Chapter 4 #3
The attic has always been off-limits. When Nick tried to sneak in as a teenager, Mabel gave him a scolding worthy of Ragnarok. It’s about time I figured out exactly what she’s keeping up there, and why she doesn’t want us to know.
“How am I supposed to help? I can’t touch anything, not these days,” E says, a muted edge of apprehension—or perhaps regret—shining through.
“Aren’t you tired of being kept in the dark? About who you are, about what led you here?” I ask.
I only meant to leverage his help, but the words come out heavier than I intended.
“Yes,” he shoots back, no hesitation.
“Me, too.”
“What is Mabel hiding from you?” he asks.
I open my mouth, ready to serve him the rehearsed story of how Mabel adopted me, but stop. For the first time in a long, long while, I don’t have to lie.
“Only everything.” I huff a humorless laugh.
“When my brother and I first moved in, it made sense for Mabs to shield us from the truth. Follow the rules, she said. Don’t do anything that could help the Reds find us.
We grew up in fear, always looking over our shoulders, in case some slag with a katana stalked out of a mirror to kill us. But as adults, the answers never came.”
No wonder I want to marry a mortal and live a normal life.
“Mabel took you in when you were young?”
“Yes. Mabel found us in a pantry, severely dehydrated, two days after our mother was murdered.” Her head was cut clean off her neck, I almost add, but that detail always freaks people out. “We were twelve.”
There’s a pause, solemn and muted. “I’m sorry.”
I shrug, more habit than indifference. “Don’t worry, it was a long time ago.”
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds,” he shoots back, and my heart gives a forlorn squeeze.
He’s right about that.
I rise to my feet and check on the poultice, the paste cool enough now to use. I scoop a couple of spoonfuls onto a butter knife and grab fresh bandages from the first-aid kit.
“Witnessing something like that changes you forever. Nick, my brother, is still trying to avenge her,” I blurt out as I peel away the dirty wrap on my calf. “There’s no forgive and forget when your mother gets killed in front of you.”
“I get it. I think I’m the sort of person who held a grudge, back when I was alive. ”
I arch a brow. “You can tell?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t tell you why. Where is he now, your brother?”
“Oh, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away, on some dangerous mission, per usual. Nick couldn’t wait to get out of Scotland. Mabel’s refusal to tell us who killed our mother—and why—drove a rift between them.”
“But not you?”
I tie the clean bandage in place with a strip of tape and press the thick poultice into the wound. “No. It’s not as though we could ever go back to Faerie, so I didn’t see any upside in a quarrel.”
“I think I lived there, once upon a time,” E says in a dreamlike drawl.
“Faerie?”
“Yes. The word always sparks this…nostalgia in my chest. You know what I mean?”
“Absolutely.”
Parts of me long for Faerie, too, even though I hardly remember any of it aside from a string of small cottages and dusty pantries.
It’s strange. I’m spilling my life to a ghost, but it’s so easy. There are no lifted brows, no tilted head in pity. The lies I’ve spent a lifetime hiding behind, the carefully-crafted stories, are useless here. It’s freeing, really, to pour my heart out without fear of disbelief or judgment.
An echo from my dream rises to the forefront of my mind. Damn you, Lillivere. We were sisters, you and I. From the sound of it, Lillivere was the one who betrayed her.
My memories of that night have never been this clear, yet I still can’t remember who struck the final blow.
The katana that killed my mother might have belonged to Lillivere—or to any of the other four.
Still, it’s more than I knew yesterday, as if those specific memories had been wiped clean until last night.
From the sound of it, my mother befriended a Red spy and brought her demise upon herself. A lead wire encircles my chest at the possibility. The habit the Reds have of hunting us by forming attachments and digging into the heart of who we are brings bile to my mouth. It’s fiendish and vile.
My fingers curl until my nails bite into the skin of my palm, anchoring me against the current of regret that threatens to flood me.
Heat prickles beneath my collar in a flush of shame and anger I can’t separate.
My pulse thuds heavy and uneven, as if my body remembers the bruise—the wretched cost of an intimate betrayal—even when I pretend I don’t.
I twist my engagement ring around my finger with my thumb. “If Mabel can’t make it home, and I can’t leave, then we’ll get answers ourselves. Are you in?”
“One thousand percent.”
Excitement chases away the dread that had festered in my blood.
The time has come to tear down walls. Finally.
When Mabel comes home, I can give her hell about all the secrets she’s kept from me.
Then she’ll scold me for snooping through her things, for never minding my own business.
I’ll welcome that anger, because it will mean she’s come home.
And she will come home in one piece. Because she has to.