Chapter 24 Last Night Of Yule #2
“Varya,” she insisted. “Or I’ll make you call me by my full maiden name, Vaevarya Anastasia Parshukova.”
I opened my mouth, but that time Alaric cut me off.
“Take the dress, Leda,” he advised. “And the jewels. And those lovely shoes. You’re not going to win this one. Trust me.” He raised what remained of his whisky in a half toast. “And open my present now, if you please. Or I’m going to be deeply offended.”
I looked between the three of them. Bones smiled faintly, shrugged, and lifted my hand to kiss my palm. “Alaric’s right,” he said quietly. “Take the loss with dignity, Shadow.”
Alaric got me a few things, as it turned out. Despite his teasing comments to Bones, he’d made me a talisman that should turn me invisible and soundless for five minutes at a time.
He also got me a toy for Wraith, two new quills, and several pots of iridescent ink that changed colors when I held it up to the fire.
I smiled and thanked him with a hug and then Varya was opening the present from me. I sat there, trying not to look as mortified as I felt, especially after what she’d given me.
I told myself I couldn’t have bought her anything anyway, since I wasn’t allowed out in public.
Even so, I found myself watching nervously as she unwrapped the crystal ball I’d spent on and off for the past two weeks tinkering with charms and spells to try to get it to work correctly.
In the end, I’d used one of the blood spells I found in the Bones family library, ironically enough, mixed with a spell that required a crystal, and that worked well with the green crystal my mother had given me.
Somehow, the combination had finally done the trick.
She’d just held up the clear crystal in one hand, when I blurted out an explanation.
“I know it’s not much,” I said. “But you told me you were curious about Earth, that you’d always wanted to go there. I can’t show you around, obviously, since it’s illegal for me to go back… but I can show you what I remember.”
I leaned towards her and motioned for her to bring the crystal into her lap.
“Speak a place name.”
“A place name?” she looked at me blankly.
To show her, I leaned over the crystal.
“London,” I said. “Westminster.”
The crystal immediately began to swirl inside its round edges, growing translucent like smoke before it began slowly reconfiguring into the image of human London.
Double-decker buses and cabs, cars and lorries, bicycles and motorcycles filled the streets, along with humans in their familiar clothes, their familiar buildings and shops, restaurants and gardens.
Still unable to read her expression, which had gone utterly blank as she stared into the moving images inside the crystal, I continued to babble.
“I asked my cousin to give his memories, too, and his wife. They’re both Praecuri and have traveled everywhere, so they’ve seen a lot more than me.
” I hesitated, feeling my palms sweat. “You can add to it, too,” I added at her silence, my voice openly awkward now.
“If someone you know has been somewhere, they can add their memories of that place. If you know anyone who’s able to go there legally, I mean. I’ll give you the charm to use.”
Bones laid his hand heavily on my thigh, presumably to silence me.
When I glanced over at him, he smiled, his eyes warm.
He leaned over and kissed my cheek.
“That was very thoughtful, mongrel,” he murmured softly.
When I looked back at his mother, she was wiping away tears.
“It’s absolutely mesmerizing,” she said, nearly in a whisper.
“It’s incredibly thoughtful, Leda.” She wiped her eyes again, and smiled at me.
“It’s the deepest of deep family secrets, but you know there’s a story in my family that my father was part human?
No one ever told me how much. As you can imagine, it was a tightly guarded secret… ”
Next to me, Bones stiffened. “What?”
She looked at him, her grey eyes sharp. “I would be careful what you say, darling son of mine. If the story is true, it means you’re part human, too.”
“That’s not what I…” Bones seemed at a loss. “Does father know?”
She scoffed openly, crossing her long, slim legs.
“Of course not. Do you think he ever would have asked for my hand if he’d thought there was even the tiniest, remotest chance that it might be true?
Do you somehow imagine the great Maelfic Bones would sully himself with me, if he’d suspected I contained even a drop of human blood? ”
Her voice grew openly derisive.
