Misty
Cole’s arms are wrapped around my stomach, his eyes widened in disbelief as he stares at Aviva. She looks like a wet rat right now–completely soaked to the bone with her hair plastered to her face and her knife belt hanging off her waist, but otherwise she’s whole.
My powers are a mere flicker of what they usually are, but I feel them simmering to life as the strange, glowing symbols all over her arms and legs start to dim, and the roaring in my ears fades to the point I can hear my rapid heartbeat and Cole’s heart behind me.
Ryan looks devastated. Devastated, and shocked–a myriad of emotions I can’t even begin to put into words. He shakes his head, mouthing Aviva’s name as he reaches a hand toward her then retreats.
Aviva looks terrified as she scans the group, panting hard, her breath coming in shallow rasps. She turns her gaze back to Ryan, and her expression shatters, tears welling in her dark, amber eyes that are finally going back to their usual color instead of gleaming like polished bronze coins.
“Help,” she croaks, sucking back a shattered breath. “Ryan?”
Ryatt steps forward and claps a hand on Ryan’s chest to stop him from approaching her. “Who are you?”
Aviva blinks, taken aback by his question. “I’m–I’m Aviva–”
“Where were you born?”
“Endova–Endova, in the Deadlands–”
“What was your mother’s name?”
She stares at Ryan, silently pleading as she trembles from the cold and damp clinging to her body. “G-Gemma. Why–”
Ryatt shoves Ryan back and steps forward, unsheathing his shadow sword. My blood runs cold as Aviva’s eyes go wide with sudden panic.
“Ryatt!” Ryan shouts, but Ryatt points the tip of his sword at Aviva, its pointed tip resting directly under her chin.
“What was his mate's name?” Ryatt asks in a booming voice that echoes through the cavern, bouncing from end to end. “His first mate.”
Aviva looks stricken as her teary eyes slide to Ryan. “Hadley.”
“Ryatt,” Ryan rasps, a broken edge to his voice.
Ryatt’s sword gleams in the faint light still pouring from the forge, a wave of deep violet washing from the hilt to the tip where it fades into Aviva’s skin.
I have no idea what he’s doing to her, but I’ve never seen my uncle so… so brutal.
“What happened?” Aviva whimpers, shaking so hard her teeth clack together. “What happened to me?”
Ryatt lowers his sword, taking a deep, restorative breath as he turns to us, his gaze sliding from me and Cole back to Ryan. “She’s made. We need to go to Moonrise, right now.”
“No,” Ryan says, shaking his head, his eyes locked on Aviva as she curls her arms around her body to try to find any warmth. “No, she’s not going anywhere but home–”
“This isn’t up for debate,” Ryatt growls, sheathing his sword down his back in a fluid motion that sends shivers down my spine.
“My daughter,” Aviva says. “I can’t–she needs me–”
Ryatt cuts her off with a wave of his hand. But Ryan looks murderous as his gaze sweeps back to Ryatt. “We’re going home. If you want to fight me on this, Ryatt, be my fucking guest. My wife just nearly drowned. She’s not going anywhere but home.”
“You have no idea what she’s just done–”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Ryan grinds out, edging past Ryatt. He reaches for Aviva, wrapping his hand around her forearm and hisses out a breath when he feels how cold she is.
Even Cole shifts his weight behind me, his eyes locked on her lips, which are actively turning blue.
Ryatt glares as Ryan gently, ever so gently, pulls Aviva closer into his arms. He whispers something obviously meant for just the two of them into her wet hair before his gaze locks on Ryatt again. “Home. Now. I swear to the Goddess, Ryatt, if you spirit us to Moonrise it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
I turn toward Cole, closing my eyes for a moment in an attempt to catch my breath. The last… what? Ten, twenty minutes felt like a fever dream–something conjured by my deepest, darkest nightmares. But Cole’s warm and solid as I wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his filthy, mud soaked shirt, fighting my own tears.
“Logan and Maeve are–are together,” I murmur into the fabric loud enough for everyone to hear. “We confirmed it. Logan–he killed the witch.”
I don’t look over my shoulder, but I can hear Ryatt’s boots as he turns in my direction.
Aviva says in confirmation, “Misty used her powers to show us what happened in the clearing. Logan–he can shift already. He’s only twelve. Maeve whisked them away somehow.”
Silence settles, broken by the occasional splashing of the water rolling over the edge of the forge as it settles.
I blink a few times to dry out my eyes and glance over my shoulder at the very moment Ryan scoops Aviva into his arms, his gaze still holding on our uncle. “Take us home. We can finish this conversation there. If Maeve’s with Logan, she’s safe.”
“You don’t know that. That boy’s from a world outside of our own,” Ryatt argues, but his tone is softer, fading back to something familiar and far less deadly.
“He went looking for her, Uncle Ryatt,” I say, backing Ryan up. “That’s the only explanation, and Maeve… she trusts him. We could see that clearly. She’s safe, wherever they are. He’ll protect her. He killed a witch for her.”
Ryatt’s silent for several seconds before exhaling deeply, his next words directed to Aviva as he says under his breath, “We’ll return to Moonrise, but this isn’t over. I need to know everything that happened to you in there, everything you saw and heard.”
