Chapter 28 - Aurela
“Oh, I just knew you would come!”
Tara is standing at the ridge, just like she was all those years ago. Except, unlike what happened back then, the four of us all arrive at the same time together, rather than one at a time.
“Tara,” Maeve says, her voice low. “You never really went to our school, did you?”
Tara rolls her eyes so hard they could fall out of her head, and starts to pace so near to the edge of the cliff that it makes my heart jump into my throat.
Logically, I know that she could use her magic if she fell, and I know that this night is probably not going to end with her peacefully surrendering, but I can’t help the fear that rises up into my chest, anyway.
“Aren’t you guys getting tired of this game?”
“Yeah,” Valerie says, crossing her arms. “We are. And we’re tired of you starting fires and threatening our pack. We have children now, Tara. We’ve all grown up, and it’s time you did, too.”
Again, something cracks in her normally cool face. She turns, voice fracturing in the middle when she says, “I can’t.”
We blink, glancing at each other, and Tara goes on bitterly, “Don’t you get it? I’m not like you. I don’t get to leave. I don’t get to roam free. I don’t get to fucking grow up!”
For the first time since I met her all those years ago in the hallway, tears start to roll down her face, and the sight of it makes my heart feel like a sticky, amorphous ball of chewing gum.
Quieter, so her voice can barely be heard above the sound of the wind, she says, “I don’t get to find a mate. To be claimed. Or to have cute little fucking babies, like all of you.”
Without thinking, I set my palm flat on my belly. Valerie gasps, her eyes tracking the movement. The other girls all look, too, and I swallow hard, meeting their eyes. It distracts from everything else she’s said, the comments about never getting to grow up.
“Congratulations,” Tara says to me flatly. “Can’t wait for another little wielder in our group.”
“There is no group,” Phina says, then changes her mind. “Actually, there is a group, but you are not a part of it, Tara. You lost that right when you hurt us, hurt the town, hurt the pack.”
Tara sucks on her teeth, then lets out a breath. “Fine. If you feel that way.”
Then she moves quick, so none of us realizes what she’s going to do until it’s already happening. Her hands raise, her palms facing us, her mouth open like she’s laughing, though we can’t hear her over the whoosh of the magic blasting toward us from her palms.
None of us has time to move or even realize what’s happening until Maeve flies backward, a cry flying from her lips before she lands on her back three feet back from where we were standing.
“Maeve!” Valerie cries.
With Maeve on her back, we can all see the little swell of her belly pushing out against her dress. Before, I could only have imagined what it would feel like, the fear of getting hurt and losing my baby, but now I can truly understand, with my hand still resting on my stomach.
“You bitch,” Phina seethes, raising her own hands up to Tara, who is laughing. I can hear it, echoing and loud, so similar to the deep, reverberating laughter of fire daemons that it sends my heartbeat up a pitch.
Tara fires again, trying to hit Phina, but Phina dodges, sending a blast of wind toward Tara, who stumbles back under the weight of it, her heel hitting the edge of the cliff.
Phina isn’t trying to kill Tara with her magic; she’s trying to push her over the edge of the cliff. I try to meet Phina’s eye, to understand why that’s her strategy, but her hair has flown in front of her face, the blond strands fanning out like a cobweb, sticking in her mouth.
“Who’s the real bitch?” Tara taunts, stepping back into mid-air, but remaining in the same spot as though she’s still standing on the cliff’s edge. “Me, or the girl who made me?”
“Phina!” Valerie cries, her hands spread out over Maeve. “I need help!”
Phina turns and races for them, so it’s just me facing Tara, who stares down at me like some sort of goddess, her shrewd eyes picking me apart.
“Made you?” I ask, brow furrowing. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Tara says, tears still running down her face. “I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.”
And then it clicks.
Maeve lets out a loud moan somewhere behind me, and I’m reminded of that day, all those years ago, when Tara faced me on this very same cliff, screaming at me that this was what I wanted.
All the other girls had been pulled dry by her, and that just wasn’t enough.
She was too powerful, too strong. Especially once she got my magic, too.
“You were so lonely,” Tara whispers, drifting toward me.
Without thinking, I step closer to the edge, staring at her, my mind trying to catch up with the possibility that this could really be true.
“You were so lonely, and you were so powerful, Aury. It’s like—you did it without even realizing you did. ”
“That day, outside Foods Club,” I whisper, staring up at her, eyes wide, breath catching in my throat. “When you appeared in that alcove.”
“I’ve always been a spell you cast,” Tara murmurs, and I watch the tears drip from her chin, falling down to the lake beach far, far below. “And even I didn’t realize it at first.”
