Blake
It’s late afternoon when we finally return to Moonrise. Marianna slumps in my arms as I spirit us directly into my suite, which is dark, the curtains pulled, and the blinds closed to the outside world. Rain pelts the windows. I lay Marianna in my bed, and she groans, blinking wearily up at me while her skin flushes a pale green.
“How do you people travel like that without throwing up every time?” she rushes out, trembling.
“Most of my family members do, in fact, throw up. You haven’t yet, so consider yourself one of the strong ones.”
She’s limp with her eyes shut before I even finish the sentence.
I walk through the fifth floor’s eastern wing of the palace, which I normally have to myself, when Leona comes rushing around a corner, nearly knocking me over. I grab her by the shoulders to steady her as she gasps in surprise. “Blake! I heard you were back, and she–”
“She’s fine.” I slide the keys to my suite into her hand. “She’s lying down. Jumping here wasn’t easy on her.”
“Kenna tried to explain what happened, but it went right over my head. She’s cured? The curse is gone?”
“We’ll know for sure in a few days when the potions wear off.”
Leona exhales, her breath coming in a whoosh. “How? How could this possibly be real?”
“As far as I know, they used a counter curse, and Misty was able to use her powers from that point forward to heal the damage.” I purse my lips, shrugging a shoulder. “Admittedly, I know very little about dark magic.”
“You and me both,” she breathes, her cheeks stained a fiery red. She pats her chest like she’s trying to restart her heart. “Oh, Blake, thank you! I–I feel like I’ve been barely surviving the past few days. Oh, Marianna. Goddess, I need to go see her.”
“Where’s Skye?”
Leona takes another deep breath, trying to regain her composure. “She’s been following Soren around all day. Skye is a bit obsessed with Fallon, I’m afraid. She’s… she’s really taken to this place and everyone around.” Leona looks mildly unsure as she blinks up at me and then quickly glances away, her eyes locked on the hallway leading to my office and private suite. “She has no idea she’s related to any of you yet, but… Kenna and Maeve have been incredibly kind. I’ve been trying to take Skye back to the townhouse, but they won’t hear of it.”
“I told my parents about her earlier this morning.”
Leona looks up at me again with a heavy sigh. “You know I wanted you to do that from the beginning.”
“I know, and looking back, you were right.”
“Of course I was right. You were nineteen.”
I roll my lower lip between my teeth and match her sigh. “There’s nothing we can do about it now other than move on. Marianna will probably sleep for a while, hopefully the entire night. I have some notes from the witch who performed the counter curse that I need to take to Kenna.”
“Are your parents here? Maeve mentioned more people just arrived upstairs, but I was already on my way down here when I found out you’d come home.”
“Yes.” The word wobbles. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to cover my tracks, keep my emotions guarded, lately. Usually it comes naturally, but ever since I found myself in the same place as Marianna again, that damp, poorly lit hallway beneath the performing arts center… I feel like she flayed me open for the world to see.
And now, here I am, rocking on my heels, watching my mate’s mother eye me with skepticism. “Did anything else happen when you were in Crescent Falls? You seem different.”
“Marianna can explain everything. If she remembers.” I highly doubt she remembers much about those few minutes I spent back at Misty’s. I scooped her up the second I felt the mate bond knitting between us and brought her here, seeing the confusion and exhaustion in her eyes. I’m unsure she even felt it given the ungodly amount of herbs in her system.
I felt it, however. It’s the only thing on my mind other than my immense regret that… my inability to just be honest with her from the beginning was how she ended up with Dean, the man responsible for her shortened strand in the stars. If I’d just been there, none of this would have happened.
It was all my fault.
I turn Leona toward my suite and give her an encouraging nudge. She glances over her shoulder at me a few times before slipping into my darkened apartment, and I wait for the door to click shut before turning toward the recesses of the palace and hiking down the stairs to the fourth floor, which is where the family tends to congregate the most.
The pink room is a family favorite but is shockingly empty other than an enormous amount of boxes overflowing with toys I remember from childhood but haven’t seen in two decades. So is the long, narrow room with the massive dining table we use when the entire family gathers, which is rare these days. So are the numerous sitting rooms and studies that dot either wing.
But voices ring out when I find myself back on the balcony overlooking the grand foyer, and several stories below, Soren sprints into view with Skye hot on his heels, shrieking with laughter before disappearing from sight again.
“He told me he didn’t know what to do with kids,” Maeve says behind me. I resist the urge to jump out of my skin and slowly turn to look at her over my shoulder. She leans her hip against the balcony, Fallon resting in a sling across her chest. “Look at him now, though.” She chuckles, shaking her head. “He’s been letting her chase him all over the castle. Mom and I actually got some of our old toys out of storage for her to play with, but she wants Soren instead.”
I shouldn’t feel jealous, should I?
“He’s bored,” I reply dryly, and Maeve gives me a knowing smile. “He’s been stuck in this palace for weeks now–”
“Very bored. Well, that’s going to change any minute, I guess. I was just talking to your dad, and he mentioned Grandpa Ryatt is plotting something that involves Soren.”
“Soren is his heir to the Roguelands.”
Maeve’s expression darkens so deeply that the sea-green of her eyes fades to a stormy blue. “I’m… I’m aware of the rumors, yes.”
“Don’t consider it a rumor.”
“You’ve seen it in the stars or whatever?”
“No, but… who else, Maeve?”
The column of her throat bobs as she swallows. “I don’t want to think about what’s coming, what changes are coming. Fallon is just over a month old, and you have a kid… a mate, too.” She arches her brow. “Your scent changed.”
