My hands wrapped around the box, letting the bucket rope go. Energy zapped through the night and down my muscles. Emotion I couldn’t explain wheezed in my chest.
Shaking, I pried open the lid. Inside, all I could see was a substance almost like solidified honey.
A bell in the distance rang out, the first stroke of the midnight hour right as my fingers brushed at the substance.
It glowed, humming with not just a deep familiarity...
It. Was.Me.
Crack!
Whether the sound was inside me or outside, it made no difference.
My senses were ripped from me. A cry shredded up my throat, blackness engulfing me as magic exploded inside my body, taking me away from the present, dropping me instantly in the past.
Exactly twenty years ago.
Like with the fae book, I stood in the battlefield of the fae war, the sounds of metal clanging, of death screams rattling, of magic popping and crackling as what was left of the barrier between the worlds splintered and dissolved. I was in a different place, closer to the Seelie Queen’s castle, figures running by me, dead bodies littering the ground.
“Eabha?” The sound of my mother’s name whipped my head to the side, confusion clouding my mind. Was it a coincidence? Another woman named that? My mom was supposed to be giving birth to me right now.
“Eabha,” the woman’s voice called again, zeroing me in on her. Her light brown hair in a braid; dressed in black, she darted to another figure.
Everything in me froze, my eyes absorbing, while my brain stumbled over the scene.
My mother, her picture still in my pocket, was there. Not in the cottage giving birth to me, but here in the middle of the battle. She hissed, one hand grabbing the woman’s arm, her other pressing against her pregnant belly, bending over with a groan.
“You shouldn’t be here!” The other woman’s voice shook with fear, her head darting around, searching for attackers. “The baby is coming.”
My mother grunted, sweat dripping down her face. “It’s too early.”
“Clearly not! My niece is coming, Eab.”
Niece? I blinked at the woman, now seeing how closely some of her features resembled my mother’s, though her hair was more reddish-brown. I never knew I had an aunt or any family on my mother’s side.
“You need to go. It’s too dangerous. Think of your baby.”
“I am,” my mother seethed, anger pushing through her pain. “This is allfor her.” She grunted through another contraction, crying out in pain. “I am the leader of this family now. If I don’t fight, we have no hope, Morgan.”
Morgan dipped her head, bowing. “What if he sees you?”
“He won’t.”
“How can you love him and keep the truth of who you are from him?”
“It’sbecauseI love him,” my mother spat, her head shaking in sorrow. “If he knew...”
“You mean if he knew, not only what you are, but the fact we are fighting for the opposite side as him...”
I sucked in, stepping back.
Opposite side?
My father fought against the cruel Seelie Queen. That meant she was fightingforAneira—in support of tyranny, of humans being nothing more than slaves—not against.
Why?
Betrayal knifed into my chest.
