Chapter 37
The snow beneath her should have soaked her shins in a freezing grip. She should have been shivering, shaking. Her bones should have seized up, prevented her from breathing.
But she was warm. So warm.
Reeve’s hold on her face remained, keeping her from collapsing completely, but he did not force her gaze up at him. His thumbs moved in slow, caressing motions across her cheeks.
But she hardly felt it. His presence before her was distant and fuzzy.
Comprehending the overload of information she had just received was impossible, even for a Witch as clever and instinctual as Maeve.
As Reeve’s memories settled over her, as her mind verified them as real and as matching the ones she was now remembering, she concluded that she was, indeed, mad.
Only a madwoman would have done this to herself more than once.
“How many times?” she asked, in a hushed voice meant only for Reeve, as if he had the answer. As if the answer could ever be in her grasp.
She searched her mind for any trace of her previous knowledge of her Shadow Magic. For any understanding of why her. There was nothing besides the argument she’d witnessed between her father and Reeve.
It was you who came to be terrified of her mother.
It was too heavy. All too much.
“Let go, please,” she muttered.
A queasy sensation settled in her stomach, further blurring all thought.
Reeve obeyed her request and dropped his hands from her face.
She looked to her side until her eyes found Antony.
She reached for him, and the black wolf stepped towards her, towering over her kneeled form.
Maeve wrapped her arms around his thick neck once more, burying her head in his smooth fur.
Reeve stood from the snowy ground and turned to one of the wolves, one of many that had transformed into humans again. It was a painful sight.
“You can’t change freely, can you?” she mumbled into Antony’s neck.
The sound was small, but it confirmed her words were true.
She wanted to judge him for giving up, for abandoning her and their family. But as her own repressed memories surfaced and showed her the agony Antony endured for so long, the half-life he lived, she couldn’t find it within her to be so selfish.
His decision to choose the life that was best for him wasn’t about her. And so she just held him tighter as his head tucked into hers in a comforting manner.
She allowed Antony entry into her mind. His voice was so much like their father’s as he said, I’ve missed you so much.
She didn’t pay much attention to the conversations that happened next.
Even if she had wanted to soak in the plan that developed between Reeve and Antony’s pack, she couldn’t have.
Her mind drifted through thoughts almost sleepily, and she was certain at one point she had drifted off against Antony’s warm body.
Ambrose’s voice drifted into her senses, as though he stood before her.
“Please, calm down, Maeve,” he said lovingly from behind his desk.
“You told him to stay away from me, didn’t you?” Her accusation came with an edge.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because there’s only one loyalty I can think of that would keep the most powerful being alive away from me. And that’s to you.”
“There’s so much you don’t understand, my darling. We are in the middle of a war, and Reeve is—”
“Are we? Are we the ones dying? I believe the humans are in the middle of a war, and the Double O has done nothing. You have done nothing.”
“My Militia shields human cities and homes every day, Maeve. Just because we move in the shadows doesn’t mean we aren’t moving.
Give it twenty more years, and you, too, will understand humans will wage war with or without Magicals’ assistance.
They are addicted to the notion, the instability, and the power it brings. ”
“What do Reeve or I have to do with any of that?”
“He is an Immortal ruler of a different realm. He is hundreds of years your senior, and you have obligations to another.”
“I do not want to marry some boy I hardly know.”
“And you want to marry Reeve? You don’t know a damn thing about him.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to marry him. I only want the freedom to choose if I do or don’t. The freedom to know him.”
“Reeve is out of the question, regardless of who the Committee wants for you. He is not on the list. That’s final. He will not be returning here.”
“Then it was you!” she shouted. “You told him to keep away.”
“And he listened,” argued Ambrose. “Perhaps you overestimate his affection.”
She turned on her heel and stormed towards the door of his study. “That isn’t fair, and you know it.”
With a flick of her wrist, his office door slammed shut behind her—
Maeve’s eyes popped open. She groaned immediately as she registered the aching pound in her head.
She ran her hands across her face, forcing her body upright as silken covers pooled at her waist. Her chamber in the Celestian Palace was quiet, calm, and dark.
What felt like late-night or early morning sky filtered through her tall windows.
