Authors: A. M. Hudson
“
Right. Sorry. Didn’t think of that.”
I laughed. “Now you’re just starting to sound like me.”
“
Well, rather than sound like you, can I have your power, please?” he said, and I giggled. “That’s not fair. You’re not supposed to be cooler than me.”
“
Well, maybe you’ll get some wicked new talent soon. You’ve only been officially sworn in on the Stone for two weeks.”
“
Very true. I guess I have a whole month worth of a lifetime to find out, right?” he said.
My shoulders sunk. “It would’ve been nice to see how powerful you became after another century.”
“
Yes. But, perhaps I’ll pass that power down to my daughter.”
I laid a hand across my belly, thinking about what Eve said. And a part of me wondered if maybe, in some small way, she meant that our child held the key to saving David. “I did that pregnancy test.”
“
And?” I heard the smile in his voice.
“
It was negative.”
A long moment of silence followed before his deep, whispery voice came down the line, distorted with a bit of static. “I’m sorry.”
“
There’s always next time, right?”
“
Right,” he said in an almost quick, insincere manner. “Now, what were you doing, exactly, when you broke my baby brother’s arm?”
I laughed. “I was running away so I wouldn’t have to kiss him.”
My ability to silence him surfaced again. “Okay, I’m going to assume there’s quite a story behind that.”
“
There is.” I sat down on my bed and crossed my legs. “Remember when I threw that guy at training the other day?”
“
Yeah.”
“
Jase said it wasn’t my blue light that did it. It was telekinesis.”
“
Telekinesis?”
“
Mm-hm. Apparently I can snap bones with, too.”
“
Okay, just . . . I need a second to get my head around this.”
I smiled, letting him have his second.
“
So, you have telekinesis? You didn’t snap his bone with your bare hands, but with . . . your mind?”
“
Yes. Because I thought he was the one that was hurting me.”
“
What do you mean?”
“
He told me I could move things with my mind, that the power had surfaced the other day out of necessity, and that if we could recreate a situation where I felt threatened, it would surface again.”
“
So he hurt you?”
“
No. He tried to kiss me.”
“
Right.” He paused again, clearly seething on the other end of the line. “Just give me the full story from start to finish.”
“
Okay, well, he was throwing stones into the ocean, and I was headed down to the beach. I asked him to show me how to throw them with my mind, and he said we needed high stakes to force my power out of hiding. So we agreed that. . .”
“
The wager was a kiss?” David asked, but not in a dull, flat tone, more like he was laughing.
“
Um, yeah. We were playing keep-off. If he got the stone, I had to kiss him.”
“
And if he
didn’t
get the stone?”
“
I—”
“
Right. So he didn’t believe for a second that you’d actually use that power, did he?”
“
Of course he did. But I guess that was my grand prize—the knowledge of power.”
“
Fine. So you were running from him?”
“
Yes. But, when he captured the stone and he was standing right in front of me, all geared up to accept his prize, I couldn’t do it. And I was holding the stone in my hand, and it got really hot.”
“
Why?”
“
I thought Jase—”
“
Jas
on
,” he warned.
“
Jason,” I corrected, rolling my eyes, “was doing it to me, you know, making it burn to make me fight. But even
he
got scared when my hand started melting.”
“
Melting?”
“
Yeah. The stone got so hot my hand fused shut and I couldn’t get it out. Jason stepped in to help me, but I thought he’d make it worse. So I kind of, I dunno, I didn’t want him to touch me, and then he just fell to the floor. When the stone stopped burning, his arm was broken, and I don’t really remember doing it.”
“
Do you remember how you got the stone to stop burning?”
“
I melted it,” I said simply. “I felt it turn to cold glass in my hand, and then it just melted.”
“
You . . . you
melted
it?”
“
Uh-huh.” I nodded.
“
Okay, I’m gonna need some time to process this,” he said distractedly, then came back into the conversation with a completely different tone. “On another note, did you go see Arthur about that rash?”
My hand went to my hip to scratch it. “No.”
“
Why not?”
I inhaled to the deepest part of my lungs and let it out. According to the book Petey showed me, the one safely back under my bed, I already knew what the rash was. I just wasn’t sure Arthur could mix up a remedy to fix a Mark of Betrayal, and I wasn’t really sure what I’d done wrong, either. So, until I figured this out, the last thing I wanted to do was tell anyone about it. “He’s my uncle, David. I feel kind of funny talking to him about that stuff.”
“
Don’t be silly, Ara. The fact that he is your uncle is exactly why you can talk to him about anything. And he’s seen it all, my love, not just every ailment known to man, but he’s seen your entirely naked body, too. Who do you think stitched your organs back in after you fell off the lighthouse?”
I cringed.
“
So don’t feel embarrassed around him. Just go show him and let him fix you.”
“
Okay.” I looked at the floor just under the corner of my bed. “I’ll go see him now.”
“
Thank you. And call me as soon as you’re done.”