Aviva nods in Ryan’s arms, but my brother tightens his grip on her body. Ryan looks so mad right now, and I understand why. I also get why Ryatt had to question her like that and wants to take her to Moonrise, where he can get clearer answers about her glowing eyes and tattoos.
The truth is plain to me. I can feel it in my bones, my soul. The truth simmers through my powers like a heated warning.
Aviva is different. She didn’t come out of the forge the same woman–the same friend–I know and have grown to love like a sister.
Aviva has powers now.
* * *
“She’s asleep, and Ryan isn’t letting anyone near her,” Cole says the second he passes through the door of our cabin in Silverhide. I stand up from the couch with Addy in my arms, absently running my fingers through his thin, nearly white hair.
“Did you get to examine her?”
He nods but purses his lips as he leans his weight against the door to close it. “Barely. Ryan’s worried, but I would be, too. She’s fine, all things considered. Physically healthy. She’s having trouble regulating her temperature, but she nearly drowned and was borderline hypothermic, so that’s not a surprise to me.”
I scan his face, noticing the lines of fatigue and dark circles under his eyes.
What a fucking day. What a fucking hard two days, actually.
We arrived back in Silverhide this morning but fortunately didn’t have to travel the entire way on foot. My powers returned shortly after Aviva emerged from the forge, and then Ryatt got his powers back, and he whisked us here, dropping us off and promising to return at sundown.
But the sun set two hours ago, and Ryatt is nowhere to be found.
Cole runs his fingers through his hair and sinks beside me on the couch, a blank look in his eyes as he gaze locks on the bare, far wall. “Misty, I… I hid the book in the sheep barn. It’s still there, up in the rafters.”
“You were suspicious of Kyra from the beginning, weren’t you?”
He licks his lips, looking down at his lap. “She rubbed me the wrong way at first. I know enough about traditional medicine to know that the sickness that spread here wasn’t natural. It would have affected everyone. For shifters to get sick like that–for it to be transmittable? It’s practically impossible. A few people came to her when the first symptoms began to emerge, and the tonics she gave them didn’t make any sense. The herbs she prescribed were wrong–completely. She had no idea what she was doing.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me? Or even Ryan?”
He chews his lower up, reaching over to lay his hand over Addy’s head. “I guess I’m not over it. Having to–rely on anyone but myself to fix things. I thought I could stop her, and I got close, just like with Richard, and I didn’t want anyone getting hurt, so I… I egged her on a bit, trying to figure out what exactly she was here for. She was curious about Ryan, asking me questions about the family, Ryan’s powers, your powers, whether Aviva and Lexa had them. She was especially interested in Kenna, but I was vague. She must have overheard a conversation about Maeve at some point, somewhere, because she began to steer whatever conversations we had toward her.” He meets my eyes, giving me a sad sort of smile. “I thought she might have been connected to Richard in some way because of how she asked about the war. I don’t think she realized I’d been part of it on Richard’s side because she went on and on about him, his genius…. I made a comment about The Book of Whispers to see where she’d take it, and I knew for a fact that it was what she was after.”
Cole goes on to explain what happened the day Kyra attacked the pack. A few nights before, he’d faked a headache, wanting to know what kind of herbs she’d prescribe. She’d given him what he immediately knew was a sedative. He didn’t take it, of course, but visited her again, pretending to be under its influence, and that’s when she tried to manipulate him into getting her the book.
“The whispers about the ruins you and Aviva found was the catalyst to her plan. She was planning on just getting close to Ryan, getting between him and Aviva, but I think she realized quickly that wasn’t going to work, but then Aviva found the forge, and Kyra thought the book was there until she found out you had it–thinking it was the real copy.”
“So that morning you… confronted her.”
“Yes. I tried to kill her,” he replies, point blank. “I had no idea what I was dealing with, though. Her powers put Richard’s to shame, honestly.”
And she had a hellhound somehow.
“She was trying to use Maeve to find the forge. I wonder what she wanted to do with it?”
“I think Aviva answered that for us,” Cole sighs, relaxing into the cushions. Addy jerks, his arms flaying, before he falls back asleep with a soft coo. Cole smiles gently, the line between his eyebrows finally relaxing, but his eyes are still dark as he says, “Ryatt said Aviva was made. She might have powers now. That’s what the forges were used for–to create magical objects.”
“I know,” I sigh, leaning my head against his shoulder. “Like every special weapon my family keeps inadvertently collecting.”
“Now she’s part of that collection, and Ryan knows it. I’m supposed to alert him if Ryatt shows up, but I have a feeling he’s with Evander looking for Maeve and Logan.”
“We have to find them.”
“We will. Another search party is going out in the morning. I plan to join them,” he says, closing his eyes.
I let my mind wander, thinking about the forges, then the weapons and strange objects that somehow end up in my family’s hands… and then I think of Grandma and her stories of Maatua, and the falls, and how she found her powers.
“There’s a forge on Maatua,” I whisper into the silence. “The falls. It’s actually a forge.”
We fall asleep on the couch as a family, too exhausted to be bothered moving to the bed, and that night, I dream… I see visions.
I see a little house tucked in the woods in faraway mountains.