“Hey,” said a musical and delicate voice at her side.
Maeve turned. Next to her in the sheets was the greatest sight she’d seen in months. Zimsy sat up, no sleep prevalent on her face, as though she’d been awake for some time.
Maeve took in the sight of her, eyes scanning her with caution. Was she another memory? Another lie? She looked down at Zimsy’s arms and fingers. No blood. No protruding bones. No broken skin. She glowed like she was meant to, perfectly pieced back together.
“Are you real?” asked Maeve, the pounding in her head persisting.
Zimsy nodded and opened her arms. It didn’t take much effort for Maeve to fall into them. Their embrace was grounding, solid.
“You found me,” said Zimsy, her voice strained as she tried to be strong.
Maeve gripped the back of her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Zimsy held her tightly as they tried to stifle their tears. “Are you alright?”
Maeve shook her head. “No. I’ve ruined everything.”
“No, you didn’t, Maeve,” said Zimsy, tears slipping down her cheeks and pooling along her jaw.
“You knew,” said Maeve, guilt wrecking her voice. “You were the Sentinel for me when I last altered everything.”
Zimsy hugged her tighter. “I was. And I didn’t keep you from him like I should have. I hoped things could be changed.”
It wasn’t her fault.
They stayed that way until they’d sufficiently cried out their tears, and when Maeve pulled away and they wiped their cheeks with their palms, Zimsy said, “Let’s go make some tea.”
It was days before Maeve was ready to talk to Reeve. Even then, ready was a bold word for what she was, how she felt. She hated that she’d give anything to down a bottle, a whole cauldron full, of Astrea’s potions and forget everything. All of it. She’d drown in the swirling liquid if she could.
But as her father had raised her under his own strength, she did not perish beneath the weight of her mistakes and the unfair hands she had been dealt. She persisted.
She tucked her legs beneath her by the blazing fire in Reeve’s quarters, finding some comfort in the way the chair was soft beneath her, even though the conversation she was about to have would be anything but easy.
Snow clung to the windows as the first drops of Shadow’s freezing reign reached Aterna.
Reeve had already added barriers to the Celestian Palace to keep it warm.
The open-air halls and rooms that once kissed her skin with sunlight fell dark.
The soft sounds of the Black Deep no longer echoed through the palace as the lake stilled.
Maeve pulled the sleeves of her pajama robe down over her hands as Reeve threw on a shirt, concealing most of the Vexkari tattoos across his chest that called to her, asking for her touch.
The hour was late when she had knocked on his door.
He ran his fingers through his hair, exposing his undercut, a gesture that always had Maeve forgetting he was three hundred years old.
When he was seated on the other side of the fireplace, she realized his eyes were heavy with exhaustion. The thread of Magic between them hung with new weight.
The tension between them was thick, nauseatingly dense.
She shifted her knees in front of her in an attempt to shield how anxious she was. “I am going to ask you questions and you are going to answer them all without argument.”
Reeve nodded.
“My mother was of Shadow Magic?” she asked finally, beginning her interrogation.
Reeve nodded. “She is why you are part Shadow.”
“Why did you know? And why couldn’t you tell me? Why have you known everything all along while I have been in the dark?”
“Because your parents wanted you to live a different life than your mother did. Free of the mental slavery that Shadow Magic can create. Free of the persecution you would have faced beneath the Orator’s Office.”
“That doesn’t explain why you know.”
“Your father was my best friend then. When your mother began struggling beneath the Magic she didn’t understand, he asked for my help.”
“And were you able to help her?”
Reeve looked at the fire. “No.”
Maeve asked her next question carefully, acid turning deep in her core. “How did she die?”
“She shattered her own mind.”
Maeve exhaled loudly, dipping her head back and closing her eyes. She remained there as more questions spilled from her.
“How old was I?”
“You were barely a week old.”
“Where did they meet?”
“At Vaukore.”
Maeve looked up at him, their eyes meeting like magnets snapping into place.
“And he loved her?”
Reeve smiled, softly. “Very much.”
“What was her name?”
“Maeven.”
Maeve couldn’t smile, despite the sentiment of her given name.
