Chapter 32 #3
I remembered . . . Thalienne had called it a ‘last resort.’ I grimaced. “The nuclear option?”
“So to speak. But now that we’ve seen the strength of your spirit, we know this is a challenge you’re ready to face. Don’t worry. I promise to take good care of you.”
Worry? I couldn’t help the suspicion that rose in me. I had been a thief for a very long time. And I could tell there was more to this than unlocking my magic. Another attempted murder by something other than drowning perhaps? “What are you not telling me?”
Her faint blush confirmed my gut feeling. “It is not for me to speak of the full experience of the ritual. I will only be the guiding voice while you navigate your past, your present, and your destiny.”
She turned and motioned for me to walk beside her. “Vague much?” I muttered.
Bryony pointed through the picture window at the back of the room.
“I have already prepared the ritual. I cannot join you, but I will be near and I will be with you in spirit. Walk between the two oak trees, and you will find an elixir I have prepared. It will allow your mind to sink deep within your psyche, and it is there that your magic will flow to you like never before.”
I wanted to raise my eyebrows at her, but there was something tugging at me. Something drawing me to the door, toward the trees . . .
“Step forward Fae-born. The magic calls, and you must answer.”
One last moment I stood there, letting the feeling tug on me, but still not stepping forward. If this was the way I was going to learn how to cast silent runes then so be it. And yet I still couldn’t take that step.
Let it go, Harlow. The fear. The worry. The uncertainty. Let it go and step into what waits.
It almost sounded like my mom, and her voice was the last bit of encouragement I needed.
I let it all go and followed the tug on my body. The oak trees lured me like a pair of magnets, and I walked calmly towards them even though a part of my mind still whispered it could be a trap.
The trees seemed to bend outward as I approached; I paused and looked back. There was no door, no house, no Bryony . . . nothing but forest around me.
“No way around it now.”
I drew a breath and walked through the opening the trees provided. On the other side was a patch of cleared ground around twenty feet across. The soil had been smoothed out in concentric circles, over and over, and in three spots were pairs of pottery mugs.
The circle had an obvious entrance, flared and wide enough for one person to start walking the path.
Did I just walk in? Was this part of the ritual? Like a circular labyrinth but no choices to the path – you step on the path, and you walked forward.
Thalienne’s teaching was there, hovering in my mind, her advice for dealing with the curse-breaking right there as if she were speaking to me again.
There are no manuals, Harlow. Just feeling the magic and following where it leads.
If that was the case . . . I took off my boots and socks, paused and scooped Calypso out, flipping the locket open. “I think I have to do this by myself.”
“Well, don’t die.” She crossed her arms and shot me a baleful look that softened as she leaned in closer. “I do mean that, Harlow. Please don’t die.”
“I don’t plan on it.” I closed the locket and tucked it inside my boot, then stepped onto the path barefoot, the fine grit of the sand soft under the soles of my feet.
I took a breath, the forest smells gone and the scent of perfume that I knew from so long ago suffusing my nose. Jasmine, lavender, all the floral scents of a garden in bloom. Tears pricked at my eyes.
“Mom?”
Closing my eyes I just breathed it in. That overwhelming floral perfume, she’d loved it and worn it even when she was sick.
Maybe more then, to cover up the smells of antiseptic and death that was coming for her.
A tear slipped down my cheek. Had she known she was part-Fae?
If so, she’d kept so much from me and in trying to protect me she may have doomed me.
“Harlow. Open your eyes.”
My eyes flew open wide, and I stared at my mom somehow in the flesh.
She stood by the first two chalices. Long white robes flowed down her body, her hair silvery blonde like mine, and blue eyes – not like the color I’d inherited from my father.
Her smile though . . . I reached for her and then pulled back.
“I don’t even know what to ask, what to say,” I whispered. “You’ve been my guide before you died, and even after, but you never told me the truth . . . and now, I find out that you . . . I am part-Fae?”
Her smile was sad and her eyes lowered. “I didn’t know, Harlow. Not until it was too late – I didn’t even have time to tell you. It is the reason your father chose me, because he wanted . . .”
“A child with a higher percentage of Fae blood?” The truth nearly gutted me.
Stronger, he wanted a stronger child. And he’d gotten me.
She nodded and lifted her hand and her eyes. “Yes. I loved him, not understanding that he had one goal. He wanted a child. He cared for me in his own way, but he never stopped loving the girl he left behind.”
Phyllis, she was talking about Phyllis. “How do you know that?”
“He talks in his sleep. Perhaps the only time he was truly honest with me, and it was why I sent him away before you were even born. But that is not for now. This is your chance, Harlow. You still have time to connect to your magic, time that I didn’t have.
I want you to fight for it, for both of us.
Do what I never had the chance to do, Harlow.
Be the woman I never had the chance to be. ”
Gods, my eyes were leaking again.
“How, Mom? You were my world, and always my hero.”
Tears streaked down her pale cheeks, matching my own. “And you will always be my greatest accomplishment. But now you must see the past in a different light.” She motioned toward the two chalices. “You must choose one.”
I crouched beside them, gaze narrowed. “Is there a way to know which one is better?”
“There is no better, just different. Let your heart decide, Harlow.”
Lifting the chalice on the left, a whiff of chocolate and strawberries wafted toward me. My mouth watered and I knew it would be easy to drink it down. Easy, the safe choice.
Like Liam.
Where the hell had that come from?
I set it down and picked up the other. I breathed in deeply and the spice hit the back of my throat, making my mouth water in a different way, my eyes stung and I knew this one would burn all the way down. But would the pain be worth it?
Like Typhon.
Fuck my life. I gripped the chalice harder and tipped it into my mouth.
Like drinking fire, the heat scorched the inside of my mouth, down my throat and into my belly.
“You never had it in you to take the easy path.” My mom stroked a hand over my head as I coughed and fought the waves of pain radiating outward. “But within the pain we learn, Harlow, within the pain, we find our true path. We find ourselves. Be strong, my brave one.”
Well, fuck me, if that was true, I was about to find a damn superhighway of a path, because the flames were eating me from the inside out.
Of course, I might have died, I had no idea. I only knew that one minute I was in the forest, and the next I was watching a scene play out in front of me.
One that I never could have imagined.