Page 26 of The Reaping Rose

Before coming here, Callum and I scoured the limited prison records in the village to see if any particular Fae stood out as having the possibility of being my mother. Nothing stuck out at the time, and from what I recall, the name Idunn was not on any page I read.

“How long have you been here?”

A curious smile crawls her cheeks. “Time is not of importance in this place.”

“It is when you’ll suffer the Beating if you’re here too long.”

“The Beating?” Genuine confusion fills her eyes.

“It’s what happens to Fae without magic to nourish them. Their heartbeats quicken until they die.”

She huffs a laugh, shaking her head, like the thought is utterly ridiculous. “Ah, yes, I’ve heard the whispers.”

The whispers?

The Beating is the reason Fae are brought to Alyssium and locked in the prison. And even if the Crown might have buried the fate of prisoners from the kingdom, it became common knowledge after the Collision first started claiming Fae near the Well almost three hundred years ago. For Idunn to be unfamiliar with the term, she would have had to have been in here longer than that, which isn’t possible, or she would have suffered the Beating centuries ago.

Unless celestial Fae aren’t bound to those same mortal limits?

My gaze moves to the runes containing her. Clearly certain rules still apply to us all.

Idunn moves, her white gown dripping like moonlight over her body. Unlike Wilder, who I found beaten and battered, cut and hurt from years within the prison, her skin is unmarred. Her dress is grander than anything worn at the parties in the Ley Court.

She paces to the far corner of the cell, gazing out as if there is more to see than darkness. With how the prison toyed with my memories as I walked inside, maybe for her, there is.

I climb to my feet, drawing her attention. From a distance, shadows cast over her face, marking the brightness of her freckles. I brush my fingertips over mine.

“Why do our freckles glow?”

“Why do the stars?” Idunn asks in return.

“Because they’re burning.”

“Are you not?” Her gaze skims me, unimpressed.

“Do you mean my magic?”

Idunn looks away, not answering my question.

“I can’t use my magic here.” I approach the conversation from another angle. “Alyssium doesn’t have any.”

“As if that matters.” She lifts a hand, palm up, until an orb of white light forms above it.

We’re surrounded by obsidian on an island with no magic, and somehow, she summons it as if it is nothing.

“That’s impossible. You shouldn’t be able to do that here.”

“Why not? You did. I heard the whispers. The girl who raised the dead.”

“You knew that was me?”

She clamps her fingers into a fist, the orb vanishing. “Only my magic could do as much in a place without.”

“So we have the same magic?” Hope swells inside me.

“We do,” she confirms, her eyes narrowing. “But you do not know how to wield it.”

“I’m figuring it out.”