If he had been present during my growing-up years, he would know things were not always that simple.
“It’s not because I don’t trust you,” Maris said, making it dazzlingly obvious that she did not trust him.
“No, I understand,” Corbyn returned.
I would rather have drowned in one of my awkward conversations with Fear rather than stand in this one.
Tay cast a startled look at Fear every time he moved, making it obvious that Fear’s restraint had not been forgiven.
I was desperate to talk to Fear about whether I had failed my brother, but I was not going to attempt that conversation in front of this audience.
“Tay and I will spend some time getting to know each other,” Corbyn offered, which was exactly what we needed. None of us wanted Tay alone right now, and Tay clearly would not like to be left with Fear.
“You are not subtle,” Tay said to Corbyn, without any apparent rancor.
“I’m not trying to be.” Corbyn sounded both pleasant and unapologetic. “I’m trying to give your sister room to work and your mother some privacy. And I wouldn’t mind the company.”
Tay, always eager to help in what ways he could, smiled. “All right.”
Maris headed toward the tent quickly, as if even she were afraid she would lose her nerve.
Fear stopped me with a hand on my arm. “You know my question.”
He was making me ask if I wanted his presence. Well, I’d told him to leave me to suffer. Very recently. I had earned that. “Would you come with me?”
“Of course.” He spoke as if there was any other possible answer.
The two of us went in together.
My mother’s hands knit together. There was no hiding her nervousness, especially now that it was just her and me and Fear. “How do we begin?”
It was a meaningless question. She had seen this already with Tay, and she was already sitting on the edge of the cot. She shook her head, rejecting her own reluctance. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Lay back,” I suggested.
She did, her hands flat at her sides. She looked at the canvas ceiling of the tent with the expression she’d worn through difficult things my whole life. She was not brave exactly. She was more practical than brave; she set herself to what was required and she would endure.
Her enchantment was different from the others. This one was rough, made in haste and grief. Heaviness settled on me as I pressed the tip of the blade into my own mother’s skin.
The first layer came loose easily. Too easily. I had braced for resistance and found instead something almost willing, as if the enchantment had been waiting to release.
Maris made a sound, and my head jerked up, afraid I’d caused her pain. Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling but distant; her lips were parted in shock.
“There were lanterns.” Her voice had gone soft and sounded as if it came from far away. “All the way from the waterline to the cottages. Always lit by magic. Ilena’s gift. Mostly, she said, because she didn’t want it on her conscience if I tripped and fell. I was always a little clumsier than the shifters.”
She was smiling. “They had a party for me. A birthday party. I wasn’t used to that. All the time I was growing up, there was never any acknowledgement of my day. But Corbyn and Ilena plotted, and Corbyn made me pick a birthday.”
I thought of my fingers on Fear’s chest, of Fear urging me to imagine my sigil. Corbyn asking for her to choose a birthday had been only sweet.
The last of the magic released. Then the gory enchantment, with its sharp edges, was pressing into my palm. I held this one a little too tightly instead of flinging it away as I had the others.
Maris inhaled sharply as if she had just remembered more she had forgotten. “I should go find them. Ilena will want to know about the?—”
Then the last of the sweetness dissolved into the present. Grief came over her face, and I realized too late that she had looked young for a moment, despite the crow’s feet and the touch of ash at her temples, when her face returned to the cruel present.
“Ilena,” she said again, her voice more quiet. She looked past me to Fear. There were tears in her gaze now. “What happened to them?”
“They’re gone, Maris.” Fear was at my side, his shoulder brushing mine as he knelt in front of her so they were nearer, eye to eye.
