Chapter 20
TWENTY
Croft
“I’ll be right back. I just want to say goodbye to him.”
“I thought you already did?” Croft caught herself too late. Being a mother was harder than she remembered. “I mean, of course, go say goodbye to Jack. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Abigail blinked at her mother a few times as if she were going to say something, then she thought better of it and left the room.
Croft watched her daughter go. She had handled herself like a true warrior on the battlefield. As a mother, she couldn’t have been prouder. In a strange way, the same also went for Elizabeth. Her youngest was misguided, but she was strong and determined.
Croft turned back to Elizabeth, and the simple motion of twisting in her seat brought a wave of sharp pain in her shoulder.
The wound Elizabeth had dealt her in their battle was agonizing but not life-threatening.
She would heal in a few weeks. Any injury was worth having her daughters back together again.
“Off to say goodbye to her little Jack,” Elizabeth’s voice drifted through her cell bars. “How sweet. I hope his werewolf father eats him alive.”
Croft realized Elizabeth was trying to start an argument between them, and she refused the bait. Instead, she stood and reexamined the magic-laced cell and wards that hampered her youngest daughter’s powers, along with keeping her contained.
Croft had ordered a cell constructed in her own room as soon as they returned from the battle with New Hope. Normal steel, when laced with the right layers of magic, could hold a witch just as well as any normal human being.
Elizabeth sat in her cell, staring at the floor. Her wild red hair hung down, hiding her face. She wore the same black cloak she had during the battle, the same New Hope uniform on underneath.
“You know you won’t be able to hold me here,” Elizabeth continued when Croft didn’t return her words. “You know it’s just a matter of time before I get out, or she comes for me.”
Croft hid her emotions, although Elizabeth’s last words sent a pang of regret down her spine. Leah had been there for her. She had filled the motherly role for a short time, but in that time, she had wreaked havoc on Elizabeth’s mind.
“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Elizabeth finally looked up through her curtain of hair. “Are you just going to sit there and silence me to death?”
“You’re not going to die.” Croft crossed her arms, looking through the steel bars at her younger daughter. “Neither are you going to be rescued in the way you think.”
“Oh, really? Please, enlighten me, oh, cryptic one.”
“You’re going to save yourself.”
Elizabeth rocked back and forth in mirth, a light chuckle escaping her lips. “Oh, really? And I’m going to do that for you? For the mother who abandoned us so many years before?”
“I had a choice to make.” Croft pursed her lips, reliving the day she’d left her family in Burrow Den. “I had to leave you to save you. I had to leave you to prepare for this very moment, when you, your sister, the entire Outland, would be on the brink of destruction.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.” Elizabeth rose and walked to the bars, gripping a steel rod in each hand. “Whatever you say. I’m not going to save myself for you. Now that mommy dearest has chosen to make her presence known, all will suddenly not be right with the world.”
“I didn’t say you were going to save yourself for me.” Croft hid her discomfort this time as she crossed the white floor in her room to the cell where Elizabeth stood. “You’re going to save yourself for your sister.”
For the briefest moment, a look of confusion crossed Elizabeth’s face. A second later she lifted her head to the ceiling, laughing in hysteria.
“Wait, wait—” Elizabeth lifted her hand to her mouth, trying to compose herself. “You’re telling me I’m going to save myself for the person who left me locked in the dungeon? Oh, this is getting better and better. What happens next? Do we all live happily ever after?”
“You’re laughing now, but what do you think Leah is going to do once she arrives in Azra? She’s going to kill most of us and enslave the rest. Now, I know you couldn’t care less about me, and maybe I deserve that, but you do care about your sister as much as you’ll deny it.”
“Oh, because you know me so well?”
“Because she took care of you while I couldn’t be there. Because she loves you. Because when your parents made mistakes and fell apart, she never left your side.”
“She left me in the dungeon in New Hope!” Elizabeth screamed, so loudly it filled the room. Spittle came down the right side of her lip and her hands quivered as she gripped the steel bars of her cage.
There was a quick knock before two Azra guards robed in the white-and-gold uniforms of their city rushed in.
“We’re fine.” Croft lifted a hand to them without even looking at them. “Leave us.”
Without a word, the two guards obeyed, retracing their steps back out of the room. The door closed behind them.
“Leah has twisted your mind to believe that Abigail totally up and left you behind without a thought. But really, think about that, Elizabeth. Your sister loves you and has watched over you for years. She left the dungeon that day in order to come up with a plan to save you. She’s the warrior she is today because she trained in New Hope, day and night, to become strong enough to save you.
She never even left the city, Elizabeth. ”
“You won’t change my mind.” Elizabeth shook her head, spit still falling from her mouth and dripping onto the white floor below. “I won’t stop trying to escape.”
“You’ll do what you must.” Croft walked toward the bars, now so close, she could reach out and touch her daughter.
Everything in her wanted nothing more than to throw open the cell door and embrace her daughter, but doing that now would do Elizabeth no good.
Inside her daughter, a war raged between light and dark, a war she and she alone would have to fight.
“I hate you.” Elizabeth looked at her mother through the bars, grinding her teeth. Tears fell from her eyes. “I hate you for leaving us, for what it did to Dad, for all of this. I hate you.”
“I know.” Croft swallowed hard, trying to fight the tears that came to her own eyes, not for the words of anger said against her, but for the amount her daughter was suffering. “But, I love you, Elizabeth. I always have, and I always will.”
Indecision clouded Elizabeth’s eyes again, though she quickly recovered and started to scream. She rocked back and forth against the bars, trying to rip them from the ground itself.
The screams were like a banshee wailing in the night; no words were audible, just high-pitched wails full of anger and confusion.
Croft stood with her daughter, weathering the tirade of screams. She had left her once before, and no matter what the circumstance, she wasn’t going to leave her again.