19. By the Spindle
By the Spindle
MAX
After E leaves the room, Nick serves me a relieved, overly satisfied sigh. “Ah. Alone at last.”
“Dial it down. You’re acting like a prick.” I link my hands over my knee, trying to hide my jitters.
I have to disperse the tension, or these two idiots are going to posture themselves into a fistfight soon. If things go south between them, Nick is hot-headed enough to try something rash, something along the lines of the banishment spell I cast this morning—only far more violent.
And I really don’t want that.
“Anyone invisible and impervious to harm makes me nervous,” Nick fires back.
“He can’t help it. He’s a ghost.” I stand and walk over to the counter to pour myself another cup of tea.
“Ghosts aren’t to be trusted, sis. They’re souls that refused to meet their reaper. Given enough time, they all wither into something darker. Less human. We can’t trust him. For all we know, he might be working for the Mist King.”
I set the teapot down with a loud clink. “No he’s not.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve let down your guard around a ghost of all things.”
“Mabel knows him.” I dump a sugar cube in the cup and return to my seat. “And from the way she spoke, I’d swear E is family.”
Nick scoffs. “Family?”
I meet his incensed gaze head-on. “Yes.”
He freezes at that.
“He can get into the attic,” I add. “He’s a Bloodsinger. If not by name, then by blood. He can help us.”
Nick crosses his arms. “Or stab us in the back when we least expect it.”
He has every reason to be wary. I’ve always been drawn to eccentric, unusual people, but I have to admit, falling for a ghost is an entirely new level of crazy, even for me.
“He’s not a threat,” I repeat. Not to me at least. “But if you keep antagonizing him, who knows what might happen?”
Nick studies me with a troubled look. “Are you worried about him?”
I throw my hands up in the air. “I’m worried about you!”
His face darkens. “Because he’s dangerous?”
“Because you’re getting tied up in the wrong issue. E is not a problem for you to fix. Finding the spindle should be our priority.” I ground myself by curling my fists, forcing myself to stop gesturing
“Before you arrived, we’d decided to try to burn out the wards in the attic. Painting over them wouldn’t work, but fire should cleanse Mabel’s blood from the walls,” I add, tempting him with a juicier, longer-standing mystery. “We might finally be able to get in there.”
Nick leans back in his chair and raises a skeptical brow. “We as in you and me? Or am I expected to serve as the third wheel?”
I force a deep breath down my lungs and sidestep his subtle accusation altogether. “Tell me more about this golden spindle. Have you seen it before?”
“No.” His defensive stance melts, and he scratches the back of his neck the way he does when he’s torn up about something. “But it’s called the Spindle of the Gods. It’s rumored to spin a thread strong enough to make someone immortal. I’m talking true immortality, a way to cheat death forever.”
“True immortality is a myth,” I blurt out.
Nick grins in a mischievous fashion. “I know it goes against everything we believe, but it’s real.” He pauses for a moment. “Legend has it the Spindle of the Gods can also tie a soul back to its body.”
“By the Dark One—”
My stomach twists and my heart hammers, my palms suddenly sweaty as hell. I dry them off on my jeans, suddenly understanding why Nick asked for E to leave the room.
My twin’s jaw sets in a hard line. “You can’t tell your ghost friend about it. He’d want it for himself. Promise me, Max.”
My pulse swirls at my temples.
Want it for himself? Hells, I’d give it to him in a heartbeat, but I can’t admit to that.
“This spindle is invaluable,” I whisper. “No wonder the Mist King is ready to kill for it.”
Nick nods emphatically at that. “Any Fae would kill for it.”
“So Mabel kept it hidden and out of their reach for a reason.”
Her name is enough to cast a dark cloud back upon Nick’s face. “Mabs is out of the loop, Maxie. She’s too attached to the old ways. If we’re going to take our lands back for ourselves, to stop living in fear, we’re going to have to forge our own paths and use every possible tool at our disposal.”
I comb my fingers through my hair and start braiding it to one side.
My gaze drifts around the kitchen as I do.
The old cupboards with their uneven hinges.
The curio cabinet holding Mabel’s most treasured teacups.
The double French doors that open into the gardens—the only real home I’ve ever known.
A place I ran toward instead of away from.
After a childhood of moving from hut to hut, always fleeing, always hiding, this house rooted me and kept me safe. And now its foundations are shifting.
“We should try and contact Devi,” I say. “She’d know what to do.”
