Epilogue
T he curtains were tied back against the oak window frame, allowing me a perfect few of the garden below.
If Amelie’s fury in this room threatened to once burn the McCalmont Family Estate to the ground, there was no proof of that now.
The herbalist did a great job restoring it, I don’t know what Mia was talking about.
The roses were bright red against the stark white of snow.
A walking path had been made between each of the rows.
Where Amelie and I watched our dream-selves first make love to one another, was the only shrub that was green and untouched by winter’s evidence. Like her dream was cemented to life among the winter chill.
The knob of my bedroom door slowly turned and Mia popped her head in. “She’s ready for you.” Her tone was apathetic. All of them were unaffected by the events that unfolded tonight, but me? I was broken.
Amelie was dead. I didn’t stop calling to her mind, hoping I would hear anything back. Any chance that she might still be alive. She had to have done something.
It wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. So much of it looked like what Amelie described church to look like. Her Sunday services and how their leader was positioned on a cross to die for them.
Why did they lay her like that?
I replayed the events over in my mind, when my family and I arrived back in Avonya, I came to my room first. Hoping it was all a dream and Amelie would be waiting for me in here, when she wasn’t, I took another shot in the dark and stepped to the window, she would be in the garden.
But she wasn’t.
Amelie had been in hysterics in the days leading up to the ritual, pleading for me to help her with her plan.
Not only did I not entertain helping her, I didn’t even know what she was planning.
She kept repeating “Mirror, it has to mirror the pain.” but to that Amelie would’ve had to go to sleep, we all would’ve needed to sleep alongside her to be pulled into her dream.
She hadn’t practiced the dream portals Orla wrote about in her journal, had she? If she did, she would’ve been terribly underprepared. That was Bloch… magic. Unprecedented and unpredictable. But that sounded like the definition of Amelie.
My chest ached and I knew I had to go, but my mother was waiting for me in the grand sitting room.
I left the window and took a seat on my bed.
They could wait one more minute. The covers were rumpled as if to mimic the way Amelie and I slept the night before.
Tears pricked my eyes as the smell of vanilla and strawberry filled every bit of me.
I pulled the pillow from her side and buried my face in it. The smell of her hair suffocating me.
Tell me you’re okay.
I strummed my fingers on my thigh.
No response.
Come on, pretty girl. I know you didn’t give up that easily.
The gold in her eyes was so lifeless.
Amelie, please.
A tear fell from my eye, my stomach felt like it was being punched over and over again with every flash of her cold, dead body in my mind.
Her puffy, pink lips were pale and cracked.
The perfectly wavy curls in her hair she donned prior to dinner were frizzy at the ends and stuck to her forehead at the top, printed in blood.
My beautiful girl. My perfect, fated mate.
The pain was too great. I hinged at my hips, putting pressure on my chest in hopes of feeling any relief.
“Fuck!” I screamed, the room rumbled in response.
Crying into my lap, I rocked back and forth trying to shake this feeling.
The tether between should’ve snapped by now, the heartbreak was one thing but that tie between life and death would shatter me completely.
I needed it. If Amelie’s God had a say in where I went after death, I’d tell him I want to be with her in purgatory, or Heaven or even that fucking cottage.
I didn’t care, as long as I was with her.
A knock at the door had me trying to suck the tears that were in free fall back in.
“Let’s go.” Adan was taking a straight line to me, grabbing me off the bed and pulling me back to the long hall that led to the grand sitting room.
We were the same size, tall and broad, but Adan’s freedom over mine in the last two hundred years made him stronger.
I couldn’t fight him with the weight of my shredded heart holding me down.
We rounded the corner and standing at the long oak bar pouring herself a mug of cider, was my mother. The High Priestess of Avonya.
Mia sat in full High Table garb with her apprentice pin attached right in the middle of her jewel covered epaulets. Her face was covered now with the traditional black veil worn only when operating under Coven orders.
“Oh Kiaran, you look exhausted. Drink?” My mother’s tone was flat as she finished stirring her own drink, popping the stir stick into her mouth to take every last drop off of it.
“No, thanks.” Taking my arm back from Adan, I went to sit by Mia on the couch. Though she was clearly not the sweet, kindhearted little girl she once was, she was the only thing that made me want to come home all those years.
My mother sashayed over to us, her long hair and High Priestess gown swaying as she handed me the drink she just made.
“Just take it. It was a long night.” She ran her knuckles over my cheek, studying my face.
My lips pursed, nostrils flaring, and I wished I had Amelie’s fire to set this place ablaze right now. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
Mia said when we arrived back that our mother wanted to hold a family meeting in a half hour. I wanted to be anywhere but here but I hoped when Amelie’s soul crossed to the other side that I would be alone to feel the tether snap.
“Drink,” my mother commanded.
I took a sip. Notes of berries and apples slid over my tongue but left a rancid taste sitting at the back of my throat. It was dry and aromatic, going straight to my head.
My mother slowly nodded at the mug, urging me to keep drinking.
Adan was standing at the balcony doors, fidgeting with the floor length drapes, not paying attention to the rest of us.
Mia’s face was still covered. Traditionally, when you sat at the High Table and were operating on orders from the High Priestess, your face would be covered by the veil. It united the Witches working together.
Mia said this was a family meeting, but she was working under High Priestess orders right now.
I set the mug at my feet, leaning forward on my knees and lacing my fingers together to get a better look at my mother.
Something was wrong about all of this.
“Finish the drink, Kiaran.”
“What are you playing at?” I questioned my mother.
She tilted her head to the side, then smiled, sending chills up my spine. Keeping my mind clear of any thoughts she might try to pluck from me, I focused on her .
I sifted through each ridge of her mind, hoping to find the answer to what she wanted from me in this moment. What exactly she was playing at.
“Ah… my son. You won’t find what you’re looking for in here.” My mother used her pointer finger to tap gently on her temple, her long sharp nails clacking against her headdress. “Drink.”
It was an order.
My body was compelled by it. I picked the mug back up, my mind competed for control but lost. Tipping it back as it reached my lips, the rest of the cider slid down my throat, three gulps and it was gone.
“Good boy,” My mother assured me.
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
“And the girl, how are you feeling about that now?” she asked, grinning in wait of my response.
“What girl?”
TO BE CONTINUED…