Page 42 of Witchsea

I won’t have to look up at my parents’ bones and souls every morning. I can’t free them, but I can take Rowe and be free, ourselves. I hope that is enough.

I climb up onto the deck and see a massive crystal island that wasn’t there before, right in front of the ship. The crystal is blue and sharp-pointed in the sunlight, making it glow so brightly it’s hard to look at. There looks like a door at the front, carved in white stone, and a pathway leading right inside. I walk up to Ren’s side as the ship stops because we have run out of water. It tilts to the side slightly, with the wood groaning and cracking, and then it goes still.

Ren leans down, and he kisses my forehead. “No matter what happens in there, you’re mine and I am yours, Miriam Vale.”

“I think I like the sound of you being mine, Draven Elswyth.” I smile at him, and something haunts his eyes as he tries to smile back. I want to ask him about it, but he turns away, telling Chaos a list of orders to be done while he is gone with me. I walk to the edge of the ship, and my map markings light up, glowing the most beautiful purple color from every inch of it as I lift my hand and look at the light.

Freckles runs up, wrapping her arms around me from behind and hugging me tightly. “Good luck. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“We won’t be long.” I turn around and hug her tightly again. “I’m going to see the gods and save my sick brother. He’s eight and so sweet. I want to tell you all about Rowe soon.”

“Your sick brother?” she whispers. “I thought you just wanted magic or immortal life or something…”

Ren comes up to me, looking at Freckles. “We are leaving now.”

“Did you know about her brother?” She grabs his arm.

“Yes, but it changes nothing, Freckles.” He takes her hand off him. She grits her teeth and steps back, lowering her head.

“Wait, are you okay?” I ask her, but Ren places his hand on my lower back, guiding me to the ladder down to the island. When I look back, Freckles and Chaos are heading down below deck. “What was wrong with her?”

“Nothing,” Ren states, but it feels like a lie, and I’m not sure why. He climbs down first, and I follow, a strange feeling settling into my stomach. I’m nervous about this, and I have thought a million times about what I’m going to ask the gods. I’m going to ask them to erase the illness from all existence. No one will die from it, and no one will ever be born with it again. I touch the rocky floor, which is almost like hardened ash and nothing more.

“Why a crystal? It’s gorgeous, but I don’t know why the gods chose this to meet in,” I question Ren.

“I know enough about the eight gods’ history to know that they did like crystals like this, and I believe they need a powerful place to appear without hurting us,” he muses, taking my hand in his and linking our fingers. We walk through the archway door, which is covered in those markings, and my map lights up the mirrored crystal walls in a hazy purple glow. The markings on his neck start to glow the same purple, the crown itself lighting up.

“Why is yours glowing?” I wonder.

“Maybe it’s something to do with this place,” Ren answers, but he doesn’t look at me, and the sinking feeling only gets worse. It feels like he is lying to me. The further we go, the more I wonder if there is any treasure to be found here at all. It’s just a crystal cave, and it doesn’t look like anyone has been here in a very long time.

“There’s no gold here, Ren.” My shoulders drop. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s walk and find it.” He pulls me with him deeper into the cave. The second we get into a small clearing, rocks begin to fall from the ceiling with mighty crashes, and they blast into us like a storm, cutting and marking me. I scream as the floor caves in under my feet, and my stomach flips as I fall into thin air, the rocks still plummeting into me as I fall. Ren’s shadows wrap around me like a cloud, protecting and slowing my fall, but one rock slips through the darkness, smacking right into my head, and the world fades as I hear Ren shout my name.

Chapter

Twenty

“Stars are the way for the witches of our blood to find the shadows of our home,” my mother whispers to me, stroking my cheek, her long hair falling into the space next to my pillow. It’s late, but she hasn’t gotten into her bed on the other side of the room, and father is late at work. He rarely comes back before the sun rises on the next morning. The room smells like the fire and somehow like the snow outside, the opposites that always seem to mix in our home. “One day, the Shadowlands will return and our magic with it.”

“We don’t have magic.” I yawn, wanting to fall asleep, but I won’t. I’ll wait until my mother reads a story, like she does every night, until I drift into the darkness. My hands are sore from where I fell in the ice earlier, and I wiggle under the sheets, trying to find a comfy spot. Rowe leans on my shoulder, his light snores echoing in my ear. The little three-year-old should be walking and playing—happy. But he is recovering from an infection that nearly took him from us, and he won’t stay awake for longer than an hour.

My mother cups my cheek, looking into my eyes. “No matter what happens to me in this life, know in your heart that our magic will bind us forever. Remember this night, remember the stories, and know I’ll always be with you.”

“You’d never leave me because you don’t leave the people you love. You told me that once.” I smile at her, even when I’m not sure in this moment what she is saying, what she is thinking, and I’m too tired to think about it. My mother often whispers confusing words to me. Our neighbors call her one slice short of a full cake, but I don’t understand that. Tomorrow is my fifteenth birthday, not that we can afford cake, and I want to spend it happy and not confused. I don’t want gifts—not unless the gift was my brother’s health. “I love you.”

She leans down, kissing my forehead, her scent wrapping around me like a blanket. “I will always love you.”

The world is spinning as I wake up, and I’ve bitten my tongue, leaving a nasty taste of blood in my mouth. What happened? I blink several times, remembering the dream about my mother and her stories of witches, how hugging her used to be my favorite part of the day, but now I can’t even remember how she smelled. I can’t remember what she looked like unless my dreams show me, and even then, I’m not sure I’m getting every feature of hers right. Grief is loud and there constantly, but no one talks about the silent grief of when your mind forgets the tiny things about the person you loved. My father used to tell me old stories about the witches, too.

I go to touch my head where I must have hit it, and I can’t. My hands are bound at my back and to the wall, and there is a gag around my mouth. Wait…we came into the crystal at the end of the trials, and then the floor gave out. I remember Ren jumping for me, his shadows catching us both, and then nothing.

Everything is blurry and spinning as I manage to sit up, looking up at Ren’s back as he stands a few feet away from me in the center of a diamond-walled room. Light bounces off every inch of the diamonds in the walls, and behind Ren is a staircase going up to the light above. He is holding the keys, standing still, looking down at the ground. Did he take the keys from me? “REN!” My shout comes out blurry, broken around the gag, and he turns back with some surprise.

“Clark said you’d be out of it for a few hours if I gave you that potion…how did you wake up?”

My heart begins to pound as my body turns to ice. I watch him stare at me, like everything is a dream—no, a nightmare. He looks at the keys. “There hasn’t been a day in the last five hundred years where I haven’t wanted to do this. Where I haven’t plotted and killed and done unspeakable shit for this moment. Not one day—until the great library. Until I thought you were dead and I lost my fucking mind. Not until the second you ran out of the corridors and you stood there—alive—and holding a key. Brave, reckless and beautiful. You stole my heart right there and then—and I doubted everything.”