother’s plight; Her mind is the cost to set things right. She weaves the threads of fate so tight. Her sacrifice made in love’s pure light. I had thought the reference to time had meant Mum’s use of the Third realm, that her mind had been the price for using that, but the two sentences were unconnected.
Mum’s plight had been a moral one; her distress over killing Diane had sent her back through time. Her mind was the cost of securing the harkan, keeping it from being fully used by the evil Coven. Her sacrifice – giving a piece of her mind and soul – had been made because she loved me. She had been trying to keep me safe from my father and the evil Coven.
I sat down. How could I be angry? Mum had lost everything for me. I could even forgive her the ill-advised clearing – she was my mum and I could forgive her anything. Frankly, if she told me now that she’d killed someone, I would help her hide the body. Love makes you do crazy things, including breaking your own rules. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for love and I couldn’t fault my mum for feeling the same, even with all the grief it had brought down on our heads.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda had no place in my life. All I could do now was move forward. And that is exactly what I was going to do.