Chapter 14 #2
I don’t knock, opening one of the large doors just far enough to slip inside before pulling it shut behind me. Lamplight bathes the ground floor, providing enough light to see by, so I deposit my own lamp on the circular desk in the center of the room.
“Greta,” I call, my voice traveling up the curved book lined walls, bouncing off the darkness-cloaked ceiling high above. “Greta!”
The sound of a bolt sliding out of place comes from below.
On the floor beneath the open center of the desk, the intricate circular pattern carved into the stone on the floor slides away, revealing a haggard-looking Greta.
Despite her frizzy hair and unbalanced spectacles, she still spares me a smile.
“Acker,” she says, stepping out from the alcove in the floor. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Of course she has.
I glimpse the smaller, secret library hidden under the floor for a split second before she shuts the hatch of the door again. Every time I believe I’ve reached the bottom of the well holding reminders of Jovie’s time here, I’m mistaken, and I’m forced to breathe slowly past the pinch in my chest.
“Then you know why I’m here,” I say.
She dusts her palms on her pants. “Your father quit asking for my view of the future almost a decade ago.” She drops into the desk’s chair, pushing her hair out of her face as she leans on the desk with her forearms. “He never liked my answers.”
My father has never hidden how little regard he holds for Greta’s sight. We create our futures, not experience them, he’d say, dismissing his Match’s gift.
“I’m not asking.”
My tone gives her pause. “Your father will know,” she says, warning clear in her voice.
“I know.”
Admittedly, I’m ashamed it’s taken me so long to gather the courage to come to her, and I think it’s because I’ve spent the majority of my life desperately clinging to the idea that my father was right.
That we are able to forge our own paths.
But I’ve never felt more like an onlooker in my own life since Jovie’s betrayal.
“What makes you think you can handle the reality of what is yet to come?”
“I don’t,” I tell her, honestly.
She must see the thin string I’m hanging by because she sits a little taller. Removing her spectacles from her nose, she places them atop the desk before standing. “Could you help me with my collar?”
Lifting the portion of the desk that allows for entrance to the center, I move to stand within the circle with her as she turns in place, giving me her back.
The mangi stones Greta wears around her neck are the only reason my father didn’t lump her in with Beau and Jovie in their betrayal.
Like her daughter, Greta can get overwhelmed with her gift and has always worn the collar for her own sanity.
But though her collar was never meant to be a shackle, it has become exactly that in my father’s insistence she never tell anyone her visions.
Greta grabs the collar in both hands as I use my magic to turn the metal locking mechanism, releasing her, and as if a weight has been lifted, she stretches out her spine.
It’s a feeling I know all too well.
Her back is still to me when she goes still, utterly motionless in place.
As children, Beau would recall tales of waking to the ghostly sight of her mother at the foot of her bed, eyes unseeing yet aware as she recited her visions aloud.
While Hallis, Wells, and I had all assumed she was exaggerating, it scared us enough that we never dared cross Greta.
We were all very diligent in returning our library books on time.
But as I slowly take a step around to look at her, I can honestly say Beau never embellished the truth. Not even slightly. If anything, she didn’t emphasize the horrifying reality enough. Eyes glazed with a sheen of white, Greta’s expression is haunting, face slack and devoid of any emotion.
And nothing could prepare me for the unwavering, monotone voice when she speaks. “Bodies lay in waste. More will switch their allegiance,” she says flatly, as if reciting lines. “One will prevail.”
Chills break out across my skin, and I take a step back as if the premonition will happen at any moment.
She blinks and the life returns to her face and body, her features becoming animated once again, but she still utters one final, terrible statement: “The king of Kenta will prevail.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Do you know when any of this happens?”
She gives a small nod. “Likely this winter, judging by the snow on the ground.”
I’m at a loss for words.
There’s a shakiness in Greta’s hands as she reaches for her spectacles.
I move closer to her. “Are you okay?”
She waves away my concern. “A little out of practice is all.” Her eyes linger on the string of stones around my own throat. “If you’re not careful, you’ll be just as out of shape as I am one day.”
“Not if I can find a way to break the blood oath.”
She smirks, but there’s no real humor in the gesture. “I’ve searched every text, boy. No such thing exists. Nothing aside from killing yourself along with your Match.”
Her obvious certainty works to grate on my nerves. “You’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill my father, so why haven’t you?”
“Like yourself, I didn’t stop loving him until it was too late.”
I got what I came here for, so I don’t know why the next question leaves my mouth. “Is that why you didn’t leave with Beau?” When she and Jovie betrayed me …
Her smile falls away altogether, leaving an unshakable look of despair in its wake.
“If there was even a chance I could evade your father, that I could outrun him and go somewhere he’d never be able to find me, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
” She sighs, as if the truth exhausts her.
“But we all have a part to play, and mine is as inevitable as your Match’s. ”
She speaks as though Jovie’s fate is set in stone and I don’t like it.
I always thought my father kept Greta locked away in the library out of sheer possessiveness. He found her after already marrying my mother, and he couldn’t bear to part with either of them. I’ve since learned that no one can deny the Bond, king or not.
Greta is correct, though. It wouldn’t matter where she went. As long as my father is alive, she’ll never be able to escape him, as they’ll forever be drawn together by their Bond.
Maybe I can relate to my father more than I’d care to admit.