Chapter 3 #2
That's why my mother had agreed to the marriage alliance with Thayden's family. His armies would protect Stormfell's borders, his influence would quiet the dissenting voices, and his name would give us the shield of a purely human bloodline.
Politics dressed up as marriage.
The perfect solution, if you ignored the viciousness that lurked behind Thayden's courteous smile.
In just a handful of weeks, I'd have his ring on my finger, his claim on my lands, my body, and my future. But how could I worry about marriage when I might have just unleashed something terrible? Who knew where the wraith was now?
Emabelle came up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I faced her and sighed, trying to look like I wasn't freaking out. I couldn't break down with Emabelle watching. It would only make me look weak.
“Try not to worry.” Although she offered a small smile, it did very little to conceal the apprehension in her eyes.
“Nothing has happened yet. But just know that Blackthorne and Jameson will be watching us more closely. Forget them for the moment. You have more important things to focus on with the wedding coming up.”
Emabelle was eight months older than me, so she was already twenty-one. She’d taken that to mean she was wiser. Sometimes, she was.
In this instance, I wasn’t sure her advice would be the same when I told her about the wraith. Undoubtedly, she’d think I was so much more than reckless.
Right now, I wished that damn wedding and my marriage to Thayden were the only things I had to worry about. “It’s not that simple.”
“I know, but you can make it simple if you stay away from magic.” She tapped my shoulder and looked at me as if she truly believed that was the answer.
“Stay away from magic.” I almost laughed. Almost.
It was easier for Emabelle to say such things. She was a pure blood human. My cousin from my father’s side who didn’t have a magical bone in her body.
Unlike her, magic flowed through my veins. It was a part of me.
“She must be awake.” My mother's voice on the other side of the door clawed at my spine like thorns.
“Yes, I definitely heard her talking.” That was Grandmother.
Before I could exhale, the door crashed open, wood striking stone as if the force of their worry had physical weight. Grandmother swept in first with Mother close behind.
The air in the room thinned at their entrance, drawing back like the sea before a tidal wave.
Grandmother walked ahead of Mother, her back straight and expression sterner than I’d ever seen in her usually sweet-tempered, quirky personality. Her silver hair was elegantly twisted into a neat coil, and the midnight-blue embroidered gown she wore amplified her unmistakable air of authority.
Mother was dressed in a similar gown. Except the blood red hair I inherited from her that marked us as mages made her look more daunting. Her hazel eyes, so like my own, brimmed with disappointment as she scanned me for visible signs of my turmoil.
The two stopped a few paces away and stared at Emabelle and me, multiplying my trepidation a hundredfold.
The few heartbeats of silence that passed between us were infinitely imposing, filled with the weight of a thousand emotions. Relief warred with worry. Anger with compassion.
In the end, when they appeared to confirm that I wasn’t physically hurt, worry and anger seemed to win.
I couldn’t blame them. I had broken the cardinal rule of protection and put us in danger. Even if Chancellor Blackthorne and Friar Jameson hadn’t done anything yet, they were the most dangerous of men.
“Child, what madness possessed you?” Grandmother’s voice was firm and low but carried the weight of a shout. “You performed the blood spell. After everything I told you? I warned you about what could happen.”
“I’m so sorry,” I rasped, bringing my hands together.
“Sorry? Sorry is not good enough. I told you there were dangers you couldn’t handle from performing such a spell.”
“You said my blood bound me to my father. So, we only had a chance if I did the spell.”
“It was too dangerous for you.” She glared at me, making me feel weaker.
“I still had to try.”
In my journals, I had extensive notes about us talking about the Phantom Moon from my last memory reset. That was how I’d known what to do. I left a plan for myself to follow based on all the things I’d learned from Grandmother.
Her frown deepened, and she inclined her head to intensify her stare. “You portaled. Something must have happened for you to do so. What was it?”
The question was like a lash slicing into my already raw conscience, and the sanctuary of my bedroom suddenly felt like an interrogation chamber.
My breath hitched, but I summoned more courage to speak because I knew I had to tell them about the wraith. Now was not the time to back down. “A wraith appeared. After I cast the spell.”
“Blessed Mother and her angels.” Grandmother’s skin turned as pale as the moon as all the blood drained from her face.
Emabelle stiffened next to me while Mother’s back became ramrod straight. She hadn’t said anything to me yet. A tell she was furious. With her, silence was often more potent than the crudest words.
“Tell us everything that happened.” Finally, Mother spoke, and her piercing eyes bore into me.
Every muscle in my body strained, my heart pounding with a triple beat, but I took a deep breath before I told my family about my huge fuckup of a disaster.
By the time I finished relaying what had happened, I’d successfully managed to terrify them all and shock them in equal parts.
I’d never seen Grandmother look scared. And that might terrify me more than the wraith.
Apart from being a powerful mage who’d lived for over a century, Grandmother offered to be my mother’s guardian when she left the Ravenwood Realm to marry my father.
Like my mother, she was supposed to bound her powers by the Decree of the Accords so she could live in the mortal realm.
But all she did was suppress them for fear that she may need them one day. A day like today.
Yet here she was, spine rigid, panic swallowing her gaze, her eyes so wide the whites stood stark against her green irises. Even the air seemed to hesitate around her, as if, like her, it was bracing for a blow that hadn’t yet come.
“Please say something,” I pled, staring only at her as I purposely tuned out my mother and Emabelle.
“Are you certain the creature called you a thief?” she asked, keeping her gaze riveted to mine.
“Yes.”
Mother turned to Grandmother, her expression taut. “What do you think that means?”
Grandmother’s shoulders became more rigid. “That couldn’t have been an ordinary wraith. It sounds like a tracker.”
