4. Hospitality 101 #2
I bit my tongue as the pain flared again. I’d also once created life, though that had been antibiotic mold, not an entire person like Gams had when she’d cloned herself to make Mom. Still, I didn’t feel like going into it with Sorcha and Siobhan.
“What about Nightmares? Those are living,” I pointed out. Sorcha sucked on her teeth.
“Not really. It’s the borrowed consciousnesses from your world that give them the appearance of life.
” Sorcha straightened up and stretched out her back.
Sabrina reentered the kitchen behind her, and Sorcha snapped her fingers to get her attention.
“Speaking of Nightmares, Sabrina, fetch Aoife. We need to update the Lady Saergrim.”
“Are you finished yet?” Ciarán’s voice echoed in my head.
“I’m wearing clothes,” I snapped in the direction of the doorway. “You don’t have to lurk outside.”
Ciarán whisked into the room with his head down, grabbed three more soup bowls, and then returned to the hall without looking at me.
Sorcha pulled my tunic back into place over my bruises, and I prodded at my side through the fabric. The bones and muscles there felt stiff, like they usually did after Sorcha’s treatment, but the heat of the magick had at least dulled the pain.
Sorcha hitched my tunic up on my other side, and I blushed when Ciarán returned to the kitchen behind her. Our eyes locked.
“Don’t make it weird.” I wasn’t sure if my mental message would go through, but a resolved smirk chased away the blush of Ciarán’s face.
“I would never.”
Pain blossomed in my side, and I jerked away from Sorcha’s touch.“What the hell, Sorcha!”
“Oh, stop.”
“You needed me?” Aoife crowded into the kitchen. Her gray hair frizzed and frayed, escaping from the disheveled braid she kept wrapped around her head like a crown.
“No, I need Eliza.”
Apprehension mounted in my gut. While I missed my mom so badly it hurt, the version of her I missed was the one I didn’t know was a Magician. I wanted the mom who hadn’t lied to me about Skalterra.
When I’d seen her Nightmare a week ago, I got the feeling she felt the same about me. There was a new, unwelcome awkwardness between us, as relieved as we’d been to see each other.
Or maybe it was all in my head, and I was just projecting after discovering she’d spent my life reaching out to my father, inviting him to events and graduations only for him to say no every time. She still didn’t know I’d met him the night before the Rift opened.
Sorcha’s hands burned hotter, and her matrix shifted and expanded within my ribs, bridging the cracks my volatile magick and Sabrina’s rough training had left in the bones.
“Remember to breathe, Blue.”
I glared at Ciarán, and he stepped around Aoife to return to the hall to deliver more soup.
“Eliza is going to be annoyed I’m calling her,” Aoife said, but she took a sip of Skal from the bottle on her belt, and her outstretched hand glowed orange. “You know she hates leaving the harbor unattended.”
Dust rattled across the cobbled floor to pool itself at her feet, swirling and expanding until it stood a proud five feet tall. Legs, torso, arms, and head took shape, and long, blonde hair fell over slight shoulders.
“Make it quick, Aoife,” the Nightmare said as she settled into her magick-formed body. She wore her favorite bathrobe and slippers, which made sense, as this was her idealized version of herself. “I need to watch the harbor.”
“Oh, it’ll be quicker than you like, I think,” Sorcha warned. “Things are getting complicated.”
“More complicated than my mother sitting on the top of the Rift, trapped in a storm? That smells amazing. Is that you, Siobhan?” The Nightmare blinked, adjusting to the flickering firelight as she peered around the kitchen.
Her eyes locked with mine before flitting to Sorcha’s hands pressed against my bruises.
“What’s wrong with Wren? Wren, is it your ribs?
Your ulcers? Sorcha, her ulcers. How are they? ”
“I’m okay, Mom.” I wanted to look away from my mother’s Nightmare form but was transfixed. Having now seen Gams’s younger self, the similarities in their appearance was disarming.
Sorcha pulled my tunic back into place and straightened up to face Mom. “Your daughter will live. It’s your mother I’m calling you about. Apparently she and her friends rigged the local volcanoes to blow and reseal the Rift if it were ever opened.”
Mom threw back her head as she laughed.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said when her guffaws subsided. “Why would you think that?”
Sorcha made a sweeping gesture in my direction, and the mirth in Mom’s eyes died.
“Gams told me,” I said. “She summoned me as a Nightmare last night and—”
“You were just dreaming.” Mom shook her head. “She would’ve told me about the volcanoes if it were true.”
“I know the difference between a dream and being called as a Nightmare,” I said quietly.
Mom stared at me through narrowed eyes, and I wondered what could possibly be going through her head. She’d been similarly stoic a week ago when I’d told her about my misadventures in Skalterra.
“Then we go through the storm and reseal my mother,” Mom finally said. “It’s the only option.”
“It’s not an option at all,” Sorcha tutted. “Soldiers from Breachriver and the Shogunate passed through earlier, all on their way to the Rift, and there’s sure to be more on the way.”
“What’s a bit of extra traffic?” Mom turned away to stare through the double-side hearth and watch the shifting silhouettes through the flames.
“We already can’t get through two armies and your mother’s storm,” Sorcha continued. “More armies will only make it more difficult.”
“You’ll have to find a way if the alternative is volcanoes,” Mom scoffed.
I looked down, gripping the wooden edges of my seat.
“There’s another way,” I said. Gams had said not to try, but Gams wasn’t here. “Gams said we could save her if we found a Lyrian, that they could lead us to Keldori a different way.”
Mom slowly turned away from the fire to look at me.
“Wren Warrender,” her smile was disbelieving, but her eyes furious, “since when do you lie to your mother?”
“Now you want to talk about lying?”
“We were going to tell you about Skalterra eventually.”
“And what about my dad? Were you going to tell me you invited him to my graduation and he said no?”
Mom’s nostrils flared, but she was too smart to be led into my attempt at a distraction. She’d have to interrogate me about how I’d found out about my father later.
“It’s true that the Lyrians supposedly know of a secret door to Keldori, but Wren is lying to you. My mother would never suggest we try it. Our best bet is the storm.”
“But there is a door?” Sorcha pressed.
“All I know is it’s dangerous enough that my mother never told me the details out of fear of me trying to use it,” Mom snapped. “I know you’d have a better chance against a hundred armies than you would against whatever secret passage exists between Keldori and Skalterra.”