Chapter 29
Mother
Brynn insists on checking where I detected movement along the dense copse of blackwoods.
At first, I think he will tell me to return to our camp alone.
Instead, he asks me to wait while he investigates.
When he reappears, he offers only a shrug.
If he saw or heard anything, he did not whisper-shout back at it, like I had.
What could the hag promise him?
We retreat to the campsite together. I consider taking a dip in the pool.
I can’t help but feel unclean from the shadow hag’s intrusive attempt to scour my thoughts.
But with no fire or proper towel to dry myself, I fear I’d be too cold to sleep.
Instead, I crouch at the pool’s edge to scrub my hands clean.
Once they are, I splash my face with the cool water.
Had Brynn not woken up, I might have wandered off into a trap out of indignation. What was I thinking?
I again see the faces of the man and woman who attacked me in Aston.
A broken part of me still wonders if I asked for it.
Perhaps I was morbidly curious what it would be like to be beaten and hurt.
Perhaps I was a glutton for punishment. Perhaps I desperately wanted to feel everything—or anything at all.
The thought makes me want to slap the calm surface of the pool.
I stand and scrub my face dry with the bottom of my tunic.
“You should sleep. I’ll take the next watch,” Brynn says quietly, sitting on the same rock I started my shift from earlier. His face is level with mine now, his expression passive.
I don’t know how to thank him for everything he’s done for me thus far. The words don’t seem like enough. When I do not move, he stares at me.
“You’re safe with me, Thea,” he says, deciding my fear must be the reason for my hesitation. The softness in it makes my heart stumble, my face flush. He reaches to brush my cheek with his knuckles, feeling the warmth there.
Without another word, I slip away—back toward our makeshift pallets and the promise of sleep.
Before I become even more reckless tonight. Before I wrap myself around Brynn and thank him in other ways.
I dream of my mother.
It’s a distorted flashback of sorts, a triggered memory.
A conversation we had when I was a teenager, after I’d read my first ever love story.
It felt arbitrary. Impractical. The characters seemed to know almost nothing about one another before proclaiming their undying love.
And in the end, they didn’t even stay together.
It was yearning, yearning, yearning, then yielding.
First to each other, to their feelings. And then, more cruelly, to societal pressures.
To families who did not want their happiness.
Was I really meant to believe the lesson was that they loved each other so much that they willingly let one another go?
And for what? Logic?
Who determined their relationship wrong? What is right, other than love?
I wanted a love so obsessive that they fought for it. Killed for it. Died for it. I wanted them to try. Their pain was avoidable, yet they chose heartache. Even at fifteen, that felt like a load of horseshit.
“Mother,” I started, approaching her at teatime as she sat in the gardens surrounded by her prized chrysanthemums. Her favorite mid-afternoon activity. In this state, the colors are vibrant and blinding, the edges of my memory blurred and soft. “What does love feel like?”
She eyed me thoughtfully, noting the finished book still in my hands. I carried it all the way out there, as if I couldn’t let it go. Her eyes, even bluer than mine, glow ethereally—yet I can’t seem to picture them right. They’re nothing but cerulean irises now.
“There’s no right way to love, Thea,” she said, a peculiar, warm look on her face.
Even in this hazy distortion, it’s apparent she thinks of my father.
“Love is easy some days, and hard others. Some days, love will bring out the best in you, and others, the worst. Love can make you see sharper than you ever have before, but love can also drive you to madness.”
I listened to the manic birdsong above as I pondered this. Perhaps I was not destined for the kind of love that consumes and destroys. I do not wish to go mad.
“But, above all else, love is a choice. It’s a choice to open your heart to another… allowing them to witness the light and the dark that dwell there. And them—choosing to fight—alongside you—for you—despite the darkness—”
I am uncertain if it’s the dreamscape filling in the blanks of my memory or if it was Mother’s sickness that makes her voice so… disjointed.
Despite the darkness, echoes in my head.
“It’s much easier to define friendship,” she said after the silence grew stale. Her face starts to dematerialize before my eyes, the pieces of her floating into a nonexistent wind. The book melts away in my hands, but I do not—cannot—react.
“Really? What does friendship feel like?” my voice asked. It does not sound like it comes from my mouth.