“It’s a lot more common in the royal families than any will admit,” she said dismissively. “For years, it was believed in Russia that human blood was the only way to have children who contained significant magic. It was a mark of honor. Of high breeding.”
Alaric and I exchanged looks, our gazes sharp.
Bones stared only at his mother, his gold eyes openly shocked. When he finally looked away, I couldn’t help but notice his hand shaking.
“Why in the gods would you tell us this, mother?” he asked finally.
She scoffed again, and arranged her back deeper in the stuffed armchair. “Why do you think?” she asked. “Because I finally can.” She nodded towards his lap. “Now open your present from me, Caelum. I think you’ll understand more, once you have.”
Bones opened the rather large, violet and jade-green box while the rest of us watched. Once he’d opened the lid, and before he’d gone deeper into the tissue wrapping underneath, he plucked something off the top. He held the antique silver key up to the firelight.
He looked at it, frowning.
“Is this father’s vault key?” he asked.
There was a strange note in his voice as he asked it.
Varya nodded towards the box.
“There’s more,” she urged him, clasping her hands together and wringing them slightly. “It’ll make more sense when you see all of it.”
Bones reached back into the box.
He pulled out a scroll next, which appeared to have been written in black ink on very old-looking piece of parchment. He pulled out another scroll following that one, on much newer parchment, then a pristine, thick envelope sealed in wax.
Last of all, Bones extracted a vial of liquid maybe four inches tall, which glowed a pale blue and had been sealed with wax and a cork.
He moved the box to the floor, spread everything out on his lap, and looked at it.
He picked up the first scroll, unrolled it, and began to read.
I didn’t let myself look over to read it from next to him, but occupied myself with examining the toy Alaric bought for Wraith.
It was a small, mouse-shaped, ceramic-looking figurine that, when you shook it, turned into a dancing mouse, or a running, hamster-like creature, or a small, hairy gnome with huge teeth that seemed primarily to poke me then run away laughing while I tried to catch it with my hands.
It was funny and ridiculous and I knew Wraith would love it, but I also wondered if it would encourage her habit of stalking and trying to pounce on drakai whenever they delivered messages to the dorms.
If so, I had a feeling the drakai would stop visiting our rooms soon.
Bones read the two scrolls and the letter silently, without comment to any of the rest of us, and all while his mother sat there, wringing her hands together and looking worried.
I could feel his magic reacting to what he’d read, although I could also feel him trying to suppress that reaction, maybe to keep his mother from feeling it, or maybe to keep both of us from feeling the extent of it, or any specifics.
Finally, he looked up at his mother, rolling up the newer-looking scroll.
His face looked taut, and I felt the conflict on his magic starting to bubble over as he looked at her. She looked small to me suddenly, and yes, disconcertingly young.
“He’ll kill you,” Bones said quietly.
I flinched.
I looked over at the two of them, in spite of myself, and saw Varya’s jaw tilt upwards, a defiant stare growing in her grey eyes.
“I’ll be long gone by the time they let him out,” she said, her voice stubborn. “And anyway, it’s done. There’s no use lecturing me now.”
“Mother––”
“NO!”
Alaric and I both jumped, staring at Bones’s mother in shock as she rose shakily to her feet. Bones alone didn’t visibly react, but I felt his magic coil hotter.
“You are my child,” Varya said angrily, her accent growing thicker. “I love you, but this is not your decision. It’s not for you to tell me what to do in this, any more than it was his. And I’ve had enough. If I hadn’t last summer, then seeing you in that hospital was the final straw.”
“Mother, if this is for me, then I absolutely have a say––”
“No! No you do not!” She stamped her foot angrily in the high heels.
She shook her head vehemently, her delicate jaw clenched.
“No. No, I stayed silent for too long. Far, far too long. Inexcusably long. And I won’t do it again.