“Devi is a criminal, an outcast, and we have no way of contacting her in Faerie. But my contacts could introduce us to people who want real change for the continent. Powerful people who could help us return our forest to its former glory.”
Nick leans forward, bracing his forearms on his knees.
His hands clasp together for a second before breaking apart again as he adds, “The very foundations of Fae society are shifting as we speak. I’m talking about a full-on revolution.
With the right allies, we could strip power away from the Reds and get revenge for what they did to Mom.
We could go home, sis, and that spindle could be our ticket into the inner circle. ”
I gasp. “You want to barter it away?”
“Who knows? But whatever happens, we can’t let that Mist fucker get it, right?” Nick raises a brow, squinting as though he’s not following my train of thought.
Or maybe he is following it, and doesn’t like where it’s going.
He’s right, of course. We can’t let the most dangerous Fae in existence get his hands on something that could resurrect him fully.
Mabel is the reason he didn’t become the one and only king of Faerie in the first place, and now he thinks he’s got to kill her entire bloodline to get his jewels back.
The bargain we made that he would leave us alone in exchange for the spindle was heavily skewed in his favor, even though he pretended otherwise.
This house isn’t worth setting a psychopath loose on the worlds, but a small part of me wishes it was.
I don’t know what silly hopes I clung to. Some quiet belief that I could hold up my end of the deal, keep my head down, and live a danger-free life. Nick’s incredulous tone crushes that fantasy under its heel.
This life, this house… All of it is about to crumble.
“There’s something else.” I swallow. “This morning, Armand called me the daughter of the Dark One.”
Nick blinks. “Because you’re a witch.”
“No. He sounded…gleeful. Like he knew more about my own blood than I do.”
“He was trying to mess with you.”
I shake my head, unconvinced.
“Mabel told me to stop the Angelica tea. She said I had more power than I knew.” I hold up my hand. “Look.”
My serpent flames rise to the surface. It takes concentration to summon them, but less than before. They feel familiar, like they’ve always lived in me, and I’m finally letting them breathe.
Nick’s eyes widen. “You’re a fire witch. Damn.”
“Have you ever done something similar?”
He rubs a hand over his face. “No, but fuck, Mabs is even more of a liar than I thought. She hid this from us. You were this close to giving up on witchcraft, and all this time she was drugging you to keep your Summer fire tamped down?” He huffs out a humorless laugh. “What a witch.”
“Summer magic?” I ask.
“Fire is from Summer,” Nick says. “Explains why you’re good with plants, too. That means our father must have been a Summer Fae.”
“Considering how many lies I’ve told in my life,” I chuckle dryly, “I know for a fact I’m not a full-blooded Fae, and neither are you.”
“He was a Summer seed, then, and his powers only passed on to you,” Nick counters. “It’s still a better clue than anything we’ve ever had.”
I trace a glowing flame along my palm. “Alright, I promise not to tell E what the spindle is for, but you’re going to have to find a way to get along. He’s not evil. I know it.”
Nick’s lips form a thin line. “What about your wedding?”
I stare at him through my lashes as I gather our cups and dump them in the sink. “Oh, Nick. You already know there isn’t going to be a wedding.”
He joins me by the counter, places his hand over mine, and gives it a little squeeze. “I think it’s for the best.” He cracks a smile. “I’m glad you finally came to your senses.”
I stick my tongue out. “You’re an insufferable know-it-all.”
“That’s how you love me. Blunt and lovable.” He wraps an arm around my neck in a mock-chokehold and plants a big goofy kiss on top of my head. “And you deserve more than a mortal with no sense of fun.”
“What about you, eh? Still seeing that sexy, mysterious deep-throat source you met in Norway?”
“Nah. She’s out of the picture.” He shrugs, walking backwards to the living room. “I’ve met someone new, actually.”
“Really?”
He rarely speaks of such things, and that alone makes my ears perk up. I follow him to the sofa, and we sit together on the purple corduroy, gossiping like we’ve done a thousand times, and the familiarity of it all eases the tension beneath my ribs.
“She’s a witch from another coven,” he says, “and she introduced me to the rebels I mentioned. Bloodraven witches aren’t the only ones who were wronged by the Reds, Maxie.
Many covens have survived, in stronger numbers than we knew.
If we could work together, we might just be able to take our lands back.
Lysandra gave me information that could prove invaluable, like the fact that there are underground tunnels that run from Lorntree Hollow all the way to the Red Queen’s keep. ”