“A tracker?” Emabelle cut in.
“It was looking for something. Trackers are ancient wraiths that are immune to certain magics. They work for dark forces and powerful beings in the magical realm.”
A sharp inhale came from Mother. Even Emabelle stiffened beside me, her hand gripping the fabric of her gown.
“But Elariya didn’t do anything,” Emabelle stuttered.
“Perhaps not, but that thing believes she took something. The blood spell must have linked her to it in some way. I just don’t know how.”
My heart clamored up into my throat. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You foolish, foolish girl. You performed a blood spell. Now only the Gods know what that thing wants from you.”
Damn it. This was not happening. Everything was so much worse than I thought. “I need to fix it.”
“No.” Grandmother’s voice pierced through me. “I’ll place up a protection spell and a cloak around us, then I’ll go to the forest and see if the wraith is still there.”
“I have to do something to help. This is my fault.” I had to take some responsibility. “I could go with—”
“You are not to interfere anymore.” My mother stepped forward and shook her head, her eyes blazing. “You’ve done enough, and I won’t allow you to put this family in more danger. You have no idea what it’s like to deal with the likes of Chancellor Blackthorneand Friar Jameson.”
“I didn’t mean to put us in danger.”
“I believe you. And I understand why you took the risk.” Her eyes softened for a moment before regaining their hardness. “But these are dangerous times, and we’re on the brink of losing everything. Only the Gods know what Blackthorne is up to now that his eyes are on us.”
“I know, but what about Father? What about me? We have no idea where Father is, and I’m stuck in this memory loop.”
She stared at me for a long moment, wordlessly, an expression that spoke of all our pain and grief washing over her face. In her eyes I saw the conflict she faced.
It mirrored my own. Nevertheless, there were some things she couldn’t possibly understand about my pain and grief. How could she? She wasn’t there when the darkness took my father, and she didn’t know what it felt like to experience the terror I felt asleep or awake.
That terror was always there regardless of what I remembered. It was a cruel, unfair punishment the Gods or the universe decided to hand me along with the curse.
“Nobody, not even you, could love your father more than me.” Tears filled my mother’s eyes, but she held them back, displaying the strong matriarch she was.
“I left my realm, gave up my magic to be with him. I’ve had to accept that he’s not coming back and maybe, maybe nothing we do will work because he’s no longer in the world of the living. ”
My heart stilled, its beat slowing to a stop. She was saying Father was dead.
Dead.
So, she’d given up. My mother had given up.
Bile rose in my throat and my blood thickened in my veins, making my head feel sluggish. A glance at Grandmother and the resigned look on her face told me she agreed with my mother.
“No,” I muttered, my voice breaking. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
Emabelle slipped an arm around my shoulders, steadying me, keeping me from fading away.
“We don’t know.” Mother shook her head. “And that’s just the problem. We don’t know. Your father would never, ever want us to put ourselves in danger. He’d want us to live. So, I need you to stick to the plan.”
“And marry Thayden?” The words tasted like poison on my tongue, bitter and burning.
“Yes. You will marry Thayden. He knows about the curse and will keep you safe.”
“Safe?” My body recoiled at the word. Thayden’s protection was nothing more than a cage with a prettier lock. “Do you really believe that? That I’ll be safe with him?”
“Marrying you benefits him and his people. His father is your father’s oldest friend. I have no doubt that you will be safe. And Thayden loves you. He’s perfect for you.”
I stifled a laugh that would have bordered on hysteria. Thayden was as perfect for me as a noose around my neck. “What about the portaling?”
“You will not do it again.” Grandmother spoke up.
My gaze whipped back to her. “Aren’t we even going to talk about it?”
“No.”
“But don’t you think we should? I’ve gone from barely having any abilities to doing something a high-level mage can do.
I must have unlocked some latent power I didn’t even know I had.
And you’ve just forbidden me from ever doing it again.
” When I was little, Grandmother told me portaling was a technique that took years to master.
Yet I’d done it on a whim. That couldn’t just be ignored.
“We will not speak of it again. It should never have happened. Just imagine where we’d be if you’d portaled right in front of Councilor Blackthorne.” She seethed. I couldn’t even argue with her because she was right. “Now… no more discussion of magic. It ends here.”
Something inside me shattered and the world tilted beneath my feet. The grandmother I knew would sooner stop her own heart than forbid talk of magic.
We both kept journals that were supposed to help me remember events that happened with each memory reset.
It kept the secret of the curse locked within these walls.
The one constant in my notes was her love for magic.
That was evident even before the curse. Now those memories of her felt just as far away from me as my father.
“Get yourself together.” Mother’s voice pulled me back. “Take the time to rest and make sure you’re ready for Thayden’s visit.”
She exhaled sharply, frustration leaking through the cracks in her control.
“The prospect of marriage is the only thing keeping us afloat and keeping men like Chancellor Blackthornefrom gaining more power. If the King makes him Warden of the South, the first thing he’ll do is take everything away from us.
This house, our land, everything your father worked for.
Then I’m sure he’ll banish all of us. Or worse.
Burn us like the heretics and call it justice. ”
The warning stole the fire from my fury, shutting me down.
Mother gave me one final piercing stare before walking back through the door, her head held high. I wished she would stay. I hated when she was upset with me. But maybe it was better this way because everything she said next would only hurt more.
Grandmother looked away from me, too. Another stab in my heart.
Without another word, she followed Mother. Only Emabelle remained.
I already felt doomed. Now I was trapped. There wasn’t even the hope of a Phantom Moon to cling to.
I’d gambled everything on a desperate hope and lost. Now, all I had were consequences and uncertainty.
And in twenty-six days, I wouldn’t even remember that any of this ever happened.