The world has gone quiet behind me, nothing but the thick sound of hot wind roaring past me and Tara’s impossibly soft voice, drifting through the space, just reaching my ears. Her eyes are cast downward at the grassy outcropping where I stand.
“I thought—I thought I was real, too. But then the rest of you started getting involved with those boys, and it dawned on me that they didn’t see me.
I tried to talk to them, to mess with their heads so they would leave you alone, and they walked right through me.
I realized that everyone else left school at night, but I was always there. ”
My eyes are hot. I might as well be the one floating. This can’t be possible.
“You were lonely, and so you created me,” Tara says, raising her chin and meeting my eyes. “And then, on the worst night of my ‘life,’ you left me out here to burn up.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because it’s true—I didn’t mean to create her, and I definitely didn’t mean to leave her alone. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her when I retreated to the quiet of my family’s house. When I was gone so far, she couldn’t reach me.
I was gone so far, I couldn’t even reach myself.
Tara opens her mouth to say something, but I cut her off, shaking my head, “I’m sorry that you were left alone, Tara.
That this is what life has been like for you.
But that doesn’t excuse the things you’ve done.
You hurt my friends. You’ve killed dozens of shifters, including children and the elderly.
These fires aren’t acceptable, no matter your reason for causing them. ”
“But they accepted you,” Tara counters, jutting out her chin, eyes skipping somewhere behind me. “And her, and her. And you all started fires, too.”
“No, we didn’t. We tried to stop you.”
I’m in the middle of the sentence when I realize this is all futile.
I made her when I was in high school, which means I must have created her with even less maturity than I had at the time.
She didn’t have a chance to grow up. No family.
No parents to raise her or get everything wrong.
No siblings to wrestle with in the front yard.
And no chance to develop a conscience before it was too late.
I read somewhere that all children are psychopaths before they grow up and develop empathy. Maybe that’s true, and maybe Tara will never grow up. Maybe she’s trapped in the mentality of a child, only reaching for what she wants, never thinking about how much it can hurt others.
And maybe that’s especially dangerous when it comes to someone with this much power.
“But you gave it to me,” Tara whispers, and I don’t know if I said all that out loud, or if she’s just in my head. She pouts, coming close enough to me that she could reach out and touch me if she wanted to. “You’ve always been giving me the power, Aury. So that makes you just as bad as I am.”
For a second, her words cut through to the core of me, and I start to believe. If I were capable of creating something like this, something that could cause so much harm, then I must be evil.
Then, I feel the tiniest little surge of something through my body, and I lower my hand, placing it on my stomach, where new life waits.
Soren loves me. Lach and Val love me. I trust their judgment, and I know that I didn’t make Tara on purpose. I was a scared, lonely kid, and I did something without even knowing it.
Maybe I could have been stronger, or braver, but there’s nothing I can do to change that now.
The only thing I can do is be strong now. Be brave now.
“No,” I say to Tara, shaking my head, lifting my gaze back to hers. We’re both crying now, and I know as long as I live that I’ll never experience something like this again. Having to kill my best friend.
Because if I made her, that means I can unmake her, too.
“No-o-o!” Tara shrieks, flying up into the air and away from me in a blink, blue flames rising up around her body like they did fifteen years ago.
I stare at her in awe and fear, feeling so incredibly small. Impossibly little.
“No,” Tara booms, her voice dropped several octaves. “You can’t leave me, Aury! Not again!”
And with a great, shuddering boom, the ground under my feet starts to cleave, fractures racing along through the grass like cracks in glass, allowing blue flames to flare up between them, reaching for the sky.
I stumble backward with the force of the impact and glance backward over my shoulder, seeing Phina and Val still leaning over Maeve. Valerie holds a protective bubble up over them while Phina concentrates, her hands lit with healing magic as she holds them over our friend.
Turning back to face Tara, who hovers in the air, engulfed in flames, I feel the same thing I felt on that night, all those years ago.
I want to run away from this. I want to hide. I want to never face my own strength. Right now, the only thing I want is my bedroom, the safety of my isolation, the knowledge that I never even tried to be something, or do something, better.
But I’m not that girl anymore.
I pull my hand from my stomach, swearing to the baby inside me that I’ll be the mother they deserve.
I’ll be a mother who walks through fire for her child. I’ll protect them from anything, even themselves, when it comes to it.
And when I stand up tall, facing Tara and starting to rise into the air to face her, I see the surprise flicker over her face, the shock.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, knowing she can hear me, even through the roaring of the flames. “But I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else, Tara.”
For a second, she looks defeated, crestfallen.
Heartbroken.
Then, she screams, raising her hands and aiming them at me, and I feel the great crack of her magic striking through the air before I ever see it coming toward me.