” Tears rose to her stunning eyes, and she stared down at Bones, her fists clenched at her sides.
“Do you think I didn’t know every single thing he did to you?
” she asked, half-choking on the words. “Do you think I did not know he used me to bend you to his will? Did you think I didn’t see it, Caelum?
Every day. The broken bones. The burns. The blood?
Did you think me so indifferent all that time, that I could just sit and watch him brutalize you, and not despise him with every fiber in my being… ?”
Again, she choked on the words, trailing as she lost her breath.
My hands clenched around Wraith’s toy.
My stomach dropped and turned to ice as I looked between them.
A part of me felt like I should drag Alaric out of there, that we shouldn’t be listening to this, but I didn’t want to risk interrupting them by leaving, and I wasn’t sure if I should abandon Varya or Bones, either.
I strongly suspected she’d probably picked now to do this for a reason.
Maybe she hoped he’d hear her on this, if Alaric and I heard it, too.
I thought about the scars on Bones’s body, the things that looked like the remnants of cuts and burns, and the reality of Varya being there, watching it all happen.
I looked at Bones, unable to help myself.
He’d gone totally still, his face and eyes unmoving on his mother.
“You will take it.” She pointed at her son, her hand shaking.
“You will take all of it. I am in control of the family estate with your father in prison,” she added harshly.
“It’s mine to give. And if that bastard has anything to say about it when he gets out…
if he ever gets out, which he won’t if I have anything to do with it…
then he can direct his comments to me. He’s never getting near you again.
Not while I have a single breath left in my body.
” Her mouth trembled. “I’ll kill him myself, if I have to. ”
Bones stared at her, his expression lost. He stared up at his mother in her gold dress and perfect hair and didn’t seem to know what to do with her. I could almost see him imagining what his father would do to her, and how small she looked to his eyes.
I wasn’t the only one who picked up some smattering of his thoughts.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Varya snapped angrily. “I am not as helpless and frail as you seem to believe! I may not be able to kill him with my own hands and magic, but I’m not entirely without resources, or without brains, as much as your father believes otherwise.”
Her mouth curled in trembling fury. Her chin tilted upward.
“The Parshukovas had bred assassins and sorcerers and yes, even kings for over four thousand years! We have survived when others have not.” Her jaw tilted higher.
“My family has always survived. We always eventually destroyed the likes of him. We maybe had to wait for our moment, for our exact instant of opportunity. We maybe had to do things in the shadows, and wait, and plan. But our patience bore us through. We won in the end. And believe me, I have my own people who would avenge my son, and me, and now I can finally ask it of them.”
Tears trembled her voice, but her jaw remained hard.
“You aren’t only a Bones,” she added coldly. “You are my blood, too.”
Bones rose swiftly to his feet.
He walked to his mother, and grasped her hands.
He held them tightly, and lowered his head to look directly into her face.
“I know I am,” he said. “I know I am your blood. Believe me. And I’ve never, ever thought you were weak. Or doubted you were his better. Never.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she nodded, freeing one of her hands so she could touch his face. She looked up at him, eyes full, and smiled.
“My beautiful boy,” she said softly.
I looked at Alaric, and he’d gone pale.
Bones wrapped his arms around his mother and hugged her.
“I’ve always been far more yours than I was ever his.
” I saw his throat move, right before he glanced at me, his eyes flickering with that otherworldly fire.
“Thank you for my gift, mother. Thank you. I’ll make sure it’s not wasted. I promise.”
She clutched his shirt and jacket, and sobbed into his shoulder.
I looked at Alaric, who was staring up at the two of them, his eyes now wide in shock.
Moving carefully so I wouldn’t bother them, I got up, leaving my gifts on the couch, and walked over to my friend in his armchair by the fire.
I tapped his shoulder to get him to look at me, then motioned for him to follow me out of the room.
Alaric immediately rose from the chair and left with me.
I could hear Bones and his mother talking quietly as I closed the door behind us.