Her grip tightens on my arm.
“I woke up one morning and she was just...gone. No one told me where. No one told me why.” Her voice cracks. “I was ninety before I stopped looking for her in crowds.”
Flashes of nights with my mom reading me bedtime stories, and caring for me when sick roll through my mind on repeat.
“The only difference in your childhood and mine?” Now she looks at me, eyes bright. “Is location.”
Thorns press against the underside of my skin. My magic wants out. Wants to tear through these walls and burn this whole system to Ash.
I breathe through it. Shove it back down.
Not again. I already bled for an hour the last time I let it slip.
I turn and look at the rectangular hole in the wall. I need to know she’s okay, but I can’t unknow what I know now. There’s no going back.
Human women raise Fae children.
But there is one more thing I need to know before looking.
“The women,” I turn back to Kestra. “Are they willing?”
It’s in the way she purses her lips that I know I don’t need an answer. And goddamn, but that hurts the most. “Kidnapped?” I choke on the word.
She nods.
I turn away.
Because in that moment a chasm opens between us and I can’t fill it right now. Not that it will always exist. But it exists right now.
I look through the small space.
And there, on the other side, sits my mom.
She’s eating a sandwich. Laughing with other women. Human women.
But it’s the way she laughs that breaks me. Head thrown back, one hand pressed to her chest like she’s trying to keep her heart inside. She’s always laughed like that. Too loud. Too much. Like joy is something you have to grab with both hands before it escapes.
I used to be embarrassed by that laugh. At school functions. At my graduation. I’d shush her and she’d just laugh harder.
I’d give anything to hear it right now.
My hand moves before I can stop it. Palm flat against the stone. Fingers spread like I could reach through. Like the wall might dissolve if I just push hard enough.
Thorns erupt from my fingertips. Tiny. Sharp. Digging into ancient rock.
I could tear through this wall. I could be beside her in thirty seconds. I could?—
And then what?
Lead Moros straight to her? Give him another body to threaten me with? Another blade to slide through her shoulder while I watch?
I pull my hand back. The thorns retract, leaving bloody crescents in my palm.
She’s right there. Twenty feet away. Laughing.
I’ve never been further from her in my life.
I spent two years ignoring my cousins’ calls. Deleting voicemails. Keeping everyone at arm’s length because it was easier than letting them see what I’d become.
