Conall
I'm disoriented when I wake up. For one, I'm in a semi-upright position.
For another, there's a weight against me. The sun shines through the windows of Everlane Cottage. Ivy lies with her head in my lap, sprawled across the couch. I’m sitting up.
Ursula Shipton's journal lies flat on her chest. My hand is in Ivy’s, and she's holding tight, as though looking for comfort in her dreams. My free hand finds her curls, playing with them between my fingers.
She's mine, and fuck if I'm not hers. I think of all the ways I almost ruined this when she first got here, and I want to throttle myself.
"Quit that," Ivy says, eyes still closed.
"Quit what?"
"Overthinking. I can feel how tense you are." I take a deep breath and blow it out at the ceiling. She cracks her eyes open. "Are you thinking about what we read?"
That wasn’t on my mind, but now that she's brought it up, it's all I can think about.
We'd stayed up last night reading pages and pages of Ursula Shipton's writings, all about the island and the wards for the last twenty years.
About how the wards kept monsters from reproducing, and kept new ones from coming in.
But also about how Ursula had managed to use her powers to create a kind of gate that allowed her—and only her—to come and go.
How she'd seen not only harmful monsters turned away, but the most devastating consequence. The mates.
Monsters always have a mate sent by fate out there somewhere, bound together by nature and magic.
Distance and species differences didn't matter; mates were mates.
But an unexpected byproduct of the island's firmer wards was the suppression of reproduction.
Monsters couldn't conceive. And beyond that, Ursula had gathered compelling evidence that the wards were actively suppressing mating instincts, meaning monsters could be working or living next door to their mate and never know it.
Or, their mate could be trapped outside the island, never feeling the pull to come.
It was a heartbreaking, rage-inducing realization.
The only reason I'd found Ivy was because Ursula had damaged the wards and then summoned the woman she knew to be my mate to the island.
And I feel guilty about the fact that I treated her exactly as the rest of the island had: like a troublemaker stirring up problems.
In her journal, Ursula had gone on to say that she'd told Laz, and that Laz had been upset and confused but unwilling to risk bringing violence or danger to the island by trying to adjust the wards.
She hadn't thought him malicious, just doing his best with the little knowledge he had.
That does sound like Laz. But I still plan to address it with him myself, after I've cooled down.
"Between what my aunt said in her journal and what Nick told me at game night, I'm inclined to finish her spell and complete the wards with the new adjustments Ursula wanted," Ivy admits, gazing up at me with certain eyes. I bend down and kiss her forehead. Her trust in me is everything.
"I know, and a spell keeping you from me makes me feral, Freckles," I say.
Her brow furrows. "...But?"
"But, I knew Ursula Shipton. I was her guard for five years, and my father was her guard before that, and every person in my line for five hundred years.
" She swallows, expression dropping into something like grief.
I sigh. "We had lives and families and homes and jobs outside of it, but we were essentially at her beck and call, all for a spell one of my ancestors needed.
My point is, old age certainly softened her.
But, at her core, Ursula Shipton was a complicated and flawed person.
Do I think she might have discovered these horrible flaws in the wards?
Sure. Do I believe for a second that she made these changes purely out of the goodness of her heart? Absolutely not."
"So, what? She might have put in a clause that makes us all her afterlife servants or something?" Ivy asks with a small chuckle, and when I don't laugh, she pulls a face. "Oh, come on."
"I would not put a single thing past her.
And that's what makes Laz so scared of allowing the changes to go through.
Because, although there's a sliver of a chance it would make everything better, and monsters could find their mates again and have babies and live happily ever after, there's a much larger chance we'd come out the other end with wards that are harsher, more problematic, and more limiting. "
She chews on her bottom lip, and I gently pull it free with the pad of my thumb, tracing it lightly.
Her brown eyes are dark and full of worry.
"But she brought me to you," she whispers, and it damn near breaks my heart.
"I have a hard time believing someone who's trying to twist everything to her own ends would do that. "
I curl down, catching her bottom lip between mine, feeling the soft warmth of her skin. I pull back enough to meet her eye. "I will forever be grateful for that. I would have done anything to find you if I'd known you existed."
She exhales. "Another but."
"But… it could still be a ploy to make us believe the revision spell is safe, only to find that it’s used the wards' magic to bring her back from the dead and left us unprotected, or made it so only witches could live on the island."
"So, me being your mate, the journal, Nick prompting me as her lawyer—it could all be a ruse to get me to complete the wards the way she wants."
I nod, and she flops back into my lap, closing her eyes.
"It's too fucking early for this," Ivy says, and my head tips back to rest on the couch.
I agree.