Sydney
Two days have passed. I’m not sure how. Every minute feels exactly like the last; achingly slow.
I’m doing what I do best–deflecting. Finding other things to do besides sit at Sarah’s bedside and move between begging her on my knees to wake up and being angry at her for putting us in this position.
The wound on her arm is horrendous. Wide, gnarled, and barely healing despite using my healing powers. Gabriel left his mark so deep, it took Cosette over three hours to cut it out.
But now, Sarah’s free of him. He will never touch her again. He will never even lay eyes on her, and I’ll see to that myself.
Right now, however, I’m sitting on the steps in the foyer with my head in my hands while Cosette paces back and forth, her short footsteps sending a clacking echo through the room.
I haven’t slept in three days, at least. Longer, I think. I’ve lost all concept of time.
“They should be here by now,” Cosette grumbles to herself as she checks her watch.
A soft cry pierces the air upstairs. Blake’s awake. I rise to go get him but hear Dalia’s soft footsteps somewhere above me, and then Blake’s quiet again.
I sit back down, blowing out my breath.
“Where are they?” Cosette breathes, finally coming to a stop. She starts tapping her foot.
“You’re driving me crazy, Cosette.”
“Dinner is getting cold.”
“Well, they’re technically not coming here to hangout and enjoy dinner–”
A crackle of energy ghosts through the house. The frames on the walls tremble, and the curtains lift from the windows as if being sucked into a vacuum in the center of the foyer.
Cosette squeaks and leaps back as a flash of dark mist erupts, sending a spray of embers in every direction.
Evander coughs and bends over, resting his hands on his knees, while Kenna dusts soot from her shoulders as if nothing strange just happened.
“You were supposed to be here two hours ago!” I stand, my heart thundering.
“Hello to you too, Sydney,” Kenna says, arching a dark brow in my direction.
I scan her face, then her body. She’s wearing a dark cape and green dress in the fashion of Eastonia–ethereal, flowing fabrics with jeweled accents. Her hair is spun in several braids inlaid with pearl clips that catch the light of the chandelier as her power simmers and dies away. She’s in one piece, though. I worried about her traveling while pregnant, but she’s a Firestone witch, after all. They’re the most powerful when they’re pregnant.
“We were held up in Maatua,” Evander says with effort as he straightens. He looks sick to his stomach, and knowing how recently he’s had to spirit back and forth between the kingdoms, I understand why.
It's a power I don’t have, as far as I know. I prefer to keep my paws on the ground. Looking at Evander, I’m sure he does too. I pity him, not for the first time, for being mated into this family with all of our strange quirks.
Kenna steps forward as Cosette hurries to take her cloak, but her eyes are locked on mine. “You look horrible. You haven’t slept since we spoke, have you?”
I run my tongue along my lower lip. She arches her brow again, probably waiting for me to explain why I called her here. I didn’t tell her anything when I reached out to her using my dad’s orrery. It’s tricky, honestly, getting in touch with anyone in Eastonia without the use of the mirrors owned by my father and my uncle. They used to have to use water from the falls in Maatua, too. But Kenna and I have a strong bond and are able to mind-link if I use my powers in the orrery, but it doesn’t last long, and I could only tell her that there was an emergency, that I need her help, and she needs to keep quiet about it.
“Where’s Brie?” I ask.
“She’s in Maatua being spoiled rotten by our grandparents for the next week.” She steps toward me, resting her hands on the swell of her stomach. “I told my parents that we were coming here early under the guise of spending a week with you before Aunt Maddy’s reunion with the whole family next week. Grandma and Grandpa are traveling here with Brie in a few days.”
I nod, slightly overwhelmed. In the background, Cosette is trying to convince Evander to come with her for a cup of tea or glass of whiskey, whichever will settle his stomach, but he’s shaking his head.
“What happened, Sydney?” Kenna asks. “You look absolutely wrecked.”
I hold Kenna’s silver gaze. If I’m going to trust anyone, it's going to have to be her. “I found her.”
Evander lifts his head from his conversation with Cosette, but I don’t look at him. I step toward Kenna, allowing myself to feel every emotion that’s been building since the moment I pulled Sarah out of the freezing water that almost killed her.
“I found my mate.”
* * *
Kenna walks around my bed, her eyes downcast on Sarah as she lies motionless on her back, her eyes closed and chest lifting shallowly with each breath she takes.
Evander closes my bedroom door and keeps his distance as his mate sits on the edge of the bed and takes Sarah’s hand in her own, turning it over to trace the lines of her palm.
“I remember her,” Kenna whispers. She looks at me over her shoulder, a faint smile touching her lips. “The morning after the ball. I thought she was someone Ryan brought home, remember?”
I do remember that. I remember feeling like I’d been hit by a truck as I wandered out of the guest room with a throbbing headache and wanting to crawl to the coffee maker.
I thought I’d been hungover at the time, but I wasn’t. It was Sarah’s mysterious powers ripping through my brain and disintegrating my memories of her.
I sit on the other side of the bed with my feet firmly planted on the floor and turn to Kenna and Evander, taking a huge breath.
I tell them everything–about meeting her last fall, then rescuing her from her apartment. I tell them about her talents with flowers, and being trapped in a hotel room with her where I realized how hard I was falling, and that she was falling too.
“Blake is my son,” I say in a near whisper. “I figured it out myself. I think she knew I’d learn the truth eventually.” I look at Evander, who’s still standing near the door with his hands tucked in the pockets of his black pants. “That morning, in Moorn, when we met up… I’d just found out he was mine. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her about it.”
