Chapter 27
Liz
I was twelve when my mom enrolled me in a summer camp to learn how to cleanse chakras with crystals. They braided my hair into dreads on the first day, and on the second, we all had to get henna tattoos. Mine was calculated to center me, whatever that meant.
I hated every second of it.
I loved my mother a great deal, but all the woo woo nonsense about fortune telling from lines on people’s palms, zodiac signs, and reading crystal energies?
I just had no belief in any of that. It was a three-week camp, but on the fourth day, when a girl told me I had a lingering, sickly yellow energy, I put her in a headlock. She didn’t like it, and she tattled.
My dad had to pick me up on his lunch break.
I begged him not to tell my mom.
“We’re all different,” Dad said. “And that’s okay. Your mom will understand that.”
She did not.
But I learned something.
No matter how hard I try, there are some things I will never be.
There are some things I just can’t do very well.
When they tell you in school that you can do and be the best at anything?
They’re lying. Or maybe they’re delusional.
I knew when I was quite young that I’d never be the President of the United States.
I didn’t pander, and I had no patience for idiots.
I knew I’d never read crystal energies or cleanse chakras either.
And I hated dreadlocks—they itched like mad.
Dad convinced me on the way home that it was okay if I wasn’t just like my mom.
Now that she’s gone, I wish I was a little more like her.
Sure, we had a rough few months, but she was devoted, and she loved each of us passionately.
When she thought I had died in utero, she searched high and low to find someone who would bring me back, even if she only got to keep me for a few years.
Then she flew to Iceland to recover me, violating their agreement.
I was a warrior. She was a peace-loving hippie.
I wrecked her friendship with the proprietor of the crystal camp, and she never yelled at me or even reproached me for it.
She trusted me to watch her most precious charges, my siblings, even though she feared me at times.
It’s hard to lose a mother, maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever endured.
And I was chucked in a volcano.
Twice.
The thought of planning a wedding without my mother to put in a lucky dreadlock, or loan me something blue, or weave crystals into my hair, it makes my eyes well with tears. Complicated feelings are still real ones. “You’ll give me away, right?” I ask my dad.
He tilts his head, and his eyes well with tears. At least I come by the stupid excess sentiment honestly. “I won’t want to,” he confesses, “but that would have been true no matter the groom.” He forces a smile. “But yes, of course I will. I’m happy to be there for your ceremony.”
My poor, uptight father had his hands full dealing with Mom and her bizarre hippie ideas. Presiding over an inter-species wedding was definitely not on his checklist for life, but he’s putting on a brave face, and I appreciate it.
“I’m carrying the ring,” Jade says. “Or you know, carrying Fluff Dog, and she’s carrying it.”
“Fluff Dog?” I frown. “I don’t think. . .” The voices in my head are getting more persistent and more consistent. At first I worked hard to tune them out. I’d shake my head, I’d practice Axel’s blocking techniques, and it helped.
Nothing’s helping now, several weeks later.
“Are you alright?” Jade asks. “You’ve looked. . .strange lately.”
I laugh, and I’m pretty sure she can’t tell it’s forced. “I’m fine. Just normal bride jitters.”
“The wedding’s in a week,” she says. “You’re sure that’s all it is?”
My smile’s real this time.
And when the woman comes with my mom’s old dress, which belonged to my grandmother first, and she starts talking about how we could modify it to fit my much larger frame, I try my very best not to be distracted by the pleas I now hear constantly in the background of my brain.
How did Jore ever know I needed her? This constant barrage of begging and demanding is exhausting. I want to shout at all the little whiners to shut the flip up! I inhale and exhale.
So far, I haven’t been able to do anything about all the chatter.
I can’t portal to where the petitioners are.
I can’t reply to them as far as I can tell.
I can’t do a thing. I’m sure the stories that have spread throughout the blessed about the face-off between Veralden Radien and Azar and the role Jore played in it have increased the number of demands the earth children are making to Jore, but that’s only making my life worse.
What did leaving her magic to me do? What does it mean? Am I supposed to be helping them? And if so, how?
I wish I knew. As usual, nothing in my life comes with a manual. Of course, to be fair, when things do come with a manual, I usually ignore it. Or throw it in the trash by accident.
“We can cut the lace here off,” the woman says. “Then it’ll look a lot more sleek and modern.”
