Page 31 of The Rat King
As she rose and retrieved another cup to fill for me, I asked, “How will the magic work?”
“In order to break the curse, she must fall in love with you, but it doesn't stipulate what you or anything else for that matter, must appear to be. I’m thinking I could infuse the magic into a powder or a capsule perhaps.” Her eyes became distant for a moment as she envisioned whatever recipe she’d concoct to solve the problem. As she did the mental work, the lines of tension on her face eased. She enjoyed this, solving problems and exercising her mind to make the calculations using her power required.
“Ah, yes. I know exactly what I’m going to do. Of course, there are a few things I’ll need.”
“Which are?” I asked, my eagerness apparent in my voice. I sat back, urging myself to calm. Nothing with my mother was ever this easy.
“First, we’ll need something of your Avery’s, then passionflower oil. I think I have everything else in my shop.”
“I brought something of hers. Where do we find the oil?” I asked.
“From the flower, of course!” she said.
I shook my head, my agitation rising. “And where do we find the flowers?”
My mother jumped up and scurried out of the room waving for me to come along. I followed her into her study where she fished out a rolled document from a bin and flattened it out on a wooden table in the corner of the room. When she placed weights on each corner of the map, she pressed her fingers into a strip of land in the most southern part of the kingdom. “They grow there.”
My heart sank. It would take weeks of travel without my power to make it there and more to get back to Avery. Time, a luxury I didn’t have.
My mother tapped her fingers on the map drawing me out of my dwindling thoughts. “My power will take us, we’ll find the flower, I’ll make the pill, then you’ll be on your way to win your love. I can’t wait to meet her.”
Goddess, she looked at this as a game, not the fate of thousands of people. Did she have no care that right now she stared at her own son as a mutant being? Or that mothers never got to see their babies’ pink toes and laughing bright human eyes instead of the beady black ones all children now had? No, she didn’t care. Samara Wrede’s entire world revolved around manipulating her way back into the family she’d lost. And like everything with her, there was a hidden cost which I needed to discover before I overcommitted myself.
“Okay, mother. We’ll go get this flower, then you’ll infuse the magic into a pill. What’s your price?” I asked.
She stepped back, like I’d struck her, bumping into the wall behind her. “That’s rude,” she said. “Why would you say such a thing? You think I wouldn’t do this for you out of love, my child?”
The wide-eyed expression on her face might almost be believable if I hadn’t been there the night she mercilessly killed my father. One second, her hand lifted toward the sky. The next, it shot down, drawing a bolt of white-hot lightening which speared my father’s skull nearly in two. She stood over him and dipping her fingers into the blood seeping from the steaming wound before I could stop her. Xavier, and I were both in shock as we watched her draw symbols into the ground with his blood. I was nineteen and couldn’t bring myself to kill my mother. I might have if I’d known what was coming.
“I don’t think you do anything out of love, Samara. I think you don’t know what the word means,” I said, dangerously close to letting this chance, her willingness to give me the magic I desperately needed, slip through my grasp. I gritted my teeth as I awaited her response. Her face twisted through a series of emotions landing on something decidedly sinister. The thing was, I could have tried with my magic, but if the curse sensed manipulation or someone was trying to trick it, it would trigger its permanence. I had to have faith that my mother, being the curse’s designer, knew what she could do to work within the parameters of the curse without solidifying our fate.
“I want what I’ve always wanted, Nighval. I want you and Xavier to act like normal sons. Come visit your mother. Spend time with me and let me be the mother your father never let me be.”
“Are you even capable of that?” I asked, genuinely curious if she believed herself to be.
“He poisoned you against me—”
“Considering you murdered him and enacted a curse that doomed an entire kingdom, it seems warranted,” I said.
“Son, if I wanted, I could transport us to Ravsted right now. We’d take your witch, and you could force her to be your bride.” Her voice rattled as her frenzied energy heightened. “But that’s not what I want for you.”
I swallowed. The thought of stealing Avery away had been on my mind innumerable times over the last few months, but I hadn’t done it. That wasn’t how I wanted it to be, but here I was moments away from making a deal with my mother so I could do exactly that. “What did you want for me?” I found myself asking.
“Love, darling. I wished for you to find the love I never did. And if you believe it will be with this Avery, then I’m here to help you. After all, you’ve never come to your mother over a woman, so she must be the one.” I was about to say, fine, let’s go, when she said, “Oh, and I want you and Xavier to visit me once a week. Dinner, just the three of us. And when your love bears your children, I want them to come, too. When the curse is broken, you’ll have your power back, so it will be no problem for you to manage.”
She took in a deep breath and sighed as if she was settled with the terms she’d outlined. I supposed they could be worse. She could demand I move her back into the castle and she accidentally left out meeting Avery, so I needed to agree with it before she came up with something else.
“Got it. Weekly dinners in exchange for the pill. Let’s go.”
“But it’s still night,” she said, brows wrinkling in concern.
“Go change. It will be light soon enough. I’m eager to get my task underway.”
The corner of my mother’s eyes wrinkled in a knowing way. “I think you’re eager to get back to your witch and start wooing her.” She fluttered her fingers at me as she slipped out of the room, presumably to go ready herself for our journey. “I’ll be watching.”
Two torturously long weeks later, Samara Wrede placed a glowing blue pill in my open palm as we stood in her foyer. She started working on the spell which would reset the game as soon as we’d gotten back this morning. I knew after transporting us, hunting for enough of the rare flowers, spending several nights outdoors which she wasn’t accustomed to and then the power it took to create this object, she must be exhausted. Her skin even seemed thinner if that were possible. My breathing quickened as I stared at the pill. So much magic in such a small space.
“How will it work?” I asked.
