Chapter Seventeen #2
The pervading silence that followed changed Mother into a ghostly apparition.
Spectrals held more color than her. She regarded Mila like a new oddity: unblinking, unmoving.
Emotions roiled beneath the surface, but Mother would never release them.
Not Mother, the Mother Queen, the picture of power and control.
Mother’s chin lifted. She whispered, “I see that we have asked too much of you, Mila. You could never be what we expected.”
The wound lashed deep.
Mother turned away, her voice stark, as the doors blasted open. Her single command echoed.
“Go.”
Mila paced.
And paced.
And paced.
Her unchanged chamber awaited her. The same heavy curtains, myriad windows, muted mountain scene.
Gray pervaded everything, like the castle had been built from smoky blocks.
She ignored her familiar blanket, so soft to touch.
The pillows were downy enough to sink into.
The paintings, the smell. This wasn’t her home anymore.
It never would be again.
A knock came on her door; she ignored it.
Her mind flew through wild plans. Could she escape out the window again?
Worth a try. Her first attempt sent her wheeling through the room.
She slammed into a bookshelf. Tomes toppled from the highest shelf, but stopped before smacking her head.
Stulla must have set arcane protection on them.
Her shoulder throbbed when she tried the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth times. When she smacked into the wall on her tenth attempt, she accepted that Stinna had been in charge of escape-proofing her room. Mila snuck out once through simple means, but she’d never be able to do it again.
Could Stulla smuggle her out?
Definitely wouldn’t. Stulla loved her more thoroughly than any of her aunts, and certainly more than Mother, but that didn’t put her on Mila’s side.
Not Ysinia, either.
Nurali? Also not her. She’d been too wrapped up in polishing rocks and setting them into a new castle structure, anyway. She was forever building more extensions, hallways, labyrinths.
A body shuffled into the room, followed by a soft, “Mila?” Mila ignored Stulla a second time. She didn’t want to speak to anyone. She needed a plan before she could calm down. A plan would keep her from understanding that they had separated her from Pedr, and she had no chance of reuniting.
She hadn’t accepted that yet.
Stulla lowered onto a chair and waited, hands poised on her lap. Ever the calm, in-control wonder. The one to whom Mila could vent. The one who listened without judgment, even if she did not stray from Mother’s dictates.
After several more minutes, Stulla inquired, “Mila?”
Mila paused. The gentle inquiry in Stulla’s tone was nearly her undoing. She resumed pacing.
“I love him, Stulla,” she insisted. “Before you say another word, I want you to understand this irrefutable fact: I love him.”
“I know.”
Mila whipped around. “You know?”
“I can smell it on you. Can smell him on you.”
“Aren’t you going to yell at me?”
Amused, she asked, “Would it make any difference?”
“No.”
Stulla lifted a hand, as if to concede. “Love is love, Mila. I have no designs that I can control it, nor could I ever hope to. That’s one battle that I won’t take on, because there’s no hope of changing it.”
Despite her best efforts to resist, Mila fell into the charm of her most beloved aunt.
Stulla offered safety in this horrid storm.
Mila lowered into the chair across from Stulla’s tender, loving gaze, vaguely aware that fog crawled across the windows.
It blocked her view of beyond, oddly tenacious and thick.
All sirens had ruthlessness down to an art, even Stulla, though hers was muted. A latent ferocity simmered in each siren, even while in human form. It belied their human origins. Thessa once revealed that Stulla had been a teacher before she became a Siren Queen. That made sense.
“Have you felt love before?” Mila asked, voice raspy.
Eyes lowered, Stulla said, “Long, long ago.”
“Do you remember?’
With a half smile, she said, “One doesn’t forget their first love, Mila,” as if Mila had merely chosen the wrong menu for dinner.
“First?” Mila scoffed. “Only.”
Sorrow altered Stulla’s expression irrefutably.
She didn’t reach for Mila, the way Mother would have.
Mother relied on Mila to affirm and comfort her while she hid behind a facade as terrifying and rigid as any other siren.
Truly, Vassi was the Mother Queen, more powerful than the rest, and damned because of it.
“He is your only love?” Stulla asked. “Maybe.” With longing, she added, “There is one first love, Mila. Only one. And they are indelibly etched on the tenderest parts of our hearts. Not even time, nor thousands of years, can change that.”
Tears filled Mila’s eyes.
“Who did you love, Stulla?”
“An impossibility named Tumult.”
The firm conclusion in her tone promised no more.
The courage Mila rallied in Mother’s presence fled. Her internal walls crumbled like a landslide.
“Stulla . . .” she breathed, “Have I lost him forever?”
Stulla’s throat worked as she swallowed, leaned forward, and whispered, “If it is true love, Mila, then he will fight any beast, for any length of time, to find you again. As a Queen, I cannot tell you to hope for this. Even as an Arcanist, he will age, wither, and die. He’ll forget you and move on, and you’ll remain, immortally locked in your pain, like the rest of us.
No human can stand it, which is why the sirens bear it. ”
With a pained smile, she set her gentle hand under Mila’s jaw and whispered, “What do you think brought us to this Siren Queen life, Mila? Why do you think so many sirens loathe our male counterparts?”
“Love?”
“Yes.”
“But not you.”
Memories flooded Stulla’s eyes, filled with the tenderest pain Mila had ever seen. Barren, she whispered, “No. I can never hate that which I once adored so much. He . . .” Her voice trailed away.
Stulla stood, her dress rustling and whispering as she approached the door. At the handle, she paused, but didn’t look over her shoulder.
“But you know that Pedr’s not a human, Stulla,” Mila whispered. “He has so many years to find a way to fight for me.”
Stulla seemed to consider that.
“With Vassi as the Mother Queen, it wouldn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t.
Hold the feeling while you have it, Mila.
It will fade, and the absence is far worse than the yearning.
Prepare for difficulties. If I know Vassi at all—and I know her better than any of the others—she’s going to hold onto you harder than ever before.
Pedr is on his way here. Stinna has already reported it. ”
Mila’s heart leaped.
“Pedr?”
With a sigh, Stulla shook her head. “Things are going to get harder before they turn around.”
Stulla departed.