Page 59 of Into The Green

"What other choice do I have?"

"You leave. I can give you a stone that will light up in your palm while you are on the right path back to the human realm and blank out as soon as you take one foot in the wrong direction. Or," she said, sitting back with a shrug.

"Or?"

"Or you stay here with me. There's nowhere safer in either realm for you. I can teach you to harness your power. I can teach you to control it and your urges as they begin to surface. I can make you independent. I can make you strong enough to not need guides. I can give you a life here in The Green. You can leave any time you like and take your life into your own hands when you feel ready. There are no clauses here. I am offering you asylum and knowledge like I would offer any other woman who needs it of me. It's an offer only a fool would refuse."

And a huge part of me agreed with her, ached for that. I didn't like having to rely on Jasper and Doyle to tell me what I could eat, where I could go, who I should and shouldn't talk to and how. I didn't like feeling like a kindergartner surrounded by high school seniors. I wanted to be able to take care of myself. I wanted to be self-sufficient, even in The Green. I wanted to know all that she could teach me about fae, about herbal medicine, about the rules of The Green.

I wanted that almost as much as I wanted to see Jade brought to safety.

The question was, could I be that selfish?

--

Jasper

"You're going to need to explain this to me. Cliffsnotes version. I have a friend and sister to save."

"Jade?" she asked, eyes going wide. "What has happened to Jade?"

"Someone took her to the Dark realm and that is all you are getting until you give me something back," I said, untangling from her body and taking a safe couple of steps back from Baba Yaga's property.

"I'm Alex. Alexandrite. I'm... honey, I'm your mother," she said, brows knitted like she didn't understand how I didn't know that.

"My mother's name is Opal. Believe me, you seem like you'd be much more preferable to her cold and ruthless ass, but she's my mom."

"Declan told you that?" she asked, eyes going sad. "How could he do that? How could he let you believe that evil, conniving bitch is your mother?"

"I really don't have time for the crazy talk, Alex," I said with an apologetic shrug.

"It's not crazy talk," she snapped, swiping at a tear that had slipped out of eyes that did have a striking similarity to Jade's. "Declan and I were eighteen when we got together. We were happy for two years. We were planning to marry when I became pregnant with you and Jade. Then my sister," she spat the word like it poisoned her tongue, "worked a spell on Declan, forcing him into marriage the night before I gave birth. The families wouldn't stand for a divorce, you see," she said, her voice going hollow. "And the law of the land is that the children go with their father. So they took you. He took you," she said on a sob. "He took you from me. I got to nurse you each once and you were ripped from me and put into the arms of that ice queen. I had no rights. I had no where to go."

An image flashed into my head of my father's memory back in his dungeon when I forced my way in. Him screaming at Opal for ruining their lives then cradling us to him and sobbing. All of it made sense. All of it rang true.

"So you came here," I said, almost choking on the realization.

"I came here because I was young and petty and bent on revenge."

A horrible thought crossed my head as I stiffened. "Alex," I said, my tone cautious, "what did you ask Baba Yaga?"

"I asked her to curse the rest of his days, to make sure he would never be happy with her."

And he never was. The only problem was, she must have left out the with her when she'd made the request, because all I felt inside my father was rage and hollowness and sadness. There was not even a sliver of happiness, nowhere inside. He was one-hundred percent dark. Baba Yaga, through my mother's wishes, created the monster that had raised me, that had tormented me and Jade, that had tortured me. Unwittingly, by her own account, being young and petty and bent on revenge, she was responsible for most of the bad in my childhood.

"What is he like now?" she asked and I didn't miss the hint of desperation there, the need to know. Not because she hated him, but because she still loved him. Even after all the years.

I took a breath and pointed to my face, my chest, turned and showed her my back before facing her again. "This was my homecoming present," I said and her face fell. "Alex, that spell ripped all the happiness from his life. He was all dark. And he took that out on me and Jade our entire childhoods until we ran away to the human realm."

"I did this," she said, eyes filling as her hand landed next to the carved word on my chest. "I'm responsible for this."

"You didn't know..."

"I should have known," she insisted, shaking her head, letting the tears flow without swiping at them. "Baba Yaga told me that it wasn't exact, that things could always go wrong. I was so angry, so heartbroken, that I didn't care. I did this through my own selfishness. God, you must hate me."

"I don't even know you," I said, trying to block out the swirling emotions inside her, the overwhelming guilt that made it hard to swallow, the sadness that felt like a black hole in my chest, the need for forgiveness, as strong as the need for water after a week long thirst. Her mind flashed with visions of a younger her with a younger version of my father, a father I never knew, smiling, happy, loving, gentle with her. I saw a sticky, bloody little me be pressed to her chest only to have an equally sticky and bloody Jade join me. I saw the door open and the families on both sides charge in and rip us from her, hand us to Opal who had her trademark evil smile on. I saw her fracture apart after. I saw my own father's devastation. I saw lives being torn apart in one evil act.

"Jasper..."