Chapter 12 #2
Beautiful, nothing to complain about that.
The visual was stunning. Delicate and sturdy like dragonfly wings, translucent with fine, lace-like sections connected by intricate veins that shimmered with iridescent hues.
In the darkness, they gleamed with a subtle glow, a toned-down version of the light made by those snap-and-shake light sticks.
She frowned, wondering how she was supposed to move them, let alone fly.
She remembered her grandma fluttering around—never in a delicate way, but flying, nonetheless.
It meant she was capable of doing it, right?
To test her theory, she hitched a shoulder, then both, but nothing happened.
It must have been like moving her arms and legs.
Wait. How did she move her arms and legs?
She just did. Maybe she had to concentrate.
She closed her eyes and tried to feel the wings.
Nope.
Exasperated, she just reached back and pulled the droopy things open.
Not all the way, the span was too long for her arms to reach the tip, but enough to forget her annoyance and appreciate their iridescent color.
The spectrum changed based on how she angled them, shimmering with emerald green, sapphire blue, and soft purples.
They folded gently on her back when she released them so that she could walk. At least they did that.
She blew a strand of hair from her face and sighed.
Coffee.
Espresso, not the usual brew. Make that a double. Decisions to make weighed on her shoulders. Like the wings.
Jade trudged to the kitchen and switched on the espresso machine, gathering a cup and the pancake mix as she waited for it to warm up.
She brainlessly went through the motion of making breakfast, then, after some squirming to fit the wings in the chair, she sat at the table, food in front of her, phone at her side. And sighed.
She had to go, didn’t she?
Back home. To Mystic Hollow.
If only to just tell them she straight up refused the offer. To be honest, the Mountain didn’t offer, more like told her, which only pissed her off more because she should have a say in the matter.
Whatever. Of course, she couldn’t accept.
Wouldn’t.
Clan rules, so strict and archaic, paired with her grandmother’s unbending will, had chased her away with the full support of her mother, Breccia.
Jade never understood why her own mother hated her.
She was all Breccia had left after her dad passed away, so long ago she couldn’t remember him.
Therapy eventually helped her understand that she wasn’t responsible for her mother’s feelings, and she accepted that Lyra and Breccia might be a freaking love fest all around. Just not with her.
Grandmother’s voice dripped with disdain as she dismissed Jade’s dreams of designing and crafting jewelry with stones. “Stop chasing after such childish fantasies.”
Jade had always been able to open herself, sense people’s feelings, and help them through the power stones held within.
In her mind, the natural next step was using her gift to help her clan.
And what she got was ridicule. No matter how much time passed, she still heard every ounce of contempt in her voice.
“Playing with stones is not benefitting anyone but your delusion.”
“Well, Grandma,” she said out loud in her kitchen, pouring syrup on her pancake. “My stupid dreams helped so many strangers and made me one of the top jewel designers in the world, so, I don’t know. Suck it?”
Jade cringed. Lyra Stoneheart has passed. The dead deserved more respect than that. Right? Yes. Yes, they did.
It didn’t change how she felt about going back to a town she’d loved with all her heart before family and duty turned that love into a burden. A suffocating one.
She had loved that fucking town. She’d loved.... Suddenly, she struggled to swallow the mouthful of delicious food.
Tom.
Thomas Carter.
Steady as a mountain and as patient to her messy, play-by-the-ear, restless attitude.
They were the definition of opposite attracts. And boy, how they’d attracted each other. No, it had been so much more than that. They loved each other. So. Much.
She’d always thought nothing could break them.
But she had, because they would never have been free to be.
“You’ll never be with a human,” her mother hissed when she confronted her about their relationship. “The clan will never accept him.”
“The clan, or you and Grandmother?” she bit back.
“It’s one and the same, child.”
“I don’t think so. Isn’t she supposed to listen with patience, like her precious pledge says? ‘Cause she’s sure not listening to me.”
Rage painted her mother’s face red. “Humans have no place in the clan.”
“It might have been true once. Now? Plain stupid.”
