Chapter 29
Ash
“Auntie,” a small voice prods me awake.
I yawn as I blink my eyes open. I should see the night sky. Branches swaying in the wind. Stars twinkling overhead.
I see none of that.
What I see are pitch black eyes staring at me as dawn creeps across a room I don’t recognize. Not the one I fell asleep in. The one I woke up in.
Black eyes. Pitch black ringlets around a snow white face.
“Lucy,” I choke. Because as fucked up as it is, this is the first time I’m seeing her. Ever. And my god, she’s beautiful.
“Auntie,” she rolls her little demonic eyes and puts a pudgy hand on her hip. I can’t tell how old she is. Four, maybe three.
“Lucy.” I sit up slowly, reaching for glasses that shouldn’t be there. The thick frames settle on my nose. Uncomfortable. Out of place. Wrong.
“Mommy and Daddies are having a super-secret meeting for your wedding day.”
I choke. “My what?”
I fall off the couch I was sleeping on. A couch in her nursery.
“Weddd-ingggg.” She sounds the words out like I’m the child here.
“I heard you the first time, baby girl.” I rub as much sleep from my eyes as possible before I start pinching myself. This dream is more than a dream. It’s real in a way I can’t name. “Who am I marrying?”
“The guy.” She shrugs. “I want to be the flower girl.”
“Baby, you can be anything you want if you just tell me who this guy is.” What Fae hell did I wake up in? I swear I say that a lot, but what the fuck.
“Flower girl.” She growls at me.
“Done.” She scares me a little.
“Thank you.” And she’s sweet again. Minus the demon eyes.
“There you are, princess.” Lucinda sweeps the little demon into her arms and sets her on her hip. “Morning, sleepy head. I just bet you’re excited for today.”
Sure as fuck am not.
I’m stuck staring at Lucinda. Alive. Breathing. Not at all dead. Just as beautiful as she always was. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a Glinda with a sharp tongue.
Oh gods, I know what this is.
The trial. It has to be. Showing me a future that could have been.
What choice did I make that led me here? What fucking choice?
I stand slowly. Lucy is looking at me like I’m insane. Which, fair. I’m feeling a little insane.
“Are you all right, Ash?” Lucinda places her hand on me, and healing energy flows from her into me.
“Nope.” I blow out a shaky breath. “Can you—this is going to sound crazy—can you tell me who I’m marrying?”
“Oh no.” Lucinda’s hand snaps back. “You are not our Ash.”
“Sure am not.” I shake my head and pace. “Nope, nope. In my—” I pause and look at her. I am not telling this woman she’s dead in my timeline. Is that even what’s happening here? Timelines and what? What the fuck.
“You’re panicking.”
“Mhm, yes. Yes I am.”
“What’s wrong?” Pepper asks, and her voice isn’t full of hatred and anger.
I look at her so fast that when I see the concern on her face—concern that wasn’t there before—I fall to my knees and sob.
No shame.
I’m crying again. And I’m letting it happen.
“List, baby girl, I need you to go down and hang out with Daddy Jasper.” Pepper sets the little demon on the floor, and she hits the ground running.
Pepper walks in slowly. Lucinda shuts the door behind her. They take seats on the bed while I kneel on the floor, losing my entire mind.
“Okay, I’m getting a weird read on you.” Pepper sits beside Lucinda.
“I’m dreaming.” I gasp.
“No, Ash, you aren’t.” Pepper reaches out and threads her fingers through mine.
And still I’m sobbing. Big, heaving sobs. The last dream, Pepper looked at me like I was scum. Now she can’t understand why I’m on her floor falling apart.
If I could get my shit together and talk, that would be great.
I breathe as slow as I can. “I don’t know how I ended up here, but I have to know who I’m marrying. Right now.”
Lucinda and Pepper look at each other, then back to me.
“Davis,” they say in unison.
My stomach revolts.
