PHILLIP
She left me here. With Ember. Under the guise of guarding her familiar. A familiar I was certain had never needed guarding in the past. My pain was almost gone. There was no more fever. No cold sweats or inability to control my own hand or behavior. Luna blamed my actions on an adverse effect of one of the spell’s ingredients. I didn’t even want to know what she put into the blue liquid that knit me back together so quickly, or what could’ve caused me to act possessed, like my hands weren’t even my own.
I was almost completely healed. By tomorrow at the latest, the bones would be fused, the soft tissues would have mended themselves, and I could go home. Which was what I wanted. I needed to be in Grithim; to return and make sure my parents knew I was still alive.
She wouldn’t need me here – she wouldn’t even want me here. In her space. With her cat. The cat that didn’t need me to watch over her.
I glanced down at Ember.
She purred happily, brushing back and forth against my legs.
I scooped her into my arm and closed the door against the night.
No matter how much I stroked Ember’s fur, the fire in me wouldn’t be calmed. I needed answers—answers that only Luna had. I had to know what happened to William. My parents deserved to know, too. I understood that she was tired and that the experience must have been traumatic. There was no denying the haunted look in her eyes when she spoke in circles around what happened, or clamped her jaw together, unable to speak the words. It had been eighteen months, but was still too fresh a wound for her.
Ember’s eyes, yellow-green like Luna’s, stared up at me. “I’m not leaving until she tells me what happened.”
Ember meowed and promptly tilted her neck to bury her head in my hand.
“Where’d she get the scars on her face? Hmm?” I asked the cat.
Ember looked toward the front door.
“Out there somewhere, huh?”
She meowed again.
“I’m talking to a cat,” I said, staring at her, my knuckles running over her fur. “Are you hungry, Ember? We should find you something to eat.”
She jumped down and scurried across the floor to the mysterious locked door. The locks disengaged for Ember and the door itself opened a few inches. Curious, I eased my fingers into the gap and pulled it open enough to slip inside. Black candles flickered throughout the space, but the light they provided wasn’t enough to illuminate everything.
My eyes slowly adjusted.
The room was a long, windowless rectangle, and the scent of something powerful stung my nose. A cauldron, its edges ragged and charred from use, sat in the center of a long counter. There were glass bottles of every shape and size, but unlike the kitchen, these did not contain cooking spices.
Ember was eating something in a bowl in the back corner of the room, pausing occasionally to watch me. I lifted one of the bottles to read the hand-scrawled label: Tongue of Lizard. Twisting the bottle around, I saw small slivers of dried flesh filling half the bottle. An emptier one had small eyeballs in it. The label read: Eye of Fish.
There were wings of bats, tails of rats, legs of frogs, centipedes, roaches, the largest spiders I’d ever seen in my life—alive and well inside the corked bottles. With no air. Or food. Or water...
A coiled yellow viper sat in a large one in the back, its slitted eyes assessing me. It raised its head, tongue flicking as I eased a bottle of scorpion stingers back down onto the table.
Then there were the ingredients of the human variety... hair, fingernails, peeled skin, dried ears, toes, and fingers.
And those of the fae: ground faery wings, faery dust, and nightmare powder.
There were bottles of claws and talons, beaks and brains. A large container of animal skulls sat in the back.
There were poisons: belladonna, nightshade, rosary pea, oleander, and something called moon seed.
On top of a shelf, next to a human skull, was the stuffed body of a raven, its wings spread for flight. Below it was a collection of dried mushrooms, and rows upon rows of books whose spines were ragged and falling apart. Spell books, I realized, easing one out after another.
At the far end of the room, to the left of Ember, was a table with an opened book. Is this what she used for the healing spell? Flipping through the pages, I realized this wasn’t just another spell book. It was Luna’s journal.
I took it to the chair by the hearth and began to read from the middle of the book.
I am the only one safe from her insanity. Since William’s death, Aura has come unhinged. Tonight, she killed the woman who looked on us as her children. She’d raised us since birth, yet Aura ended her life without a second thought. The worst part is, it was all my fault.
Completely out of my mind with grief, I told Uma what happened. Then, she sat me and Aura down and told us about our true parentage, warning us about the dark gifts we might possess and urging us to control our tempers and guard our hearts.
We were sired by a dark fae King.
A King who passed a sliver of his evil power on to us.
A King who took our mother without her consent, and who forced this curse of sleep upon us as well.
Aura demanded to know how Uma had such knowledge. Our mother died during childbirth, after all.
Uma said that after we were taken to the castle, the midwife who helped us into the world came to her. She said she could smell the magic while we were being born, and how Mother mumbled incoherently during childbirth, eventually divulging everything that had happened to her.
A few moments after Uma took her leave, Aura left my bedroom.
I watched from the window as Uma walked out into the garden. It was nearly dusk and Aura was weakening. Her body was preparing for sleep while mine was waking from it. But even in her tired state, she found Uma and from behind, stabbed her with a pair of shears, forcing them through her back and into her heart. I could hear the squelching sound even from above, the sigh as her spirit left her body, and the resonance of my own scream.
Aura merely laughed in response. She let Uma’s body sink to the ground, and then with her hands, willed the earth to cover her up, the beginnings of a rose bush sprouting over where she lay.
I looked over the land that was being taken over by tangled bushes full of red roses. The color of my sister’s lips. And blood. I realized William wasn’t the first, and Uma wouldn’t be the last person she buried in her garden.
I flipped back toward the beginning, when another page caught my eye.