Her eyes shoot up. “You threw this gem into the loch? Why?”
“Because I believe it’s the very same gem that the Salt Witch used to curse the men of my family after she was fired from her position at Leith.”
“The Salt Witch worked at Leith?”
“Tell me.” I try to give her time to remember this herself, but I’m anxious to get us on the same page as much as possible. “Tell me how Olympia got the gem before she leaped into the sea.”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t in the story.” Fable scrunches her eyebrows together adorably as she tries to remember, and it makes me smile.
“Read between the lines, Fable.Feelbetween the lines.”
“I—” She pushes a hand through her hair, then looks up into the starry sky before uttering, “I don’t know.”
“It was passed down for generations.”
“In your family?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Inyours.”
Alder
“That’s how I knew it had to be you. Hundreds of years, and it took you finding me again through time and space.”
“Why now?” she asks.
“The stars aligned, I guess.” I pull her close to me and touch her earlobe with my lips. “I try not to ask questions that don’t matter in the scheme of things.”
“But—”
“Tell me, do you remember anything else?”
“About what?”
“Then? Or more recently?”
“Should I?” She knits her brow together in a cute way.
“Yes,” I answer honestly. She doesn’t know the window for us to be together like this is closing. Timing matters; I have to make her understand that. “What about the Salt Witch? Do you remember her curse?”
“Of course, from ash to dust, from salt to sky—”
“That’s meant to be Skye, with an ‘e’ on the end,” I interject. “It’s a curse that’s poisoned those it touches.”
“How do you know so much about it?” she asks.
“Because,” I answer, “I was there when it was first breathed to life.”
Her eyebrows shoot up.
“And so were you.”
“What?” Her eyes search mine wildly.
“Do you know why the witch placed the curse on the gem?” She shakes her head, so I continue. “To encourage the wearer’s revelation and to seek truth and light. It’s meant especially for women to wear to ward themselves off the evil that cloaks itself in sheep’s clothing in the physical realm.”
“The physical realm…” she whispers, nodding softly.
“The Salt Witch’s daughter was grossly abused, treated like trash, and thrown away by a rotten man.”