I scramble up and out of the bedroom, skid into the bathroom, and barely make it to the toilet before everything comes up. My body heaves until there’s nothing left, then heaves anyway.
I end up on the floor. Tiles cold against my cheek. Tears falling because I don’t have the energy to stop them.
Pepper and Lucinda join me silently, locking the door behind them. They bring a rag, some water, aspirin. Then they surround me.
“There’s a magenta magic around you that didn’t exist around our Ash.” Lucinda’s fingers run through my aura. She brushes the energy. It pulses back. “Something old. Something testing.”
“It’s the Trial of Survival.” I sit up, wiping my tears, because I need to understand what the trial is pulling now. “I’m not human. I never was.”
Pepper and Lucinda look at each other, then back to me. Pepper’s nostrils flare. “Explain, Ashlyn Hayes.”
“Morgan. It’s—Fae have too many names. I swear it’s a game they play.” I give it freely, because this Pepper and this Lucinda deserve that. “Ashlynne Moonshadow is my true name. Davis was my handler. Your Ash, when she comes back—test her for iron poisoning.”
Pepper stands abruptly and paces. “You look at me like you really pissed me off.”
“I did.” I settle against the wall, eyes closed. “I think the trial is showing me the alternate path. The one where I put you first.”
That word guts me.
Then I look at Lucinda. “And you.” I can’t even say it.
“I didn’t make it.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question. “Did I?”
I shake my head. “Not really, no.”
“I’ll come back to that.” Lucinda smirks. Just rolling with the fact that in my reality, she’s dead. Pragmatic to the end.
“Put me—” Pepper kneels before me. “Explain.”
Except I don’t have time. The edges of reality ripple. “I don’t have time.” I swallow. “How do I get you to forgive me?”
“Why do I need to?” Pepper’s eyes search mine, back and forth.
“Because if I were there, Lucy would have survived.”
Pepper leans back. Tears spring to her eyes and she just stares at me in horror.
“The alternative?” She can barely get the words out.
“Your Ash is dying.” I whisper it like speaking softly will make it hurt less. “Davis will kill her soon. The iron—she won’t survive.”
“You or Lucy.” Pepper’s voice breaks. “How—what—”
“I don’t have time to explain.”
“Make the fucking time, Ash!” Pepper slams her palm against the floor.
“Maybe if I could just—” Lucinda sits between us. “There.” She turns to me. “Always choose yourself.”
“Bu—”
Lucinda holds up a hand to both of us. “Don’t be foolish, either of you. Never apologize for choosing yourself, even to lick your wounds. How could you ever show up for another when you were hurting so much?”
“I couldn’t.” The words fall into the charged air.
“There. It’s settled.”
“Context.” Pepper’s hands ball into fists on her knees. “Give me context, Ash. Right now.”
The edges of the room shimmer. The pull of the trial tugs at my edges. I don’t have long.
“In my timeline, I wasn’t there.” I force myself to hold Pepper’s gaze. “When you went after Deimos—the final fight—I wasn’t there. I was somewhere else. On assignment. Telling myself you had your mates and you didn’t need me.”
Pepper goes very still. Lucinda’s hand settles on Pepper’s knee, steadying her.
“Cassandra killed Lucy.” I watch the words hit them both.
Lucinda doesn’t flinch, but her fingers tighten on Pepper’s leg.
“Cece jumped in front of Cassandra to save her from Lucy’s strike.
Cece went down. Cassandra retaliated.” My voice breaks.
“Lucy died in your arms while Deimos held his daughter. You held her, and I wasn’t there.
I only know because I had to ask Sabina. ”
“But I was.” Lucinda’s voice is barely above a whisper. She’s not asking—she’s piecing it together. “I was there, and I died.”
“You told Pepper before you went in that if you died, you’d be free. That it would be on your terms.” Every word scrapes out raw. “And Pepper named her daughter after you.”
