Avery’s eyes raced back and forth, her mind scrambling through the ritual steps even as her eyes kept darting back to Felix. “Wolf’s milk, sage, candles, bones, and—” She paused. “Blood.”
“Apple doesn’t fall from the tree, does it? Blood and wolf’s milk, Avery, really? You’re just like her,” she spat. “How could you manage to be a more spectacular fuckup than you already were?”
Felix threw himself at the bars, desperation overriding sense. Her mother didn’t even need to look at him. The lightning hit him again, and this time Avery felt it, singing her nerves alive along with his. Bile raced up her throat as his back arched off the ground, violently trembling as she held up her hand to keep from vomiting.
“Bad kitty,” her mother said, voice dripping with venom. “The ingredient was meant to be wolf’sbane.” She laughed softly to herself. “So that’s how you did it.”
“Don’t say anything about the goddess,”Felix pleaded into her head, voice fractured from the pain. She could only look at him for a second, could only take the sight of him on the floor for that long without breaking entirely. Her hands shook, rage and terror warring in her chest until she couldn’t tell them apart.
A pegasus appeared next to her mother with a crack of lightning. Did it just fucking teleport in here? Its black coat was as shining and gleaming as her mother’s boots. Its nostrils flared, steam coming out.
Wait.No,it couldn’t be.
“You…you have a shifter too?” Avery wobbled. Disbelief caved in her chest. Her whole life was a goddess-damn lie. What was real? She tried to pick it apart in her head, going over every memory she could in such a short time. Had her father’s wolf been one too? She didn’t want to know. It would be too much.
“Of course.” Her mother smiled sweetly, but Avery didn’t miss the deadliness behind it. Finally, fucking finally, her mother stopped shocking her mate. Felix’s chest heaved as he dragged in air, his whole body trembling, and Avery could see the burns mottling his skin, the way his hands shook as he tried to push himself up. Running to the bars, she reached out to him, grabbing his hand.
Her mother’s lip curled in disgust. “And that is why you were never meant to have one. You are far too delicate. You would have been cut like a daisy, darling.”
Avery’s fist balled at her side, nails digging into her palm hard enough to draw blood. “Being kind in a cruel world is not a weakness.”
“You are just like your father.” A pitied look crossed her face.
Avery wanted to rip it off her. As long as she was nothing like her mother, she was doing well in the world.
Her mother sighed. As if this whole thing was nothing more than an inconvenience.
“Luckily for you two, you have presented a unique opportunity. It has been tiresome trapping shifters, and quite dangerous, actually. But Avery, you have done something useful for once, shown us a way to summon them straight from the source.” She clapped her hands. “And I’m sure we can find a way to make your shifter back into his docile state, while you keep all the power.”
She held back a scream. She wanted to do what Felix had done, grab her by the throat and smash her head against the bars. Instead, she swallowed the violence. “I won’t let you.”
“It’s funny you think you have a choice. Either way, you’ll probably die afterwards.”
The words hit her like a gut punch. Stealing all the air from her lungs. “You’d… you’d kill your own daughter?”
“You were never mine to begin with,” she said, looking her up and down with a sneer on her face.
Avery’s heart dropped through her chest. “What?” She didn’t like the picture that was forming in her head, but she had to ask. “Who’s my mom?”
“Really? Still haven’t put it together?” She tutted with tongue. “Youwere the baby.”
Her aunt?Alys was her mother? She stumbled backwards, one hand flying to her mouth. As if she could physically hold the grief threatening to tear her apart.
“Your father made me swear on the goddess that I would take care of you, or he would leave. He did anyway in the end, but at least I got Gwyn.Finally, I can get rid of you.”
The bars between her and Felix felt like miles now, an unbridgeable distance, and her knees hit the stone floor hard enough to split the skin. But the pain didn’t matter; it was nothing compared to the gaping wound hermother’swords had torn open. The tears came then, burning down her face as they sat in the dark, both of them broken in so many ways.
And with that, the person she always thought was her mother turned away, her clinking medals fading with her boot steps.
Thirty-Five
Avery
A creeping numbnesshad spread through her like rot, her own body protecting her from everything she had learned over the last few days. It was too much for one person to carry. Felix had checked in on her throughout the day, trying his best to reach out to her. It wasn’t fair to him to shut down. But it was all her body had allowed her to do. It was all she could do.
It was strange to think that her real mother could be in a cell not too far from here. Wrongly imprisoned by someone she thought was her family. She wondered if she was still there. What was she like now? Was there a way to get her out? She wanted to know, but even the thought of it was too much to deal with right now. So instead, she shoved it down, not ignoring the pain, but simply letting it be, to let it sit without consuming her. That was a power within itself, a lesson she had perhaps learned too late.
Moonlight shone through the small window while rain pattered against the stone walls, the familiar scent of Caerwyn wafting in from between the bars. Felix slept soundly on the stone floor of the cell, chest rising and falling soundly as if he were in a bed. Cats could really sleep anywhere.
