Chapter 22 #2
It rushed through his brain in a ripple of pleasure akin to cocaine, overcoming his will. It gagged his mouth, stopped his questions.
So this was what coercion felt like.
Anna’s power was weak, and it faded fast. He definitely could have trounced it if he’d wanted to, but instead, he remained quiet, watching her eyes widen.
A powerful thrill spread—one he was now certain she could sense. It radiated with a single sensation.
Vindication.
His intuition had not been wrong. The magic in her voice was a mirror of his own. Anna Ainslan had Morgan’s magic.
She scooted her chair back from the table but didn’t rise. A panel of afternoon light from the window sparked the starling iridescence in her ebony hair.
“I—don’t know what just happened,” she said.
He quelled the smile that always haunted him in her presence. “I think you do.”
“It—It doesn’t mean—”
“Yes, it does. You’ve been keeping secrets.”
They remained still, studying each other.
Her vibrant emotions tumbled through a winding roller coaster too fast for him to parse any running themes.
They burned, purer and brighter than anyone else, like a magnesium flame.
She felt everything all at once—joy and sadness, fear and excitement, affection and hostility.
Too much for any one person to feel at one time.
“Look at it this way,” he said, attempting to breathe some nonchalance into the air between them. “Of all the people to discover your secret, I’m probably the best one.”
Her brows drew together.
“I know what it’s like. And I know how to help you.”
A falling star of surprise flared and died inside her. “Help me? Why would you do that?”
He gestured toward the stack of books. “Why have you helped me?”
Anna’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t have a choice, if you recall. You coerced me into following you here.”
“I coerced you to come. I didn’t coerce you to stay.”
Her tense posture finally relaxed, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “You’re right.”
“So why did you stay then?”
“I stayed…because I was curious. Because you were nicer than I expected you to be. And…because you’re lonely.”
He froze.
“I can’t sense most of what you’re feeling. You hide behind this glacier so thick, it’s impossible to penetrate. But your loneliness coats you like frost, and…I don’t like it.”
Well, that was unexpected, and critter-like sensations crawled over his skin as he realized how easily this woman could dismantle all his hard-won control.
David liked his mask. The mask was comfortable.
Easy. Safe. He didn’t want to be understood, didn’t need anyone diving into his subconscious and dredging forth the parts that had broken him.
Inside, he was a very fucked-up man. His past had left scars on his soul, and he’d gone to great lengths to cover them. The icy mask was his hardiest self-defense, and Anna could see right past it.
“Would you really help me?” she asked, striking an ice pick against it.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to remain outwardly calm. “I mean, not here. We’d have to go somewhere private. The coercion came naturally to me, but there are some tricks.”
“The emotion stuff came naturally for me. I never even had to think about it.”
David chuckled. “You say I feel like ice. You feel like standing in the middle of an emotional war zone.”
The pink rushed to her cheeks again.
“Have you ever done the voice thing?” he asked.
She shook her head. After a beat of hesitation, she scooted her chair back to the table and lowered her voice. “Would—would you mind—maybe, keeping this a secret?”
A battering ram collided against the ice inside. It shouldn’t have surprised him that she didn’t want people to know, but the disappointment was hard to suppress. He hadn’t realized until that moment how isolated he really felt. He’d finally found a kindred spirit, and she wanted to keep it secret.
“Of course,” he said, voice even.
A smile flickered, and her entire emotional core glinted with excitement, almost blinding. “Thanks. So, I’ve been dying to ask you. What does it feel like to you?”
“What does…what?”
She motioned around them. “All the emotions. Everywhere. Do they hurt?”
…Hurt?
“No.”
Her shoulders fell. “Do you see the future?”
“You see the future?”
She drooped even more. “Yes. Don’t you?”
“Uh. Well. Sort of. I always kind of thought the visions were hallucinations.”
Brow notched, Anna let out a little laugh. “Why?”
He smirked, finally resettling into himself. “Because I mostly see them when I’m fucked up or being fucked.”
Her laughter morphed into an impatient sigh. “You love that, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Using words as a defense mechanism.”
A grin worked its way to the surface. “This isn’t defense. It’s offense. You may find this hard to believe, but words are the best weapons. They hurt far more than pointy objects, and the scars run deeper.”
She considered him for a long while, her blue eyes slicing deep enough to cut. But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink.