Lucinda’s composure cracks. Just a hairline fracture—a single blink that lasts too long. Then she turns to Pepper, and whatever passes between them doesn’t need words.
Pepper’s jaw works. “And their Ash—your version of me—” She points at the door where little Lucinda Elspeth just ran through. “Was she there? For the fight?”
“Yes,” Lucinda answers before I can.
We both snap our attention to her. She shrugs, though her eyes are wet.
“If this is the version where Ash showed up, then yes. I’d bet everything that she was there.”
“She was.” Pepper’s voice turns flat—calculating. I’ve heard that tone before, right before she walked into a coven and declared herself a chaos witch. “Ash was beside me when we went in. She and Talon flanked the rear entrance. When Cassandra went for Lucy, Ash—”
Pepper pauses. Looks at me with fury and devastation warring in her expression.
“Ash intercepted her.”
The room tilts. My lungs forget how to work.
“She disarmed Cassandra before the killing blow could land.” Pepper’s voice grows harder. “Lucy still got hurt. Connor healed her.”
A pause. Her eyes locked on mine.
“She survived, Ash.”
I can’t speak. Can’t move. Can barely keep my body upright against the wall.
“Because I showed up,” I say. It isn’t a question.
“Because you showed up,” Pepper confirms. No mercy in her eyes. No cruelty either. Just the unvarnished math of a choice and its consequences. “One person in the right place. That’s all it took.”
Lucinda reaches for me, her healing magic pulsing warm against my skin, but I pull back. I don’t deserve it. Not from her. Not from either of them.
“The iron,” Lucinda says firmly, refusing to let me spiral. “When you go back, I promise we will take care of our Ash.”
Which will send her—their Ash—right back on the path to Faerie.
In both versions of reality, I end up in Faerie. One version is just delayed.
“But you will have to talk to your Pepper,” Lucinda adds.
“She won’t want me there.” I think of dream-Pepper, the one who told me she stopped leaving the light on. When she knows this? This fact? It will only solidify her hatred.
She’s never going to forgive me now.
“Maybe not,” Pepper says, and her honesty guts me. “But you show up anyway. That’s the whole point, Ash. You show up even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”
I blink tears at her. “I fucked up.”
“And I guarantee, even if I hate you, I’m going to show up for you.” She says it through her own tears. “That’s what family does.”
And she is. She said they were coming for me.
“I can’t forgive myself,” I whisper, settling against the wall.
Lucinda hushes Pepper and moves closer. “Tell me something about your Lucy.”
I frown, thinking, and then I sit up straight so fast my vision spots. “Lucy, did you find your mates?”
“What?” She laughs, but it’s strained. “Well, no.”
“The mate spell! Did you do the mate spell?”
“What?”
“Okay, in my reality, you had a sleepover. Sabina talks a lot and she’s nosy as fuck—” I explain how I know. “Your mates were dead.”
They look at each other.
“You didn’t do it here.”
“We did,” Lucinda says slowly.
“And?” I press. “The underworld?”
“Lucy doesn’t have mates.” Pepper squeezes Lucinda’s hand. “Not in any world. Are you saying—”
“Oh.” The trade-off clicks into place.
“I have mates if I die.” Lucinda smirks, then looks at Pepper. “Well. It looks like I need to die.”
“What?” I ask, but I get it. I really do. Lucinda died earlier in my timeline, and I met my mates sooner. Here, she’s alive. Now she knows about the iron poisoning. Lucinda may die here eventually, too.
“I forgive you, Ash.” Lucinda kisses my temple, breaking me apart from the inside out. Then she turns to Pepper. “And you are going to have to realize you can’t control every outcome.”
“Lucy—”
“I know what I’m choosing. When it’s time.” Lucinda’s voice is steady. Certain. “Now both of you stop arguing with fate and start working with it.”
The edges of the room dissolve. Lucinda’s face blurs. Pepper’s hand reaches for me but passes through.
And just like that, I’m staring up at a night sky full of stars.