Chapter 55
“TELL HER.” DRYSTAN’S irresistible command rattles the roof tiles.
Pa’s palms flash pale as he raises his weatherworn hands to ward off the King of Death. “Yes, yes,” he croaks, still catching his breath.
I search Drystan’s face, then my father’s. Dread unfolds in me, cold and heavy like I’m back in the Gauntlet of Despair. I have to swallow twice before I can whisper, “Tell her what?”
Pa’s shoulders cave in as he rubs his hands over his face as though he’s trying to wake from a nightmare.
I feel like I’m at the edge of this cliff. One step will throw me over the edge. So will a good shove.
Only rock and roiling sea wait below.
The past few minutes churn, odd moments coming back over and over.
“What did you mean about my medicine? Why would you think I’ve stopped taking it? I don’t understand.” And not understanding feels dangerous. Knowledge helps. Always. Questions, reading—all these things illuminate, letting me see the way and avoid pitfalls. “What did you mean?”
“The plants.” Annem’s the one to speak up. “They grow in your footsteps, at your touch. It’s your gift.”
How would she know that? And why doesn’t she seem at all surprised by it?
I look at my father in silent question.
He closes his eyes and heaves a sigh so deep it comes from his bones. “I made that bargain. I want you to know that. I did it. It was nothing to do with your mother. And this was my doing too.” Head bowed, he keeps his gaze fixed on the ground and the little creeping plants at my feet.
Meanwhile, it’s dread creeping through me.
“We kept you safe, didn’t we? In this house. Within these walls. I built them with my own two hands, cut my fingers on the iron wire, made sure it ran under the threshold of the gate, too. I did it to keep you safe.”
Mechanically, I nod. “To stop The Morrigan and the fae from finding me.” Why does it feel like there’s more beneath the surface? A tangled fishing net catching on my heels, ready to drag me down.
Desperation haunts my father’s eyes. “I did it for you. All of it.”
“ENOUGH.” Drystan straightens at my side, anger radiating off him in dark waves. “Your excuses disgust me. Tell her the truth or I’ll throw you into the sea and we’ll see if any gods come to save you this time.”
Lips sucked in, tears gathering in his eyes, my father shakes his head.
“COWARD.” Drystan fists his hand in Pa’s shirt and snatches him from the ground.
I’m reaching for them, pulse surging with the need to stop one and save the other, when Annem’s voice stops everything.
“You aren’t ill.”
Silence rings out. Her words buzz in my ears. They don’t make sense.
I shake my head, turning to her, though it feels like I move through treacle. “I don’t—”
“You never were.”
An abortive laugh bursts from me as I look at Lowen, thinking he’s going to confirm this is a terrible joke. He’s too busy staring at Annem, mouth open.
“You kept wanting to go out,” Pa croaks in Drystan’s grip.
Nostrils flaring, Drystan drops him to the ground with a look of utter loathing.
“That was fine when you were a girl. But after you started making the flowers grow so well…”
Something slithering and awful has hold of my throat. I can’t look away from my father’s hunched form, but I want to. I want to close my eyes and cover my ears. Whatever he has to say can’t be good. Not when he looks so full of shame.
“The second time your vegetables won every prize at the village fair, we realized you were gifted. And if your magic was free, out in the world, then it was only a matter of time before The Lady found you. Human magic comes from the fae, and I’m sure yours is from The Morrigan herself.
She would know. We tried to keep you in, but you were a teenage girl.
Willful. So sure she wants to dance at the pub and run around the beach with boys. ”
A hot flush rushes over my face in sickening contrast with the cold grip tightening on my throat.
“If we couldn’t stop you going out, we had to block your magic so they wouldn’t be able to sense it.”
My father falls silent.
I tug on my collar, swallow, snatch in a sharp breath. “How?”
But I think I know the answer.
“Your medicine,” my mother says in this small, broken voice. “We had a traveling apothecary mix aconite and iron—”
Drystan flinches with a hissing inhale, like the word itself burns him.
Iron.
It poisons fae. Kills them if you use enough.
And aconite. One of the few ways to end an immortal’s life.
“Just a little,” Annem goes on with a nervous glance at Drystan. “Just enough to stop your magic. But it… had an effect on you.”
I stare.
It blocks magic. It burns fae. It poisons those with magic in their blood. And I’ve been taking it for sixteen years.
“You poisoned me.”
“We didn’t mean to. It was just—”
“We didn’t know.” Pa steps between me and Annem. “Too much iron will poison anyone—fae, human, with magic or not. We just wanted to make it so they couldn’t find you if you left the safety of the walls.”
It makes a horrible kind of sense. No magic, no connection that The Morrigan can follow to find the girl who’s been bargained to her son.
My mind is remarkably quiet. Logical. I almost sound normal as I ask, “And when you found out it was poisoning me?”
Before my father’s head bows, I already know the answer. I knew it before I even asked the question.
They didn’t stop. They never stopped.
“It was that or keep you locked in the house.”
I round on my mother, pointing at her with a shaking finger.
“And when my body kept me locked in? When I couldn’t leave because I was too sick?
Did you at least lower the dose? Give me fake pills so I thought I was still taking medicine but my body had a rest?
Or did you load me up with iron upon iron upon iron until my body couldn’t take it and I could barely walk up the stairs without help? ”
Her lips fold. My father steps to the end of my pointing finger, brow clenched.
“You didn’t, did you?”
His jaw tightens. “It was to keep you safe.”
Every word they’ve spoken is a weight that’s been dropped on me. And all the slippery secrets, the words unsaid—they’re another weight.
The world reels and I back away. My heart feels like it’s going to implode. I stumble backward until I hit something solid that catches my shoulders and stops me falling.
How could they have done this? All this time? That isn’t just a mistake, an accident. It’s over half my life.
I can’t deal with this. I can’t process it. I don’t understand it. And I sure as all the seven hells don’t want to believe it.
My breaths stutter. I tear the collar of my shirt. I drag in air over and over, but I can’t get enough inside my lungs.
“I can’t… This isn’t…”
I want to scream as Pa puts his arm around Annem. Lowen rests against the wall, shaking his head over and over.
I want to break down the garden wall with its hidden iron wire again. I want to ruin this cottage that has been my prison for a decade and a half. I want to smash everything that’s inside—evidence of a lie I’ve lived for too long.
I could crack this stack of rock and crumble it to dust.
I could make the earth itself tremble.
The terrible, crushing weight of that feeling terrifies me most of all.
I lock it inside, though the effort makes me tremble.
Tears well up instead of rage, the price for a thousand pinpricks I turn inward.
I thought I was fighting to get home.
But all I’ve come back to is an illusion.
Heart tangled, every beat of it agony, I turn away and find Drystan waiting.
His face is empty like someone’s poured everything out of him.
“Take me home,” I choke out.
For a beat, he stiffens. Then he opens his arms and welcomes me into his darkness.