Chapter 18
The best way to mend a broken heart is to never let it near hurt again.
My mind still reeled from the seer’s gift when Hesper and I settled into our room for the evening.
Unlike Wormwood, this room was big enough for two people. A large feather bed was centered against the wall to our right, and in front sat a stone hearth. No fire blazed in it, though. The balmy summer breeze did not need any additional warmth. The only coldness in Lore came from me.
I intended this afternoon to be for cheering Hesper up; lightening the weight that retelling her story must have put on her.
And yet here I was, thinking of my own untold tale.
Old wounds didn’t heal with time; the scars just became harder to see until the moment they were ripped right open again, fresh blood pouring out from a place you thought was cinched up forever.
No number of pastries could soften the shock of meeting a seer.
I began to fuss around the room, trying anything and everything to rid myself of the thoughts piling up.
I methodically emptied out my travel pack then repacked the items. Then, I took to the room itself.
A few bits of the paper-lined walls were peeling away, so I pressed them back to where they belonged.
An exercise of futility has rarely, if ever, helped an oncoming sense of dread, but I tried, nonetheless.
There were a few plant pots on the hearth, each filled with a blood-ruby ivy.
None of them were in bloom—but their vibrant red leaves poured over the pot.
The blooms were so rare, even Patti herself couldn’t grow anything other than the foliage.
My heart pinched at the thought of home, and for a moment, I thought I saw a single leaf curl in.
But it could have been a trick of the firelight.
I only managed to make things die when I had magic.
If I had ever managed to obtain more than just a few wildflowers here and there when growing up, I was sure I would have killed the entire crop.
But seeds were impossible to come by in that sequestered village.
All we had were stubborn roots and plants that had gone to seed so many times over the centuries, a child’s magic would have no effect on them.
Magic grew stronger with time.
Apparently.
Healing from sadness did, too.
Also apparently.
Hesper perched on the window ledge, one leg hanging carelessly to the floor. She never ceased watching me the whole time, and it set my nerves on fire.
“Do you mind?” I asked, frazzled.
“Am I ruining your evening with my sitting down?” She quirked a brow.
“No, you’re just always watching. Look out the window or something. The sunset is bound to be much more interesting than me.” I set back to pacing and fussing.
“I highly doubt that,” she replied. I ignored her. “What happened down there?”
“We went to the market and retrieved items.” I folded and refolded my new cloak, my hands shaking.
“What happened with the seer, Clara?” She wouldn’t take the bait of my conversational diversions.
“That’s none of your business, actually,” I snapped.
“It is.” She got up from the window ledge and made her way to the opposite side of the bed. “You are undone. I wish to know why.”
A war raged on inside of me. A large part screamed to never tell anyone that story.
Rosie barely knew any of it; why should Hesper?
She was my protector sent by Eldrene, not my friend.
Whatever moment we’d had in the market was just that—a moment, nothing more.
But another part of me begged to tell someone.
Hesper had just shared a bit of her story, so maybe I could share mine.
I settled somewhere in the middle.
“Before my birth, a seer came to my mother, told her the child she bore would possess great magic.” I began to pick at my cloak. “Obviously, the seer was wrong.”
“Were they?” Hesper asked.
“Seeing as I don’t have magic, yes, I would call that quite incorrect.”
“Clara, I really think you should try—”
“Stop, please don’t,” I said, leaving the bed and heading toward the hearth.
“You have magic,” she insisted.
Rage coursed through me, muddled through the old heartbreak.
“No, I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.”
“You don’t understand.” My voice rose, my heart splintered. “If I had magic, I would be able to use it. If I had magic, I wouldn’t have had to struggle every day in Moss to grow anything at all. If I had magic, maybe my parents would have fucking loved me!”
The words landed like lead in the room. Hesper’s eyes shuttered; I had even shocked myself. My hands flew to my mouth and tears pricked my eyes.
“What?” Hesper asked softly, disbelief and pain lacing her tone.
“It’s the truth.” My voice quavered.
“You are not from Moss, then?” she asked, because even she knew not a soul in Moss would ever treat a child like that.
A question I’d never had to answer. Never wanted to answer.
When I turned up in Moss, the town took me in without question.
They didn’t ask me anything. They saw to it that my needs were met and followed my lead when it came to sharing information about my past. Folk assumed me to be either an orphan or a runaway.
If the latter, they expected my parents to show up any day looking for a scraggly, grumpy girl in need of a bath.
After a year with no one coming for me, an orphan I became in their eyes.
I let them all believe that to this day. It was an easier story to claim.
“No. I’m from Cenawind.” I wiped at my running nose.
Hesper let out a whispered fuck. Cenawind was a remote village, sequestered on an island in the Barren Sea, but most had heard of it. The folk there were distinctly terrible, and they chose to separate themselves from that which they disdained—meaning anyone who was not human.
Dwindle might have been full of monsters, but Cenawind was full of hatred.
“That was where I spent my childhood,” I said, trying to blink away the oncoming tears.
Hesper handed me a handkerchief. “My parents were extremely poor, so when the seer came and told them their child would have this great magic, they thought their struggles were over. They would become a couple to be revered rather than slandered and spit upon. Perhaps I’d have alchemy magic and turn everything into precious riches.
Or maybe I’d be born with a magic no one even knew of.
The possibilities were endless, until they were nowhere to be found—I was just another child, impossibly inadequate in their eyes. ”
“You showed no signs of magic at all?” Hesper prodded gently.
