21. Obsidian
Obsidian
E
The attic bears the evidence of Max and Nick’s search—nothing broken, nothing careless, just the soft disorder left behind when urgency tugs at steady hands.
A few crates sit out of line with their lids propped open.
Candles have been blown out, their cooled wax leaving thin smears across the floorboards.
The map on the floor has shifted, one corner curling toward the ceiling.
Parchments that Mabel organized in a deliberate system that eluded us are now lying in uneven piles.
Unsettled dust bunnies leap through the air and dry my throat. That sort of unpleasantness reminds me that I’m breathing, even though I’m dead. I float down one floor and invade Max’s bedroom.
My heart is heavy with the weight of everything we’ve uncovered and all that we didn’t—mainly that spindle Max promised to the Mist King. Max and Nick move toward the kitchen below, their footsteps softer now, exhaustion thickening their voices.
“Do you remember the night Mother died?” Max asks her brother, her voice rising from the floorboards.
I lie down on the cold bedroom floor and stick my head through the ceiling below in time to see Nick drop onto a chair across from Max at the dining table.
“We both blacked out, didn’t we?” he says.
She tucks her chin down, her face half-hidden in the veil of her thick one-sided braid. “I’ve been dreaming of it. Remembering things I shouldn’t. There were four or five Reds there at the cottage that day. One named Pauline, another Lillivere.” She wets her lips. “And a man.”
Nick’s brows lift. “A man? In the Red Forest?”
“Yes. He ordered the Reds to search the woods for me and said I belonged to him.”
Nick leans over the table, his hands joined together. “You think he might be our father?”
A shiver quakes Max from head to toe. “Maybe.”
Nick knocks his joined hands against the table before slumping back into his chair, one leg bouncing with restless energy. “Now that we found a way into Faerie, we really need to find that spindle.”
A way into Faerie. My heart booms.
For Nick, it means answers. Revenge.
For Max…it’s something deeper. A home she barely remembers, yet longs for. A place that might accept her in ways this world never has.
For me, it makes no difference, as long as I’m with her.
“From the moment you saw that black mirror, I knew you’d want us to use it,” Max mutters. “But we can’t plunge into Faerie headfirst without a plan.”
Nick picks dust off his pants. “I have a plan. If the obsidian passage leads us to where it’s marked on the map—near the borders of the Summerlands—we can meet up with Lysandra and her friends.
I was supposed to join them there, but then the sceawere went haywire, so it wasn’t safe for me to travel. ”
“You were supposed to go to Faerie?” Max asks. “When?” Her voice goes squeaky, the sound spelling out exactly how rejected and freaked out she feels.
Nick’s gaze slips to the floor. “A couple of weeks ago,” he says quickly. “I would have invited you to come along, of course. Only… With the wedding, you weren’t exactly in a let’s-go-to-Faerie place.”
Max grunts at that, her eyes flying to the ceiling, but she doesn’t deny it.
“The witches there can smuggle us to Lorntre Hollow,” he continues. “We’re going home, sis. I feel it in my gut, my very soul. My blood’s been humming since we saw the passage. Don’t pretend you don’t feel it too.”
Max grabs a fistful of her hair. “It’s na?ve to think we could change the fate of our kin.
Change the world. Powerful Fae—Mabel included—have tried to restore the witches to power in the Red Forest, but it’s always in vain.
We have to face the truth, Nick. If we go home, we’re heading straight for slaughter. ”
I wonder if she truly believes that going home would put her in that much danger, because I suspect she’s just as tempted by the idea as her brother. Maybe she feels obligated to argue the opposing view, since Nick is so hell-bent on returning.
“Not with the spindle in our possession. I know I talked about bartering it, but if we could figure out how to use it, we’d be invincible,” Nick says.
Max looks down at her hands, chewing on her bottom lip.
Nick squints at his twin. “You know something.”
“You have to promise we’ll decide what to do together, if we find it.”
“Speak, Maxie.”
“Those crates stacked along the wall ring a bell. Mabel took one to Devi’s last week, but I never knew what was inside.”
Nick springs to his feet and slaps the mahogany table in victory. “That’s it. Mabel gave it to Devi, and then Devi mysteriously leaves for Faerie a few days later? That’s no coincidence. Is there a chance she didn’t take it with her?”
Max gives a sharp nod. “Devi’s smart. If she planned to use the spindle as leverage, she might’ve left it at home.”
Nick beelines for the front door. “I’ll go check.”
“Stop. It can wait until tomorrow,” Max calls after him. “The Mist King might have offered me a reprieve, but he might be spying on us. It’s still safer to move during the day. We’ll both go to Devi’s in the morning. Together.”
Nick’s knuckles whiten around the door handle, the tick in his jaw telegraphing his annoyance—or perhaps signaling an impending rebuttal—but he finally buries his hands in his jeans pockets. “Alright.”
Max sets their teacups in the sink. “Well, I’m off to bed.” She pauses, then tosses her twin brother a dangerous look. “And I’d better not catch you trying to sneak out of here.”
She smooths out her threat with a wink. “Good night.”
Nick chuckles under his breath, shaking his head, as though he was about to do just that. “Night, sis.”
The sound of Max’s footsteps on the stairs makes me weak in the knees.
I need to talk her down from the ledge of this marriage business and reassure her that, whoever I was in life, all of me belongs to her in death. I saw how crushed she was to find Mabel’s two married grandsons on the tree, two princes whose names brought bile to my mouth.
Truth is, I’m not curious anymore. I don’t care about the names on the wall, the crown I might have worn, or the man I was before I became this.
If learning his name means losing Max, then that man can rot.
He can keep his titles, his bloodline, and his carefully chosen wife.
None of it matters. None of it feels real compared to the way I feel about her.
Whatever kingdom I belonged to, whatever throne once waited for me, they’re all obstacles, now.
I don’t want power or a Fae crown. I want a body that can cage Max in, that can make her forget the world beyond my hands.
A mouth that can trace the shape of her name against her skin.
I want to exist where she exists, to breathe the same dusty air, to stand close enough that she feels the certainty of me.
To be a man again, not this restless thing bound to shadows and longing.
And if the price of that is turning my back on my old life, then let it stay buried. I would forsake every version of myself that ever ruled anything just to have Max look at me and know I am here, that I am hers, and that whatever happens next, I’ll be standing by her side.