“Good point,” Clary said.
Itwasa good point, but not one I wanted to expend energy on at present. “I have no idea. Maybe it’s just unpredictable right now.”
“Well,” Clary said. “You need to eat and sleep.” She helped me sit forward and fluffed the pillows behind me. “Pass the tray, Dori.”
Dori set the tray on my lap, and the place inside me that had been dead and cold for the longest time flickered with the first ribbons of warmth. This…them, surrounding me, checking up on me. They cared too. Genuinely cared. Panic squeezed my lungs.
I breathed through it. It was fine. I was fine. This was a means to an end. Their being here meant I was doing my job. Finding allies to reach my goal. They’d serve a purpose, and once I had what I needed, I was out of here.
The panic slowly subsided.
“I’ll collect your notes from classes tomorrow,” Dori said.
“No. It’s fine. I’m going to class.” I explained Vitra’s terms.
“Wow, that does not sound like him at all,” Benedict said. “He’s usually so even-tempered and controlled.”
The calm, collected Vitra seemed to have evaporated, leaving a domineering stick-up-the-ass eager to punish me for something that wasn’t my fault. But if he thought I’d concede, then he was strongly mistaken.
CHAPTER 25
There are places between waking and dreaming where messengers reside. It is here that we can often find the truth…
THE HIDDEN WORLD BY ALFRED REGENT
Mum sets a bowl of Onyx hot pot in front of me. “There you go, luv, just the way you like it.”
“Thanks, Mum, but you didn’t have to.”
She strokes my hair and presses a kiss to my temple. “I wanted to.”
This is my favorite time of day, when the late afternoon sun paints the kitchen in warm hues of copper and gold, and the world feels like a safe place.
But Mother looks tired and drawn. The pretty yellow-and-pink scarf covering her sparse, patchy hair looks stark against her waxy, sallow skin.
I want to wrap her in cotton wool and keep her forever. My eyes grow hot, and I drop my gaze to the food.
“It smells delicious.” I eat, swallowing past the crush of emotion in my throat. “Are you having some?”
“Maybe later.”
She pulls out a chair and joins me at the dining table. “You’ll be all right, you know, Maya. You won’t have to worry about a thing.”
The food turns to ash in my mouth. “I don’t care about money, Mum. I don’t want it. I’d give up everything if it meant I could keep you.”
Her sigh is filled with the weight of the world. “There are many things we can control, but death is not one of them. I’m tired, sweetheart. I’m ready. I need you to be, too.”
She wants me to tell her it’s okay. She wants me to say the words that will release her, but I can’t. I can’t let her go. Not yet. Not?—
A shadow falls across the room, blocking out the sunlight streaming in from the windows. “What’s happening?” I look to Mother, but she’s gone. “Mother? Mother, where are you?” This isn’t how it goes. This isn’t right.
A huge bird flies into the room, inky black wings snapping closed as it lands on the table. A rook. I’ve seen them in the park, but this one is larger, and its beady eyes are filled with intelligence.
A man’s voice invades my mind. “You have to see. You have to know.”
“What? No. This is my dream. Bring her back! Bring my mother ba?—”
My house vanishes, and I’m in a forest clearing, standing outside a circle made of flowers and toadstools that gleam in the moonlight.