I run my tongue across my lower lip, rolling my eyes back to the now empty foyer. “That quickly, huh?”
“So Misty’s scheme was successful, then? Mom had a conniption about it. I was honestly jealous you got to leave and weren’t trapped in a castle with her for the past two days.”
“I’m not even entirely sure what they achieved in my absence.”
Maeve sighs, patting Fallon’s back. “A counter-curse. We thought about it, but honestly very few witches ever train in that kind of magic anymore. It’s blood magic, you know. One misstep and several people can die.”
“Several?”
“Oh, yeah. Counter-curses are always more dangerous than the original curse. What was the witch’s name again? Katie? Anyway, she could have easily cursed herself, Misty, and whoever just happened to be walking by the house on a midmorning stroll if she made any wrong moves. The risks always outweigh the rewards.”
“In this case, it was worth it.”
“This cannot happen again,” Maeve says, her eyes still dark and fixed on a random point on the wall across the foyer. “I can’t allow this to happen in the future.”
“It wasn’t your fault–”
“Contraband leaving Eastonia into Crescent Falls, into the hands of someone who doesn’t know a Goddess-damned thing about potions and magic? That feels like my fault.” Fallon fusses. Maeve plucks her from the sling and hands her to me, which I’m unprepared for. I grasp the baby and tuck her against my chest while Maeve continues to untangle herself from the sling. “Marianna likely won’t have her wolf back for some time as it stands. I wish–gods–I wish I could punish someone for this, make an example out of them in public.”
“The man who did this to her was punished by death.” It’s not enough. The look on Maeve’s face tells me she agrees.
“Marianna should recover; that’s the good news. I’d like to get Katie here in Moonrise to discuss exactly what she did in person, however. It feels awfully unfair that Crescent Falls has a witch trained in counter-curses, and we don’t even have one.”
“You said it’s rare–”
“Nothing feels impossible these days,” she cuts in, sniffling indignantly. “And I hate that Soren just–just found his freedom and is now being called, or summoned, or whatever, to be king of the same place that beat him down his entire life. I hate it. He knows it, too. We’ve talked about it at length. I hate that Brie and Kieran are stuck in Veiled Valley while Logan remains in Emberfyll waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’s pregnant again, you know.”
“I know. Another boy.”
“She’s convinced it’s a girl, but we know otherwise,” she says shortly, throwing me a look. Yeah, I painted Maeve a picture of Brie’s life to settle her nerves on Brie’s wedding night, but what else was going on during that time wasn’t something I let myself see. “Dad’s all up in arms, putting his Ghosts through extra training. They’re all exhausted. Hell, I brought Lexa here to help train my own forces, and she beat the shit out of all of them, and now my commanders are absolutely terrified of her and her gang of feral warriors she brought with her to ‘help’. Now, I have to send her out to Teshka, most likely, during the busiest planting season in Silverhide because we don’t know what’s coming next, and I–I should know. You should know.”
“I know something’s coming.”
“That’s not enough, Blake.”
“My mind hasn’t been–” Fallon sneezes so aggressively both of us jump. She sighs heavily before dropping her head back against my shoulder, her golden blonde curls tickling my chin. I stand perfectly still as the baby falls asleep, a dead weight in my arms, and Maeve… smiles softly, taking a deep breath, calming down.
“Look, Maeve, my mind has been in shambles since Marianna and Skye came back into my life. The voices quieted. Everything I used to see is out of reach now. I’ll need the orrery. I have a few mystics I can trust, but not many. Hannibal is like me somehow, which is why we can’t find him. He’s shielding himself, keeping himself and whatever plot is in the works, hidden.”
She stands in silence for several moments, considering my words. “Marianna was the thing that turned you off.”
I close my eyes, thankful for Fallon’s steady weight in my arms. “Yeah. She is.”
Skye’s loud screech below forces my eyes open, and I witness Soren and her running back in the direction they came, this time with Skye on Soren’s shoulders.
“He didn’t have a childhood,” Maeve whispers, like she didn’t mean to say it out loud. Her voice is smaller and sadder than I’ve ever heard. She turns to me, her eyes light and shining like polished sea-glass again. “Thank you for this.”
“For what?”
“Trusting us with who you really are. All these years, I thought you were just a pompous, arrogant asshole. I’m still not entirely convinced you aren’t, but you’re not the villain in my narrative like I thought you were. You were just trying to protect them. I get it.” She clasps me on the arm before turning to walk upstairs.
“Are you forgetting something?”
She looks over her shoulder, squinting at Fallon, who’s fast asleep on my shoulder. “I don’t want to wake her up. She’s pretty mean if she hasn’t had her four or five naps a day. You’ve got it.”
“Maeve–”
She disappears in a haze of crimson smoke, chuckling, leaving me on the balcony with a baby. Her baby. Her baby, who I’m holding for the first time.
“Goddess dammit,” I grumble, but Skye sprints through a darkened corridor, skidding to stop a few yards away. Soren, panting, bends over to rest his hands on his knees, weakly waving at me when he notices me standing there.
“Wanna trade?” he rasps, completely out of breath.
Skye edges toward me, her eyes glowing a soft violet as she inspects me from head to toe. “Mommy’s back?”
“Mommy’s back,” I echo. “She’s asleep, though.”
“We can play dolls then. Soren isn’t very good at it.”
He snorts a laugh, now bracing himself on the balcony, gulping down lungfuls of air, and I feel… light. Featherlight. Like this is it, regardless of what Maeve thinks and what our future holds.
This family. I didn’t think I’d ever have it.
I didn’t think it was in the stars for me.
Now, I’m realizing that even the stars are wrong sometimes.