“Maeve.”
With a quick blink, she realized she’d been staring at him.
“Sorry,” she muttered. She crossed her legs and continued with their conversation. “So you’d like for me to see if there are any anomalies?”
Mal nodded, his eyes fixed on hers and his mouth slightly parted. If there was a question on the tip of his tongue, he did not ask it. He stood and stepped across the gap between them. She remained seated as he loomed over her. He removed the glove on his right hand with sensual precision, his eyes never leaving hers. Maeve sucked in a tight breath as his hand moved towards the side of her face.
His brows raised in a silent question. She nodded in approval, her eyes fluttering closed.
Mal’s finger touched down on her temple with the smallest movement, and white light erupted across her vision, drowning out thegallery and Mal’s tall, slender frame before her. His projected memory appeared in full force around her, blazing to life from black mist.
The Throne Room at Castle Morana manifested into view. The Dread Prince stood before his throne, Abraxas beaming at his side, and named Roswyn his right-hand man. Maeve herself remembered the day Malachite Peur was crowned Prince. She stepped closer to the men, observing them, reaching her own Magic towards them. The memory felt real.
Roswyn kneeled before Mal and placed his fist across his chest in a heartfelt salute.
Ice slammed into her own chest, coursing through her bones, causing her to grip her heart with a sharp cry. The Throne Room vanished in a blink and was quickly replaced by the gallery at Blackstone once more. Mal took a swift step back from her, his curious green eyes on where her hand gripped at her chest.
The pain began to slip away, and she removed her fingers.
“That was strange,” she whispered, “considering there were no obvious anomalies overall.”
“You wouldn’t call that,” he gestured to her aching chest, "an ‘anomaly’?”
“When you visualize that day, what about it specifically feels strange?” she asked, ignoring his rhetorical question. “In what you shared with me, where does doubt leak in?”
Mal stared down at her for a moment, seemingly contemplating answering her at all. At last, when he spoke, he kept his reply short. “Where Roswyn is concerned.”
Maeve’s brows pulled together. “While I admit that feeling such defensive Magic from a memory is rare, it is curious that the pain I experienced inside the memory correlated with the very thing you feel is out of place. However. . .I felt nothing that would lead me to believe it harbors any sort of deception. My professional opinion is that the memory is rooted in reality.”
“And you have no reason to not trust your senses?”
Maeve stalled at the words. “Pardon?”
Mal whipped his glove from his pocket at slid it back on his hand. He twisted his wrist, checking the time on a golden watch withemerald inlay and two serpents for hands. Her eyes narrowed at the familiarity of it.
His voice changed, returning to the princely way he’d conversed with her at the ball. “Thank you for your time. I hate it seems I’ve wasted both ours.”
The blow, intentional or not, didn’t go unfelt by Maeve. She didn’t stand as he stepped away. Only the sound of his cloak whipping around his shoulders filled the space, and he was gone.
Thoughts filled her mind, slow and testing at first, creeping in like light through small cracks. She knew to press down on them. She knew better than to allow them to gain a footing in her mind. But her failure before Mal made it all the more tempting to give in to them.
Each step to her bedroom echoed across her mind, drifting further towards the back as new sounds, new ideas took their place. Voices she couldn’t place, even after years of hearing them, slipped through those terrifying cracks.
Her bedroom door closed silently behind her with effortless Magic. As she moved across the room, she lifted the fabric over her head, slipping it off and tossing it on a nearby chair. She stepped closer to the tall mirror and ran her fingers across the starburst of white skin that sat just above her heart, wondering if the scarring she’d never quite remembered getting suddenly mattered. Or if it was even real.
Chapter 6
Alphard was not present for Christmas. He was called to the front lines in the Elven Lands with the remaining Bellator. Abraxas was certain the realm would fall soon.
“It’ll be swift,” said Abraxas. “He’ll be home before spring.”
Spring. Maeve hadn’t seen a spring in years. Winter was all that remained in the Dread Lands. Astrea sat at the piano in the corner, playing a soft melody that Grandmother Agatha hummed as she leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed. She occasionally sat up to speak to the children, but then returned to enjoying the soft tune. Astrea’s youngest, nearly a year old, lay cradled in Maeve’s arm.
“Where’s he been?” Maeve asked, still uneasy about the Prince’s visit weeks ago. “Why isn’t he fighting? And where did they even get Magic that could possibly stand against ours? And how does he rule if he’s gone for so long all at once?”
“That’s why he has me,” said Abraxas with a smirk and a flick of the pin gleaming proudly on his chest, signifying his place as Hand of the Prince.
Maeve sighed. “That’s only one answer.”