“Not a shred,” I said bitterly. “My earliest memories are of them shouting at me about this seer and this magic destined to be mine. Show it, girl, they’d say, as if I were hiding it from them.
But I could give them nothing, no matter how much I wanted to.
As I grew older, they grew harsher, and I thought I might die of loneliness… ”
Hesper sucked in a breath. I pressed on.
“The worst were the other days, though, when I saw a glimmer of what my parents could have been. Sometimes, Mother would sit me down and put flowers in my hair. Buttercups.” My voice broke.
“She’d take me out to our garden, and we’d work alongside each other.
That’s when I fell in love with gardening; it was the first place I’d ever really known love. ”
The worst part of the story was coming, and I steeled myself. Maybe this was the last time I’d ever have to tell the story. Then it could be laid to rest. And Hesper would finally understand how unmagical my life and myself really were.
“I loved them so much that it felt like an aching hole in my chest. But they resented me. I reminded them of everything they hated about themselves. So that hole in my chest eventually filled with resentment, too. And on my thirteenth birthday, my parents gave me a bag with a loaf of bread and one dress, and told me to leave and never come back. So I did. And you know what the saddest part of all of it was? I tried to hug them before I left.” Tears were running down my cheeks in rivulets.
“Clara.” Hesper’s voice, achingly kind, split my heart right down the middle.
After all this time, I still hated that I went for the hug.
I hated that I still thought about that moment, that I still wanted it.
I hated that somewhere inside of me lived a little girl waiting for her mother to put flowers in her hair again.
And I’d never been able to move past it, to leave that girl behind.
It was why I’d chosen to live life by myself, to keep love at a safe distance.
I’d lived a life where love was all I wanted, and it was never given.
And it almost ruined me. Almost. But I’d walled up my heart just in time, kept it safely locked behind so much stone and overgrown ivy, it would never face that pain again.
“How did you get from the westernmost isles all the way to Moss? You had to travel over the Barren Sea. You were just a child.” Hesper began to pace the room.
“I don’t know,” I said numbly. “There is very little that I remember from my journey from Cenawind to Moss. Bits and pieces come up, but sometimes I think something protected me, guided me even, to Moss. I remember sleeping in the forest and a bird bringing me food; I remember getting sick on a boat and a kind man holding my hair back. I remember feeling thirsty, and flowers opening up to let me drink from them. My memories are foggy, honestly.”
I paused, smiled ruefully. “I do remember wondering if, finally, I had magic—all of these strange things kept happening to me, surely something otherworldly had to be transpiring. I was just a child, though, riddled with sadness, and I’m sure the only magic was that I managed to live at all.
But then, there was Moss. And then there was magic. ”
“I see.” Hesper’s brows furrowed. “And your parents, they never…” Hesper trailed off, her question hanging in the air.
“No, they never came for me. I don’t know what happened to them.” But I thought about them every day. Wherever they were, perhaps they’d found happiness far away from the girl who loved them so.
Silence followed, and I relinquished my place by the hearth and retired to the bed. The story had emptied me entirely. I closed my eyes, hoping for darkness to slow my racing thoughts. A weight settled onto the bed behind me, Hesper’s familiar shape enveloping my back.
“And that’s why Moss is so important to you then. It’s not just your home. It’s your Haven. It’s what saved you,” Hesper said.
I nodded into my pillow, my throat bobbing as I tried to stifle sobs.
“I will get you back home. I promised you that at the beginning of this journey, and I will promise you again. You have my word,” she whispered into my ear, stroking my hair absentmindedly.
I nestled closer to her, relishing the strength and heat. We stayed like that for a while, our breath and the crackling fire the only sounds in the room.
She began pulling away, readying to lie down for the night. I grabbed her hand and turned toward her.
“Sleep here. With me,” I said softly, a raw need pouring out of me before I could stifle it down.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said with conviction. I’d lived my life long enough stuffing down every impulse and desire. Tonight, I didn’t want to ration my wants. Tonight, I wanted to lie next to someone who knew something about me no one else did.
She tried to remove her hands from mine, but this time, I tugged her in close to me.
Then suddenly one of her hands cradled the back of my head.
Her face was inches away from mine. One move and my mouth would be on hers.
The thought sent my body back into the familiar wildfire that always seemed to be burning around her.
She placed a knee between my thighs, steadying herself as she held me. I kept down a moan at the movement.
“Clara.” My name sounded like a prayer on her lips.
My breathing quickened. She leaned in, grazing my lips with hers. My eyes fluttered closed, and my world exploded and narrowed all at once. She leaned in again, and I tilted my head up to meet her mouth more fully. She nipped at my bottom lip, and I sucked in a breath.
That kernel in my chest that had sparked back in Wormwood came alive once more, the humming much louder now, not as distant. I burned for her, and my heart filled up with something I couldn’t quite place. The closest word I had for it was magic. Could it be?
But then she moved away, and my chest went vacant again. I ignored the relief, elation, and throbbing disappointment vying for space in my stomach.
I understood. We couldn’t cross those lines, not with this much at stake.
I blew out the candles, the room falling into darkness save for the gentle glow from the fading embers.
I told myself it was a natural reaction.
Hesper was objectively breathtaking, capable, and strong.
We’d just shared our darkest stories with each other.
Pain bonds faster than laughter in cases like these.
Of course my body would react to her in that way.
It meant nothing more. She was my protector.
She only listened because she had to. She only kissed me because I pulled her close.
Once this was all over, she would leave, and I’d go back to the life I had before.
If that was even possible.