Chapter 16 #2
Tay was a motionless mound under the blankets, and my heart stopped for a beat. His jaw was slack, his face eerily pallid. He looked as if he were barely on this side of the veil.
She buried her face in my stomach as if she were trying to burrow inside me, and it was good she couldn’t see my face, because I couldn’t fake a smile. Not even close.
“Is that so?” I asked, a beat too late, my arms closing around her.
“Sit down and let me braid your hair,” she ordered. “You look like a mess.”
I didn’t want to, but I did want to give Lidi whatever would make her feel better, so I sat down before the fire. She brought me mint tea, and I sipped it without tasting it, though I praised it.
Her little fingers pulled at my hair, knotting flowers into the braid, but I could feel how different her touch was now, rough and graceless. I closed my eyes and wondered if she felt the loss.
Our mother came in then, weary from the barn, and washed up. I sat tensely waiting, listening to the sounds of water sloshing over her hands in the sink.
Finally, drying her hands off with a towel, she came and sat across from me.
In our small living room, our knees almost touched; so much of the room was taken up by Tay’s bed. I didn’t look at him and neither did she, but she was still wringing that towel in her hands, her knuckles white.
She didn’t say a word about what had happened. I had been dreading her anger, and now it felt strangely flat that she didn’t scream at me for losing Lidi’s magic and Tay’s hope. I deserved it, didn’t I?
“I’m leaving tonight,” I told Lidi, catching her arm and pulling her around so I could look at her face. She tucked a pink bloom behind my ear, trying to finish her work. “I’m going to go with Fieran.”
Lidi nodded, her face lighting up. “That’s a good idea.”
I scoffed out a laugh before I could help myself. I was going to die. And nothing involving Fieran was a good idea.
But then I saw the look of horror that had crossed my mother’s face, and I softened into a smile. I didn’t want Lidi to remember what she’d said later, after my corpse was rolled into a grave somewhere beyond the mountain. I wanted us to have a sweet goodbye.
“I love you so much,” I told Lidi, hoping she’d remember just how much.
Would she remember the way we read silently together in front of the fire or how we laughed at our cat Curi’s perpetual despair when water dared to fall from the sky?
There were a thousand cozy moments with my sister that I wanted to hang onto, and maybe those memories would die with me. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you too.” She sounded far more cheerful about that missing than I did, though, and she was smiling as she grabbed me in a tight hug. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Mam and Tay.”
I swallowed. Do a better job of it than I have.
“I have to go up into the loft and pack,” I told them. Lidi followed me up the ladder, and I tried to enjoy her prattle, even though I wasn’t really listening.
I glanced over the ledge as I knelt on the hard wood to gather my books from the old wooden box that had served me as a nightstand. Mam was watching Tay, the firelight casting ever-changing shadows over her face.
When she looked up, I pulled away and went back to stacking my books into my bag.
I hesitated; maybe I should leave them for Lidi.
The books of fairy tales, each a different color, stayed on the shelf; my parents had given me two each year for several years, marking each solstice.
Lidi loved them too. But it would be years until she was interested in the romances, and I needed a few friends for the journey.
Tay had bartered for some of these books for me.
I touched the cracked leather cover of the one that I’d never finished, because he’d taken a turn for the worse after, and I’d been too busy since.
But it reminded me of the way he’d been grinning as he handed it to me outside the Tilted Stone.
“Look at the delightful garbage I found for you,” he’d teased me.
“You love that garbage too,” I’d retorted, because my brother loved the idea of love, much more than I did. I knew just how prickly I was.
And it was true, he’d read it first, even though he pretended not to. Hot pressure built behind my eyes, and I shoved the book savagely into my bag. I needed to get on the road.
But instead I lingered at Tay’s bedside, wanting to wake him, wanting to steal out while he slept. I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Soon we’ll see each other again, and you’ll be well.”
That was worth whatever happened to me.
Mam followed me out into the garden when I walked out, carrying a change of clothes, a few of my books, my journal, and my toiletries in the bag slung over my shoulder. The knife in my boot felt heavy and awkward; I didn’t have a better weapon than the one I’d taken from the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out once the door was closed behind us.
“You can’t go,” she told me, her face ashen. Lidi hadn’t even questioned why I would go with Fieran—she seemed to think he was perfect—but my mother had clearly connected all the pieces. “I’ve tried to protect you from the dragons—from the Trials—”
“I know.” I adjusted the bag over my shoulder. It felt heavier than it should, and I wanted to get moving. “But that’s over now.” I couldn’t say Fieran’s damned name, so instead I said, “The shifters can help Tay. I have to go.”
