Maeve stepped towards Maxius, placing her hand on one of the stones and looking down at her son. She wanted nothing more than to feel the warmth of his skin. To run her fingers through his soft hair. To see his face light up as Spinel massaged his paws against him.
“Will they remain, you think, after I am dead?”
“Of course they would,” Reeve replied. “Your body is merely a vessel for this power.”
“What if I die before it’s safe for him to be released?”
Reeve hesitated. “At some point, the Magic in him will awaken. Besides, you plan on dying anytime soon?”
She ignored the question. The answer was obvious. “My sister and her children are on Earth? Agatha?”
“Yes,” answered Reeve. “Alphard as well.”
Her throat tightened at the thought of Zimsy, her blood coating the floors of the Throne Room at Castle Morana. She hadn’t been able to get her to safety.
Nor Abraxas. How could she have just left him there? She should have forced him, found a way.
“Mal can be saved,” she said, her eyes still on Maxius.
Maeve expected a snappy reply, something about how delusional she was. It never came.
“And how do you think that’s going to happen?” was all Reeve replied.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, running her fingers over the crystal casing. “I don’t know the path. But I know the prophecy. He will vanquish her. That means. . . he’ll be saved. Right?”
Reeve crossed to the other side of Maxius.
“This must have been brutal,” he commented, his eyes on the crystals, ignoring her question completely.
“It was,” she answered.
“Let me heal your face,” he said.
She looked over at him, tearing her eyes away from Maxius at last. The crystals cast pale-blue light across his face. His eyes lingered on the bruise across her cheek.
“No,” she answered softly. The thought of his hands on her was out of the question.
Her eyes widened. He commanded. She disobeyed.
No pain sliced through her. No stinging of Magic whipped down her back.
“I broke that Curse the moment it shifted into my possession,” he answered her unasked question. “Disgusting Magic.”
Reeve looked down at Maxius. A small smile pulled at the corner of his lips. One that looked like regret and acceptance all bundled together.
“He’s so big now,” breathed Reeve. “The last time he was here, he was so small.”
Maeve remembered it all now. How it had been Reeve she’d hid Maxius with the first time. She hadn’t meant to erase her own mind of Maxius then. That was the first time she cast her spell, and judging by how quickly it broke and Maxius was back at Castle Morana, she had cast it poorly.
“I remembered the most beautiful thing this morning,” she said, looking down at Maxius as she twisted her Sinclair family ring. “My father knew I was pregnant before he died. He was the second to know. Mal and I knew almost immediately. But getting to see my father’s face for the first time again when we told him. . .was remarkable.”
They sat in the moment together, enduring the silence, until Reeve spoke.
“Do you think you’ve broken all the times you used the spell?”
Maeve thought for a moment. “How would I ever know?” she answered truthfully. “I think I have, but it’s like a bunch of timelines crossing and lapping over. It’s all real, even the parts I made up in my head. It’s not like I forgot them. Just. . .now there’s even more life added back in.”
Another long silence.