“It’s true what they say about you,” she finally said. “You’re dangerous.”
“So are you. Where did you even come from, a pixie with Morgan’s magic?”
Her stormy emotions thundered. “I don’t know.”
“David?” said a voice beyond his sphere of focus.
He blinked and brought his attention to the newcomer. Autumn stood outside their alcove, wearing a shroud of anxiety and a dim smile. Her cherry hair was pulled into a thick knot on top of her head, messy, like she’d thrown it up in a hurry.
She glanced back and forth between them, a notch deepening in her brow.
“Yes?” he said, already aware by the apprehension coating her emotions that whatever she had to say, he wouldn’t particularly like it.
“Your—ah—your—mother just arrived.”
For five full seconds, David wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly, and for the next ten, he was certain it was a joke. But her expression was dire and her smile was the weakest version he’d yet seen, and David shoved down a rising wave of sick.
His mother had arrived.
The one who’d abandoned him to that hellish existence with a psychotic father. The one whose idea of protecting him was throwing him to the wolves.
Ice crept through his veins, refreezing the parts Anna had warmed.
“She wants to see you,” Autumn said into the thick silence.
“What if I don’t want to see her?”
Her smile fell. “You have to, David. She’s the one who will coronate you.”
A slow breath entered his lungs. This realm didn’t want him coronated. They wanted him muzzled, his power cut off at the knees. What difference would it make if he wore the Sovereign crown on his head? It was all one huge joke.
“David,” came Anna’s soft voice.
He shifted his gaze, catching on that sky blue the way thorns caught on silk.
“You should talk to her,” she said.
David said nothing. What words could encompass the sheer dread that surfaced at the thought of his birth mother?
Anna leaned her elbows onto the table between them, and her hand caught his where it rested over his most recent book. “Maybe she’ll have something to say that will make all of this better.”
Her touch was warm. Sympathetic. Almost absentminded.
But most notably, this touch was voluntary.
This was a girl who had chosen to believe he wasn’t evil, despite all the rumors.
She had no reason to trust him, no motive to continue an acquaintance with him, not even any shared memories like he had with Autumn. But she trusted him anyway.
So maybe he could rely on her judgment.
David stared at her hand on his. “Or maybe she’ll say something that makes it all infinitely worse.”
In his peripheral vision, she shook her head. “You can’t know unless you talk to her. You are many things, but a coward isn’t one of them.”
He tsked. “Little do you know.”
Her answering smile kept him preoccupied all the way to his mother’s doorstep.
Autumn took him to a suite of rooms high in the Tree.
Upon entry, David was disappointed to note the space empty of all but two figures.
The vine-laden foyer opened by archway to a sitting room surrounded by leaded glass peering into the canopy of the forest. The Sunshine Room, as David would later learn to call it, was ironically bathed in lavender twilight, allowing the golden woman standing beside Sean’s father to shine.
Both directed their gazes toward him, their insides bubbling with hope. He turned to lead, and his feet bolted to the floor.
Autumn snatched David’s hand and dragged him to stand far too close to this ethereal woman. They stood in a square, silent. The woman’s gaze locked on his face. Other than the slight hitch to her breathing and the nerves cascading through her insides, she was utterly composed.
David took a moment to absorb her. They shared the same coloring, right down to the pale green of her eyes. Something about her current smile—higher on one side—reminded him of his own reflection. Her gold hair fell to her waist in gentle waves. Luster clung to her skin in flares and flashes.
This was his mother. His real one.
The only silver lining he could find in her existence was that it lessened the sting of his adoptive mother’s flagrant neglect. He wasn’t Alex Berkeley’s son, so of course she’d never found it in her to love him. It made sense, even if the whole schtick felt like one large existential sigh.
He wanted to run. Escape. To be anywhere else. Anywhere at all.
“You’re here,” she said in a voice that reminded him of the soft edge of a daisy petal.
He said nothing. It was an idiotic statement that required no validation on his part. Besides, his throat wanted to close entirely, so he wasn’t sure sound would emerge if he tried.
She took a hesitant step toward him. On instinct, David stepped back.
She paused at that reaction, brows raised. “I—don’t know what to say. I’ve imagined this so many times. And now you’re—you’re here.”
Nonplussed, David continued his silence.
The hope in her emotions faded to angst. “I spoke to Blaire Hart when I arrived. I understand you knew her—”