“You don’t have to go. You could run.” Her eyes were wild, and my heart tilted over into emotions I didn’t want to name. She loved me, and that love meant this situation was going to hurt, and I was sorry.
Unfortunately, my voice didn’t come out sounding sorry. “There’s nowhere for me to run. You think I’m going to escape the shifters? You think I’m going to escape the capital now that they know what I am? You think I’d sacrifice Tay’s life to try to save my own?”
Her face creased, her lips pressing together tightly as if she were holding back. Her dishwater-blond hair was touched with gray at the temples, like mine would be someday. Mortals were plain compared to the Fae, and what beauty we did have faded so fast.
“I can’t escape.” My voice was rough, final. “But Lidi and Tay need you.”
She cursed, raising her hands to run them through her hair before she knotted it at the base of her neck. I had the same mannerism when I was subject to emotions too intense for me to handle—which, to be honest, was most of them.
“I can’t do this,” she muttered. “I can’t lose you.”
“You’ll be fine. That shifter asshole is going to get treatment for Tay. I’ll play along so that he’ll help. And Lidi is getting older, and she can be left alone—”
“I’m not talking about how I can’t stand to lose the things you do for me.
” She cut me off, her voice heated. It was an especially harsh tone for someone who knew they were probably seeing their daughter for the last time.
“I’m not talking about the things you do for our family.
I’m talking about you, Cara. I can’t stand to lose you. ”
I stared at her, uncertain how to respond.
When I was growing up, my best friend’s father would drop her off at school and tell her I love you. I’d always stared at them skeptically as we lingered on the schoolhouse steps. We weren’t a family who splattered loving words around with the regularity of sunrises and sunsets.
It was strange to hear my mother say, in her own way, that she valued me for something other than how well I cared for my family. I didn’t even manage to feel that way about myself.
“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else left to say.
She let go of her hair, and her hands dropped to her sides, helpless.
“I know you’ve never wanted to tell me how I came to be…dragon-marked.” I didn’t want to say the words. “But I need to know. I’m going into their world.”
She shook her head. “We can hide you.”
She didn’t sound as if she believed it. She sounded like she desperately wanted to believe.
“Mam,” I said, using the nickname that I had stopped using for her when I was five years old. I’d screamed for my mam to rescue me when the Fae took my magic, and when calling Mam meant nothing, I’d dropped the childish name. “I have to go. Now. Please…”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“How?” I demanded. “What if I run into him? What if he knows something about me…”
She visibly shuddered at the thought of me meeting him. A creeping sense traced over my skin.
“He doesn’t know anything about you. If he did, I wouldn’t have been able to keep you out of the Trials. He would have taken you.”
“Ignorance has never served anyone,” I told her.
She let out a harsh, bitter laugh that sounded too familiar. It might as well have been mine.
“Look around at the world, Cara, and tell me ignorance doesn’t serve anyone.”
“Just tell me,” I said, hard and flat. “He’s my father. It’s my right to know.”
“He’s your father, but he’s my story, and I don’t owe that story to you.” Her chin had risen. “That man was a monster. I had thought he was something different.”
I was stunned, staring at her.
“Did he hurt you?” I felt shaken by the thought that I could be the product of my mother being hurt.
“If he knows who you are, he’ll hurt you. Please trust me for once, Cara. If he knows you exist, he will find you and use you. You don’t want his attention. You don’t want to be claimed.”
“If he’s such a monster, I should know who to look out for,” I told her.
“They’re all going to be monsters,” she said. “Every one of those Fae is a monster. I tried to raise you as far from them as I possibly could.”
“Sorry,” I said again, hating to see her heartbreak.
Her vision rose to look at something over my shoulder. I twisted to see what she was looking at.
Fieran was down the road. Waiting. I was sure he’d been watching me for a long time, but now he was letting himself be seen.
“Don’t be fooled into thinking that one is different,” she said. “He’s a monster too.”
“Oh, I’m already aware,” I promised.
I wanted to hug her goodbye, but she looked as if she were on the verge of shattering. Her chin trembled, her eyes glassy. I didn’t want her to start weeping before she had to go in and take care of Lidi.
“I’ll try to come home,” I told her, so it wouldn’t feel so final when I left.
I turned and walked away from home, toward the dark figure whose unflinching gaze felt like being claimed.