Brexley #5
My feet stopped, my heart speeding up. Fear clutched my lungs. It wasn’t a fear that demanded you run. No, this was a fear of knowing time was up. Something you knew was coming was here, and you weren’t ready for it.
My muscles locked down, the familiar sensation of death coating my skin. I could feel them before I even turned around, knowing what was coming for me.
“Daugh-ter.”
Taking a breath, condensation billowing out of my mouth from their proximity, I spun around.
Eabha, Morgan, Liam, Sam, Roan, Breena, and Rory. My mother’s clan. Hooded and almost indistinguishable from the shadows, the necromancers stood with weapons in hand, waiting for me.
Swallowing, my throat stuck, my mind whirling with excuses and promises. Claims I knew I couldn’t keep . . .
“Bre-x-ley.” My mother’s voice came into my head again, broken and stiff, but telling me far more than her single word said.
My shoulders dropped, a sob hiccupping in my chest. Somehow, I knew this was coming, from the night of the war, or even possibly before.
Their eyes always watching, their presence never far.
They gave me time to say goodbye. That time was up.
Like I had, they sensed its growing power.
It was something that could no longer be ignored or brushed away.
My hand moved over the pouch I carried on my hip. Unless I was naked, it was with me. A sob choked my throat, my lids squeezing shut. It took me a full minute before I forced my hand to touch the nectar but still couldn’t get myself to pull it out.
My mouth was ready to tell her no, that I would promise to protect and keep it safe, declaring we might need it down the road, but the words got stuck in my throat, the lie clotting my airway.
My mother stepped forward, the moon glowing off the metal of her scythe, her bony fingers wrapped around it. She stopped several feet from me, her power and dominance echoing in my bones. She lifted her free hand, her palm up, asking for my sacrifice.
“Mom . . .” I choked.
“Dau-gh-ter.” Eabha stepped closer. “You can-not pro-te-ct it.” She struggled to get her sentence out, even through our link. “It is part of you . . . you are not a part of it. It cannot stay.”
I knew that. It was never meant to be mine or anyone’s. Power that great was the worst sin of all. It deteriorated the strongest wills. Even if good was intended, darkness would corrupt it, bleeding out any moral virtue. The history of the world showed us this.
The nectar was no different.
Feeling like I was ripping myself in half, I pulled the wrapped object out of my pouch, my chest heaving as I held it out to my mother.
Only darkness and a hint of bone under her hood looked back.
Even if there was a drop of a mother’s love in her, I had no doubt she would fight me for it.
It was their mission. Their creed. And they could disappear and hide it from everyone and everything, including fae books.
Without even speaking into my head, I felt her communicate with me, a link only shared between necromancers.
You cannot come look for it again.
“I know,” I said out loud to her. A tear rolled down my cheek, knowing it wasn’t just the nectar I was letting go. I would never see my mother again after this night.
A noise strangled my throat before I dropped it in her hands. Her skeleton-like fingers curled over it, tucking it back in her robe.
Eabha dipped her head in gratitude before she slipped back into the darkness. My eyes met with my aunt Morgan’s, then they all disappeared.
A sob curled in my throat as I stared into the darkness.
“Da-ugh-ter. I-I lo-ve you.” They felt like words in the wind, a touch of something I could not see, but sensed all over. A final goodbye.
Bending over, I let my tears fall free, my sobs heaving in my chest. I had been orphaned all over again.
“Kovacs.” Warwick was suddenly behind me, his arms wrapping around me, pulling me, letting me cry my heart out. As a child, I never mourned my mother because I never knew life with her. She was a fantasy, a story my father told. Finding her gave me hope, a mom, a connection.
Now along with my father, Andris, Kek, Lukas, and so many others, I would mourn the loss of my mother too.
“The nectar is gone,” I muttered against his chest. It was a hole in me I’d have to become accustomed to. “My mom . . .” is gone forever too.
“I know.” Warwick pulled me in tighter.
“I’m . . .” Empty, hollow, weak, wrong.
“You know what you are?” He grabbed my face, tipping it back, his aqua eyes fierce.
“You are the legend, sotét démonom. You are the one who brought me back to life, who saved Scorpion, who survived Halálház and Věrh?za. The girl who saved this country. Not me and not the nectar. Just you. And you are fucking mine, Kovacs.”
His mouth came down on mine.
“You are The Grey.” He nipped at my bottom lip, pulling back to look into my eyes. “And I’m just the wolf lucky enough to run by your side.”
“Or hump my leg.”
He chuckled, drawing me back to him, his hungry eyes moving over me.
“That too.”
The nectar might be gone, but I was still me.
The bridge between life and death.
The villain and the hero.
The dark and the light.
I was The Grey.