“
I will.” I hung up and stuffed the phone in my pocket as I landed on my hands and knees and lowered my face to the ground, peering under the bed. The book was still there, undiscovered. Clearly the maids didn’t sweep under here often.
I reached in and pulled it out, sitting with my back against the mattress after. There was only one sure-fire way to find a cure for anything, and that was to find the
cause
. But no matter how many times I studied this book, I never really found anything other than one conclusion about my role as this ordained goddess: I was an open book, and all my secrets were painted in cryptic ink on my body for all to see. None of the Marks I’d read about seemed to be anything more than images that told stories; each one shaped differently according to what I liked to call its ‘genre’. I knew there were Marks that could cause the bearer damage, heartache, all kinds of things, but none of these fit that category. Not even this so-called Mark of Betrayal. Far as I knew, it was harmless.
I flipped through the pages again, taking mental notes, and when I came to the page Petey showed me, stopped and ran my hand over it. There was only the one English translation, and I hadn’t yet learned enough words of the Ancient Language to decipher anything other than what I already knew. But I knew a few people who could. Only problem was, that would mean involving other people.
I lifted my top and checked the Mark. Just like the drawing in front of me, it was snakelike, wrapping my waist and hip from my rib to the soft patch of skin just above my pubic bone. It was red, raised, itchy, and black on top, like an incomplete tattoo.
“
Betrayal.” I read the word aloud, smudging the ink slightly with my fingertip. I hadn’t done anything that would betray anyone, as far as I knew, unless Mother Nature considered falling off the lighthouse a betrayal.
I closed the book, shrugging. Maybe She did. Maybe, in Her opinion, being careless enough to be on a lighthouse and fall in the first place was betrayal. Who knew?
The only solid conclusion I had was that I’d done something to betray someone or something and, as an Auress, I couldn’t hide from it—like every secret thought or act that betrayed my crown would be catalogued physically. And that thought made me look up, even though the answer wasn’t above my sliding glass door. But something in my own words clicked: betrayal to the crown. There were things I could do as queen, decisions I could make to my own free will, provided I always had the peoples’ best interests in mind. So maybe that was it. Maybe I’d made some decision, committed some act that I hadn’t realised was going against my crown. If I could figure that out and put it right, maybe I could get rid of this Mark myself. But, to figure it out, I’d have to think carefully back to everything I did the day I fell off that lighthouse, and check that against my notes on the laws of the Lilithian reign, and maybe even against some of the known laws of Nature.
I snapped the book shut and stood up. I had a lot of study to do.
The flames burned low in the open fire across from me, their golden glow flickering against my hands and my books, lighting the words on the page. I could see now why Arthur lit the fire when he came here to read at night. It really was quite a lonely place, but not so desolate with those sparkling embers, and the smoky smell of burning wood kind of ‘took me home’ in a sense.
I sat down with another book in hand to cross reference, but the lure of Jase’s diary was calling me in a voice louder than the one seeking the answer about my Mark.
“
Okay, okay. Just a little look,” I said to myself and shoved the giant Book of Shadows aside, its dusty pages snapping shut like an iron door. Jase’s book was small, no bigger than a short novel, with the leather having been bent so many times the spine was wrinkled and looked almost dirty between the cracks. I determined, as I gently unfolded the pages, that it must have been about a hundred years old. And I got a very sudden sense of respect for the wisdom Jase must have collected over that time.
The first page was titled by its date: 1914. There were scribbles and lines in the margins—notes taken then corrected, some in different inks, as if he’d come back to this page many times. In fact, all the pages seemed to be in the same condition, and I guessed he’d experienced signs of his telekinesis long before he actually knew what it was. I scrolled down through the curvy text, looking for keywords, since I really didn’t have time to sit and study the entire entry. When I spotted the words
accidental
and
David
, I narrowed my grid and read that passage:
My brother, David, staring back at me. He wasn’t supposed to be there. I hadn’t seen him for some months now, and to aim my gun right in his face and almost pull the trigger, well, let’s just say that’s not the happy reunion either of us expected. Our meeting was purely accidental, coincidental, who knows? But I was mighty glad to see the guy. For a while, I thought he was dead. I know that’s not possible, but I worried anyhow.
“
This must have been from the war,” I whispered to myself, so awed by it that myself turned the page. “No.” I slapped my own wrist and closed the book. “Stay on track.”
“
Okay, okay,” I replied and slid the giant Book of Shadows in front of me again, using a bit of might to pry it open and a bit of skill to stop the heavy pages on the right from flipping over and covering what I was reading on the left: the title page. Just the same as human parents once did in their family bibles, the names of each child in this witch’s bloodline had been scribed on the first page, a sort of naming ritual. And there, at the bottom, right under Callon LeFay, was Morgana.
I held my breath. She
was
real. And this could be living proof that she at least grew old enough to read. Perhaps this book was passed down to her. Perhaps she knew all the spells by heart. Maybe she was wondering what ever happened to the book.
As I went to turn the page—take a little stickybeak at some spells—a certain combination of letters in a very unusual name stood out at me from the list: Anandene.