“I wouldn’t let anyone else do it. It was my honor. She didn’t want you to have to take care of her one day soon. She didn’t even want you to walk in and find her like that. I promised I would bury her.”
Her hands balled into fists. “All the magic you have, all the power and your stupid plants, your shadows and you didn’t have something to help her?”
I knew the pain too well. When my parents passed, I asked the same thing of Yaya. Maggie hauled back and slugged me right in the chest. The muscles flexed beneath her skin, corded tight with an awful tension. Luckily, she only half understood how to throw a punch and my breath only came out in a slight wheeze. It was okay. I could take all of her anger.
I wanted to soothe this hurt, to help her fall into the present because there was nothing either of us could do about the past. Helpless against her fury, selfishly, I needed her reassurance that we would both put this behind us.
“There was nothing to do.” My soul constricted, my voice on the edge of pleading.
Her silence dropped my heart into my boots.
“Okay,” she said.
That was it? Okay? I poured out the truth of one of the worst days of our lives and I got one tight word? My own fury rose up to match hers.
“Why did I bother saying anything? I should have let you keep failing to kill me.”
Maggie flinched and I regretted it, but neither of us would budge. She visibly struggled to collect herself, opening her mouth to say more but started walking again. I was proud she made the effort to communicate.
“I understand you did what you had to do,” she ground out. “There’s no revenge to take if Rue asked you to do it.”
The words felt right, but the tone sounded wrong.
“You don’t believe me?” I asked.
She turned on her heel and faced me. “It’s not that.”
Not even our confessions turned out to be simple. The conversation unraveled before me.
“Then talk to me like an adult. Use your words like you should do with your sister. I can understand words pretty well, but not if you don’t speak them.”
My words spilled out with regret. It was a low blow, but admittedly I was angry that I wasn't swimming in her immediate adoring absolution.
“Don’t scold me like a child. You basically just told me my mentor didn’t trust me enough to tell me she was dying. It’s a lot to process, Rat Face.”
We fought all the time, but not like this. I wanted to make a joke, or fuck her silly, but I cracked open my heart instead.
“Come here, Pumpkin.”
As if she saw the gaping wound before her, she came into my arms without complaint for once. I liftedus up onto the salamander to string her across my lap bride-style and rock her.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked, her voice muffled in my chest.
“You can cry now,” I told her.
Relief flooded me when I loosened something in her. Although she remained silent, my shirt grew wet. Maggie shook in my arms, clutching my hair as she burrowed further into my embrace. She drew my long curtain of hair around her like a cloak and I let her hide.
I kept up a stream of chatter, for her pride, for mine. The stiff grip on my hair hurt, but I didn’t move. Though it didn’t go how I imagined, we bled the festering wound between us. I didn’t want to hope for more when my crown still kept us apart, but it was a start. One that cinched the spell Maggie drew tight around my heart.
Chapter 13
Noth
The moment I crossed into Allfenheim, the connection reached all the way to the depths of my black heart. Growing things pulsed around me with recognition. The Calix perked up and Maggie watched in awe as it produced its first blushing rose.
Stuffed full of flowers, vines, nightshades and every plant imaginable, the pass had been free of monsters and animals for generations, so nothing greeted us but the rush of wind through the leaves. There wasn’t much else to mark the occasion other than a crippling wave of nausea and the sense of standing outside of time. My last trip through the Pass of Good Brothers was a drugged memory of being tossed to a madman. I had never been so helpless in my long life and I never wanted to be again. The familiar rock outcroppings were both horrifying and comforting. It was good to see home, even if the passended up ironically named, given the division between the Fae and Elven kingdoms it connected.
Relations with the Fae hadn’t been chummy, but were downright antagonistic these past few decades. The Fae were too coarse, too free with their magic. Even though their current King was cooler than ice in winter, his influence hadn’t seemed to moderate the winged-bastard’s thirst for fighting and fucking. I liked being between Maggie’s thighs in interesting ways, but those bastards had a full rut that went on for days. By comparison, Elves were a light of reason and scholarship. It was like our kingdoms were mirror opposites. I personified chaos on the throne and the Fae embodied it as a territory.
