Father stalks out of the room, flanked by the two guards, while my awakened family members blink around the room in confusion. Some sink into vacant chairs while others rub their temples. A few seem to have gained their bearings already and eye me with keen looks.
Looks that aren’t at all comforting.
“Lovey,” Mother says in a sing-song voice. She lays a gentle hand on my arm. “You said you don’t remember how you broke the sleeping spell. Are there other things you don’t recall?”
“Some,” I say. “My mind is hazy right now. Breaking the curse must have affected me too.”
Her lips pull into a pout and she gathers me in a hug. “My poor girl.”
Emotion rises in my throat as she softly brushes her hand over my hair. While I’m still tense from these confusing events, I feel some relief too. Comfort in being hugged so tenderly by my mother.
Stars, this is mymother!
I’ve been so distraught over my confusion that I haven’t had a chance to revel in the beauty of this moment. My plan worked! My family is awake. My father’s throne is saved. And my mother—the woman I’ve always wanted to meet, whose love and pride and approval I’ve always hoped to gain, even when I thought there was a good chance I was an orphan—is here before me. Hugging me.
She squeezes me tighter. “My dearest Rosaline, I’m so sorry you’ve had to suffer. This is all Vintarys’ fault. When he’s dead—”
“Dead?” I pull back slightly, just enough to catch the narrowing of Mother’s eyes.
“Does that concern you, Rosaline?”
I open my mouth but don’t know what to say. Mr. Blackwood’s death shouldn’t bother me in the slightest. We forged an alliance to break the curse, but…
Pink dancing slippers flash in my mind, but the image is gone before I can make sense of it.
“Vintarys must die.” Mother’s voice takes on a chilling tone. “He has a power over you that we cannot allow him to wield.”
She isn’t wrong about that. While I’d assumed my individual curse—the one that binds me to iron if it touches my flesh—would break along with the sleeping spell, I seem to recall Mr. Blackwood insisting that wasn’t the case.
But when did he say that?
I remember a runaway horse…
Wings that wrapped around me…
“Until then,” Mother says, “you are a danger to us.”
“What—” My voice cuts off in a shout as hands encircle my forearms, wrenching my arms from around my mother and tugging them behind my back. A glance over my shoulder shows a pair of my uncles standing just behind me. They must have crept from the table while my mother was hugging me. My face whips back to her. She now stands a few feet away. Her expression brims with pity but she makes no move to get my uncles to release me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, my love, but we don’t know what demands Vintarys left you with.”
“He helped me break the curse.”
She arches a brow. “He helped you? Why?”
“Both of our efforts were required,” I rush to explain. “It was the only way. He benefitted because the spell would break for his family…” My words die in my mouth as I realize they are the worst ones I could say.
She purses her lips so tightly they almost lose color. “Are you saying the Lemurias are awake now too?”
I give a wary nod.
“And you haven’t a clue what you did to wake us up?”
A jerky shake of my head.
She huffs. “Well, until Vintarys is dead, we can’t know what he might make you do. He could have ordered you to slaughter us in our sleep this very night.”
“He didn’t,” I say, and every part of me hums with the truth of my words. I don’t know how I know, but I am certain he’s done nothing to hurt my family since my birthday party.