Her own memories ran wild, forcing things to the forefront of her mind that felt like a past life reincarnated. Every quiet and quick moment she and Reeve shared. The way he kissed her with bruising force, like he wanted to consume her whole.
His tattooed hands, much larger than hers, as she hooked her fingers around his pinky alone. His grin, and those perfectly pointed canines the tip of his tongue loved to press against.
“It’s all coming back to me,” she blurted out, her voice small.
Reeve’s reply came with brutal honesty as their eyes remained locked together. “I never forgot.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked breathily.
“Tell you? Tell you what?” he asked gently. “That in your heartbreak, you’d erased me completely? Or tell you I was the one who broke it? When I returned to Sinclair Estates, it had been two years, and you were already in love with another and remembered nothing of what you and I once were.”
“We are not fated mates. The bond we share is the part of your Aterna Magic you placed in me in order to save my life.”
“That is correct,” he said.
She laughed softly, her shoulders dropping. “I told you that was all a ridiculous notion.”
Reeve watched her closely, smiling as she began to relax. “Fated or not, I do not know,” he continued. “I suppose it depends on how you view fate. The connection we share was a choice on my part to give you life. Just as those lines that run your body are traces of Malachite’s Magic.”
“Why is there no physical marking of your Magic on me?”
“It is only Dark Magic like Dread Magic that leaves traces, demands an exchange. Aterna Magic is pure. Given freely. It’s small, but it’s there. I can feel it. You can feel it. And it connects us in a way that differs from most spells.”
“Small?” said Maeve with a shocked scoff. “It feels like it's bearing down on me.”
“Small to me, then,” he corrected, showing teeth now.
“Must be so hard holding that much power,” she muttered. “Is that how Zimsy is alive? Do I owe you her life now, too?”
“No,” said Reeve. “That little bit of Magic you gave her kept her alive.”
If anything was fate, it was that. Fate that she had accidentally shifted some of her own Magic into Zimsy while breaking her Enslavement Curse.
Reeve’s smile faded slightly as he contemplated their exchange.
“I have never lied to you to wound you, Maeve. The Magic that held my tongue from presenting the truth led you to create the beliefs you had. I could not correct them. When you placed a hold on my tongue, just as your mother had before you, you no longer trusted me. The both of you ensured I could never share your secrets, and what you were, with you, or anyone else.”
“But you speak freely now,” she pressed.
“Because you realized the truth. It is no longer a secret between us nor anyone else you may tell.”
“How were you able to use Shadow Magic if you are not of Shadow? How were you able to do what you did and erase you and your people from all our minds?”
“Because you manifested Shadow Magic into a spell. Your understanding of it, your comprehension, enabled it to be tangible Magic. It is not mere flattery when I tell you your ability to assimilate Magic, to dissect it and grasp it at its very core, is unprecedented.”
“Not even Shadow could do such a thing?” she dared.
“Shadow is a leech. She can move into minds, and has a skill for taking them over, infiltrating and filling them with her desires, but she never altered reality like you. And I think that if she could, she would have by now.”
Maeve shifted in her seat, rearranging her legs beneath her. “How will Mal react now that you have not obeyed? Now that Mordred hasn’t killed my brother, as promised?”
“Easy,” said Reeve. “You’re going to make them both think I slaughtered them all, and that I delivered the white Alpha to Castle Morana myself.”
Maeve’s stomach turned, but she nodded, grateful to be of use at last.
“Mal may break through the spell, as he did before,” she said.
“That’s fine,” said Reeve. “We just need to stall.”
Maeve looked at the fire and wondered if the ornate fireplace had ever been used. Maybe during the first Shadow War? Did Shadow’s cold domain make it to Aterna then as well?
“They are willing to fight with you, then?” she asked.
When Reeve didn’t answer right away, she pulled her attention from the fire and back to him.
“They are,” he answered. “But I didn’t take you to Heims to stoke a rebellion. I wanted you to find Antony. I wanted you to realize the truth. I wanted to be unburdened of the secrets that forced you not to trust me.”
Honesty at last.
But she found no joy in his own relief.
Maeve didn’t return the sentiment he displayed. She couldn’t bring herself to smile or feel the weightlessness Reeve surely felt at the truth. She felt shackled by the truth.