I drop a hand over hers. “Don’t,” I say. Maybe losing my mom broke my brain, but I don’t want a modern dress. “I’m marrying someone who’s thousands of years older than me. I feel like vintage is just the thing.”
The woman frowns. No sense of humor, this one.
“Oh, that fits pretty well.” Axel tilts his head as he walks into our room and smiles. “I like it.”
“You can’t be here.” The woman stands abruptly to block his view of me. “It’s bad luck.”
I laugh. “I’m not sure those rules apply when you’re—”
She waves her hands around wildly. “The rules always apply.”
Axel actually pulls a hilarious face, which I can still easily see over the woman’s head.
“Well, I’ll try to block out my awareness of you through the bond too, so that I’m surprised by the fact that you’re complying with human tradition and wearing a white dress even though we already have an egg together.
” He widens his eyes, pivots on his heel and walks back through the doorway and into the hall outside our bedroom.
“You’re sharing a home already?” The woman shakes her head and tsks. “Never a good idea.”
“Did you hear the part about the egg?” I can’t help poking at her a little.
She just keeps shaking her head, but eventually she stops telling me that I’m doing things all wrong. When she comes back the next day with the dress, I forgive her for being a little old-fashioned and stiff. She can be as awkward or rude as she wants, because she’s actually a wizard.
Mom’s gown, that was my grandmother’s dress, was old. It looked tired. Some parts had even been moth-eaten. There was beautiful silk with a lot of lace trim, and it had wide straps that widened as they went down, leaving room for my wings. But the dress was a mess.
This muttery woman expanded the line just a bit in the back to allow my wings to fit easily, and she’s replaced all the moth-eaten bits flawlessly.
The biggest change, however, is that instead of removing the lace, she left it as instructed and she added large swaths of ribbon embroidered roses, climbing like vines up the gown in asymmetrical patterns, wider at the bottom, but pulling through all the way to the bodice in smaller and smaller circumference sizes.
The colors add vibrancy and unicity to an otherwise quite outdated gown.
She’s perfectly blended the past and my future in a way that is very, very Liz.
“It’s perfect.” I burst into tears. “My mom would have loved this.” Now I’m bawling so much I’m worried I’ll get tears all over the gown. “I love this.”
My darling dragon nearly knocks the wall down shoving his monstrous head into the room. What’s wrong?
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Look.” I spin around.
“No, don’t spin,” the woman shrieks. “I only tacked the roses on. I wanted to make sure you liked them.”
I nod. “I love them.”
Azar sighs. Don’t scare me like that.
“I’m so sorry.” I wipe at my eyes. “I’ll try not to be overcome with a combination of joy and delight about the wedding I’m about to have to the love of my. . .life feels like the wrong word.” I smile. “I’ll try to just be ‘meh’ about our upcoming wedding from here on out.”
His smirk warns me that he’s about to roll his eyes. Watching a massive, terrifying dragon roll his big, beautiful eyes will probably never get old.
“I love you,” I whisper.
I like you well enough, I suppose.
I throw the pin cushion at him, but he’s already ducked out and it hits the wall, scattering pins all over the floor. The dress-lady isn’t pleased. But it’s fine. Everything is fine.
I’m marrying Axel.
The next few days are full of so many meetings and fittings that it’s all a blur. Axel surprises me over dinner two days before the wedding by telling me his father wants to come. “Oh, I mean, yes. That’s great.” I frown. “Is he going to. . .”
He folds his hands together in front of me. “Try to blast us?” His eyebrows rise. “Attack humans? Stab you in the chest?” He laughs. “He swears he won’t.”
I wasn’t going to ask any of that.
Axel follows my gaze to the egg sitting in the center of our table. “Are you worried he’s going to waltz in here and steal our egg?” He arches an eyebrow. “Because with it sitting right there, literally anyone could do that.”
I probably shouldn’t just have the egg basket sitting on the kitchen table, but I like having it close.
I can’t explain it. It’s certainly not something I ever thought I’d be saying, or something I ever thought I’d have, but I love my little egg.
Axel insists there’s something in there, something that he and I made together.
And I love it already, even though I have absolutely no idea what’s going to come out of that shell.
Or when it will ever happen.
That’s what gets me the most, really.