Jade was sure her mother was going to slap her when she took a step forward, but she just whispered, “Play with him all you want, then it’s over. A human will never be part of this clan.”
The day after the fight with her mother, she broke up with Tom. The following day, with help from her cousin Heath, she left Mystic Hollow.
Jade stood, struggled to get off the chair without hurting the wings, then pushed the barely touched breakfast in the trash and headed to the bedroom.
She had many reasons to dislike her family—her mother and grandmother.
They’d tried to suffocate her dreams and her passion, never saw how her love for stones, precious and not, could help the clan.
But she had that gift because she was an oread.
The Mountain was in her blood, in her spirit, and stones were part of it, came from it.
She could have helped her community by doing something she was meant to do while loving a man who was perfect for her.
They shoved her away instead.
So, she’d gone and done it, anyway.
But she would never, ever forgive them for smothering her soul, for crushing her so thoroughly that leaving had been the only way to survive. And in doing that, she’d broken Tom’s heart.
She pushed her wings out and sat on her bed.
Now she had to go and settle things.
It didn’t matter how much she hated it; she was the Chosen One, and the clan was made of more people than her family. The clan was made of good people who had no fault in her situation. So, for them, she would go, fix it, and then come back to the life she’d built in New Hampshire.
She took her phone and looked at the time. It was 9AM, 6AM in Washington. Her cousin was not going to be awake for a while, but she texted him anyway and got the ball rolling.
Sleepyhead. Seems like I’m taking a vacay on your side of the world. Call me when you’re up.
She picked some clothes and realized she would have to redo her wardrobe now that she had wings. The eye roll was so big it was painful. She sat in front of her computer after yet another fight with her wings. She really had to learn how to deal with those.
She needed to sort of plan her next few weeks, a month, tops.
No way she was going to stay in Mystic Hollow a day more than that.
Chapter 2
Mystic Hollow, WA, three days later.
It was all so weird.
Jade observed the town of her youth as she drove down Main Street. It was all the same and all different at the same time. Shops and restaurants were in the same place, but the names, the signs, and the interiors had changed.
It was still manicured and kept like a jewel, as it was supposed to be. June was here, and as late spring and summer were high season, hikers and vacationers strolled under the sunshine. More people than she remembered, definitely less than an overwhelming crowd.
Most importantly, the mountains and forest still hugged the town with the same quiet strength.
And despite being hidden by the trees, the Mountain’s call grew louder by the minute.
Even her wings kind of hummed in anticipation.
It put her entire system in a state of urgency that had no reason to be there.
The stress of what she was going to face in the near future because of those damned wings that always got in the way was enough.
She didn’t need the extra pressure of getting to the Mountain asap.
Of course, it had been established how the Mountain didn’t give a damn about her feelings and/or opinion, so the pull kept beating at the rhythm of her heart. Come home. Come home. Come home.
She would. In her own damned time.
She drove her way to Tansy’s Inn. About the same age, she and the gnome had been friends, if not super close.
Unsurprisingly, her Inn was the one with the most stars and raving reviews.
Tansy was always great with people and even better with food.
A Magik herself, she understood how Mystic Hollow functioned.
Meaning, she understood Jade must be there right now, in town, so there was no sending her off to a nearby city.
Not only had Tansy worked things around to find her a room at the sold-out Inn, but she also would not divulge she was in town, for which Jade was grateful to an unmentionable degree.
Everyone likely knew who received the wings by now.
Heath was the right one to disclose the information, and she owed the clan that much.
The absence of the next chief had sent the oread into a major freak out, and she could not, in all conscience, let them suffer.
She never told him when she would get there, though.
As if she wouldn’t tell her family and the clan she was here. Please. But she wanted to test the waters. Find her favorite, and only, cousin. Get in touch with twins Elara and Aryon, Lady and Lord of the Elves. Ease in. Tiptoeing her way for once, instead of closing her eyes and jumping.
Stumbling into Tom was also a big concern, and going incognito seemed to give her the highest chance of avoiding it.