How sad this question must have been to my mother’s ears. I recognize the pitying expression, the downturn of her lips—even as the bottom half of her face dissolves.
Everything fades to black, but I still hear her delicate voice.
“Friendship is forged—through trust and trials and oaths. No friendship exists without love. No love exists without friendship.”
“You should have woken me.”
Glo’s irritable voice slaps me awake.
My eyes open to find Jasmeen’s boots a foot from where my head rests in the crook of my elbow.
Though shaded by the canopy of blackwoods, the world glows that stunning violet-copper again.
I sit up, rubbing my face—and immediately wince.
My whole body aches. From diving off a veilmane a time too many, from being tackled by Glo, from sparring with Brynn, from sleeping on the forest floor. Fuck.
“You needed rest to replenish your magic. And Jasmeen needed rest to heal her wounds,” Brynn says above me. My gaze lifts to find him leaning against a nearby tree with his arms crossed. “I couldn’t sleep if I tried.”
Glo still looks put out, despite Brynn’s selflessness. Perhaps she senses something in his tone that I don’t. “Why’s that?”
Jasmeen offers her hand, her good arm, to pull me up. I shake out my stiff limbs. It does little to relieve the pain in my spine and ribs. Brynn stares at me, dark half moons under his eyes. I assume this is an invitation to share what happened.
“I saw another one of those shadows last night,” I say, my voice gravelly from sleep. Glo’s eyebrows rise.
“Is there a reason you didn’t bother to tell me about the shadow hag after the ambush, Glo?” Brynn asks sharply.
I did not realize this would be a confrontation.
“Wait… you saw a shadow hag?” Jasmeen interrupts, staring between the three of us in abject horror.
“Yes,” Glo says through gritted teeth. “I didn’t think much of it, though. It didn’t try to enter my mind—it went about its way. I figured it was just curious at the commotion.”
“Of course you didn’t think much of it,” Brynn snaps, face twisting in a blend of disbelief and exasperation. “Well, it tried to lure Thea off last night on her watch. If something like that happens again, I suggest you tell me.”
This sounds like an order. A threat. His crossness feels… misplaced.
Glo rounds on me, hurt in her brown eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me that it spoke to you?”
“I—the one that you and I came across did not. At least… not until I was off alone looking for the veilmane... And there was a lot going on, mind you,” I mumble, sliding my boots back on for something to do while they frown at me. “Can we get going? We can speak on the way.”
“If we ride all day—with no more mishaps or distractions”—Brynn glances pointedly between Jasmeen and Glo—“we may be able to skip the final rest area and make it to Royal City before midnight. We will go straight to the palace.”
“That means traveling in the dark,” Glo reminds him, the bite in her tone clear.
“Doesn’t matter,” Brynn says. “I’d rather us all get there in one piece—the main path will be safer than sleeping in the woods again.”
It appears the only person he’s not upset with is me. Both Glo and Jasmeen, however, squint as though I’ve somehow betrayed them.
Thanks to this, when we depart half an hour later, I am left to ride Shadow with Brynn as my partner.
His moody expression slips into surprise when he helps hoist me up onto Shadow’s back and I scoot forward in the saddle, fighting another wince.
He raises an eyebrow. I nod once and adjust the reins.
I know myself well enough to admit that what I lack is self-control.
It’s best if he sits behind me, out of reach of my roaming hands.
We do not speak for a while. His touch at my waist is featherlight, like he’s trying to quash the buzzing we both undoubtedly feel. We ride behind Moon and our two companions, who are deep in whispered conversation about something grave.
Possibly shadow hags. Possibly Brynn’s misplaced temper. Possibly my omissions. Probably all of the above.
“I don’t much like this irritable version of you,” I say at last, and his grip tightens.
“Do you like me much elsewise?” Brynn asks in a low voice, his mouth too close to my ear. If I wanted to, I could lean back into him.
“Did they try to speak to you last night?” I ask, deflecting. He lets out a dark chuckle but does not answer. I’m not surprised. He has no reason to tell me and cannot lie about it anyway, so his silence is answer enough.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say. Brynn’s slender fingers tap on my hips. I fight the urge to squirm at the sensation.
“Actually, no,” he confesses in a huff. “They did not. They have a preference for… mortals. And they may show themselves to the fae, but they usually steer clear of them.”
“But you’re—”