Evander nods solemnly. “I knew something was off. Everyone did. Ryatt felt awful about snarling at you–”
“I deserved it,” I cut in.
“So you came home and confronted her?” Kenna shifts her weight as she continues to examine Sarah’s hands.
I wonder why she’s doing that, but reply, “Yeah, I did, and she…”
“She isn’t just Sarah, is she?” Kenna’s eyes meet mine. “And she’s not sick either, is she, Sydney?”
I struggle to swallow and glance in Evander’s direction. A light bulb flames to life in his mind as his eyes meet mine. “Sasha?”
I nod. Kenna sighs deeply as she twists a lock of Sarah’s hair around her finger. “Well, this complicates things.”
“Tell me about it,” I reply gruffly, and she glares at me over her shoulder.
“Did you have any inclination–”
“Of course not,” I snap, then clear my throat. “And if I had, I wouldn’t have cast her out or turned her in to our dads, if that’s what you’re asking. I brought you here because something is wrong with her. She won’t wake up, Kenna. She–she jumped, okay? Spirited away after telling me to take care of Blake, and I found her on the edge of my territory, half dead, freezing–”
“She exhausted her powers, that’s all.” Evander crosses his arms over his chest.
I shake my head, turning back to Kenna. “She was hurt. She had a gash on the back of her head and several broken bones when I found her–”
“You used Grandma’s tears, didn’t you?” Kenna trails her fingertips down Sarah’s bare arm. “I can sense them. Your powers, too.” She pauses at the gauze covering Sarah’s upper arm. Kenna makes a low, hissing sound and looks up at me. “Silver? Why?”
“Gabriel marked her when she was a child.”
Kenna closes her eyes for a moment as if gathering herself. I feel a shimmer of power settle in the room–Kenna’s powers. She’s furious at the thought of anyone, let alone Gabriel, harming a child like that.
Evander steps forward, edging toward the bed, but stops a few feet away. “Kenna, what is she?”
Kenna opens her eyes, and they land on her mate, her brow furrowed. “She’s a shifter, I can sense that. It’s in her scent, actually, which means she’ll have the ability to shift but not for a few more months, at least. There’s something else–”
“She’s a witch then. She’d have to be, being Atticus’s daughter.” I look between Evander and Kenna. “Right?”
“Well, that’s technically true, but she doesn’t….” Kenna tilts her head from side to side, perplexed. “She’s different. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“Try,” I tell her, losing my patience. She shoots me a dirty look as I continue, “You have a–a witch medical degree, or whatever. You have to know what’s wrong with her.”
“Evander’s right. She exhausted her powers. But you made it sound like when she jumped, she didn’t make it that far. Sasha was rumored to be extremely powerful. Powerful enough to rival me and my parents. But that can’t be true if a simple jump left her like this.”
Evander’s looking at me now, his eyes boring into the side of my face. I glance at him, then close my eyes and tell them the rest of it, the parts I wasn’t sure I’d be able to relive, let only vocalize.
Her memories. My memories, stolen from me using powers none of us knew existed.
Kenna listens to every word, rapt and wide-eyed.
When I come to the part where I’m with Sarah after the ball, in bed together, feeling the mate bond ignite between us, Kenna closes her eyes and shakes her head.
“She was trying to keep you safe from Gabriel.”
“I know,” I reply with great effort.
“I know what she is,” Kenna breathes. She looks at Evander, her eyes dark and looming with grief. “She’s a mystic.”
Evander’s brows pinch together at the same moment I shift forward, confused. “No… that can’t be right. Mystics aren’t just–out here, living normal lives. They’re only in Moonrise. They’ve only ever been in Moonrise.”
“You’re partly right, Sydney.” Kenna rises from the bed and starts to pace, cradling her stomach and the nearly term baby boy within. “We honestly didn’t know much about mystics before what happened recently in Moonrise. We didn’t think they could deflect. They have a… a hive-mind,” she says, her eyes meeting mine briefly before she turns and paces back across the room. “They act together, sharing thoughts and knowledge. I used to be under the assumption that Mystics simply appeared, regenerated somehow, but we now know, after an exceedingly difficult few months cataloging birth records found in the old temples in Moonrise and the Roguelands, that they are born just like we are and come into their powers as children, and those children are highly coveted and protected. Their families don’t have much of a choice but to send them away to live with other mystics. They’re a one-in a million kind of child, honestly. There’s only a dozen mystics in all of Eastonia.”
“Gabriel was using mystics to fuel his relic,” Evander says hotly, his green eyes glowing with sudden fury. “It makes sense. He needs that kind of power.”
“She’s different, though,” Kenna says. “I think–”
“I just need her to wake up,” I cut in, my head spinning. “I don’t care about the rest. I just need her to wake up. How do we do that?”
“Mark her.” Kenna stops pacing and turns to me. “Claim her as your mate and let your own powers give her strength.”
I shake my head slowly. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Kenna looks confused. She glances at Evander, who shares her sentiments.
“She’s already had so much taken from her, so much done to her against her will. I won’t contribute to that.”
“Then we wait this out,” Kenna says. “Those are our only options, Sydney, but when she wakes, and she will wake up, she needs to tell us what she can do because these powers…”
“They’re dangerous, especially if she were to fall into the wrong hands,” Evander finishes.
Blake’s cries echo down the hallway. Kenna turns toward the noise, her eyes lighting up. “I have some research to do, but first, I’d like to meet your son, and you need to sleep.”