Still grinning, Jett reached toward the board to flip down a character, then froze. His gaze turned glassy, distant.
Unease curled inside my gut, exploding into fear the moment his entire body spasmed. His pain-laced cry shattered through the room. Muscles locked taut, he tipped sideways and crashed onto the floor.
I was kneeling beside him a heartbeat later, running my hands over his shaking arms. “What’s wrong?”
Jett whimpered. A sheen of clammy sweat broke out on his forehead. He clutched his arm above the elbow. Iknew…I knew what was wrong right before he answered, “Mom.” Tears welled in his eyes, glistening on his long black lashes. “It’s broken,” he gasped, his breathing tight. “I think her spine is too.”
Shit, shit,shit—
His trembling body was light in my arms as I scooped him up and carried him out of the rumpus room, sending my senses swirling ahead of me, hunting for my mother.
In a blur of unnatural speed, I tracked her down. She lay injured at the foot of the foyer staircase with a few of our staff fussing over her. A wicker basket lay on its side halfway down the staircase, with her favorite white climbing roses scattered all about.
A soft whirring, clicking noise caught my attention. I spotted beneath a low running table an upside-down skateboard, its wheels slowly spinning.
My younger brother, Caidan, burst through the front door right as I pushed off the last step. We arrived by my mother’s side at the same time and leaned over. My mother’s skin was ashen as she trembled, biting her bottom lip against the pain. Both Caidan and I shared a quick, excited look. “Did you die?”
She huffed a pained laugh. “Why is that the first question anyone asks of me?”
No one knew if my mother was immortal. She hadn’t aged in the past decade. She remained as youthful as the day she’d given birth to me. The only way we’d know if she was immortal was ifshe died…anddidn’t. But it wasn’t anything that anyone actually wanted to put to a test.
“Noooo,” she answered. “I did not die.”
I twisted my mouth to the side. Part of me was slightly disappointed.
I gently lowered Jett onto the stone floor beside her. She winced, groaning as she raised her good arm, settling it over his shoulder. He curled into her side, stifling a whimper, and she feathered her fingers through his hair, smoothing the long locks from his sweaty forehead. “I’m so sorry, little shadow.”
With my keen senses, I could hear a faint crinkling sound as broken bones knitted back together to reform inside her body.
“It’s okay, Mom.” His voice quivered with agony and muffled slightly as he buried his face into her side. We had all inherited my mother’s unnatural healing ability, but what Jett experienced was a unique bond between the two of them. Her nickname for him reflected the connection they shared. He alone physically felt her suffering. And it was more than that. He was her shadow, clinging to her skirts from the moment he was a toddler, spending more time with her than any of us. It had even been a huge pain in the ass to convince him to play Guess Who? with me, since, if he had a choice, he’d have spent the entire day by her side.
“Gray.” Caidan jerked his chin toward the antique tables running along the walls. He shut the front entrance while the staff secured the side entrances leading into other rooms and retreated to leave us alone. With the doors closed and sunshine banished, the foyer dimmed considerably.
I knew what my mother needed to take away Jett’s pain. I grabbed a small terracotta warrior from an intricately carved cabinet.
Caidan ran a hand roughly through his spiked hair, and I noticed he’d spotted the skateboard jutting out from beneath theside table. It was more breath than words, but I heard it all the same.“Ah, shit…”
Yeah, I was starting to get an idea of exactly what had happened to Mom. I shot him a black look, and his gaze flashed to mine, filled with remorse and worry. He rubbed the flats of his hands over his face, then dropped them to his hips. He should be worried. When Dad found out about this… Holy hells, I would not want to be in his shoes. The ultimate punishment was one lick of Oskar’s whip.
My bare feet slapped against the stone, echoing down the long hallway as I rushed to reach her side. Swiftly kneeling, I reached toward her hand, then stilled as I saw her eyes widen, alarm shining in their depths, when she took in the artifact clenched in my grasp. “Not that one. It’s from the Han Dynasty!” she cried out, horrified.
“Which one, then?”
Her gaze bounced between all the antique statues and urns on the cabinet. “Maybe the…”
I decided for her by pressing the small statue into her trembling hand, curling her fingers around its sides, careful of the finger that was broken. She couldn’t move her right arm, as the bone had shattered above the elbow, exactly as my littlest brother had said earlier. “Who cares, Mom?” I grumbled. “We’ve got a gazillion more, just as rare.”
Her agony-pinched features pouted, but then she relented with a rough sigh.
My mother smoothed her good hand over Jett’s upper arm and closed her eyes in concentration.
Caidan and I took a step back as light glowed from her and made her sweat-slick skin shine. Golden, otherworldly strands of magic, threadlike and softly humming with power, wove around her body and coiled about the statue held in her loose grip.
The gloomy foyer was gilded with gold, and the soft light made the adamere threaded through the stone in our home glitter. She stole Jett’s pain, slowly leaching it from him, and channeled it like a conduit from his body to hers, into the statue. The figurine vibrated and danced in her palm, and a crack split its side. Tiny grains of clay dust spilled onto the dark floor.
My brother’s stiff body slowly relaxed, and his breathing evened out and quietened. But my mother’s breath quickened and became labored. Her chest rose and fell, and deep furrows carved themselves into her forehead and around her features. Slowly…so slowly, the otherworldly light faded, and she let out a weary sigh. She opened her eyes and cupped a slender hand beneath Jett’s chin, tilting his face up. “Better?”
He nodded, but refused to leave her side.
