“No,” I say. Command. “We at least need to try. If the sunwalker spell could be the difference, we’ll at least try.”
“And undo the peace we’ve claimed?” she asks. “Listen to yourself, Elliot. I stand by everything I did for that curse. Itdoesn’t need to be eased. If anything, it needs to be strengthened.”
“What?” My brain lags at her words, unable to make sense of them. “Strengthened? What does that even mean?”
Mama sighs. She plucks a few parchments from her desk, stacking them together before offering them to me.
“I will be informing the council of my illness at tomorrow’s meeting,” she says as I take them. “I do not have much time left, but take comfort, my son. My death will not be wasted.”
I flick through the parchments, and my stomach sinks further with each word I read. Mama has years of information here, documenting finances and budgets, potential threats and species-specific curses. It’s her life work, broken into digestible segments.
When I reach the final parchment, I only read a few lines before dropping them all on her desk.
“You’re going to kill them all,” I whisper. I can’t hide the horror in my voice, and I’m not sure I would if I could. “They’ll all die.”
“Yes,” Mama says. She tidies the parchments I’ve just strewn over her desk, focusing on them rather than me. “I believe my death can expand the curse, as I’m the one who made it. The vampires will burn in the sun, and they will burn in moonlight. They’ll burn, Elliot, and they’ll never terrorize this world again.”
“Mama.” I say her name like a curse, like an unforgivable sin. “You can’t.”
“I have already decided,” she says. “If this is the last gift I offer the world, I will rest easy in death.”
“Gift?” I repeat. “You’re going to kill them. They’re people, Mama.”
“They aremonsters,” she snarls.
I grab more parchments off the desk, flicking through them as Mama watches me with visceral disappointment.
Tomorrow. She’s planning to announce this tomorrow, after which, our realm will inevitably fall into chaos. The council will be frothing at the mouth to sacrifice Mama, the same way they were to sacrifice Grace’s father for the original curse.
“You need to push this back,” I say, throwing the parchments back to her desk. I lean on both palms, staring hard at Mama. “The annual meeting. Postpone it. At least give me a few weeks. We can figure something out.”
Something to stop your death. To make you rational. To stop everything I love from collapsing at once.
“That wouldn’t change anything,” Mama says sternly. She straightens the mess of papers on her desk, but her attention flickers back to me.
“A week,” I beg. “At least give me a week. Let me work through this before everyone else knows.”
A week is nothing, and I’m sure she’ll agree, if only to placate me. It’s not much time, but it’s enough. I’ll be able to work out a plan with Secora. Mama will agree. She has to.
Instead, she shakes her head. She pauses her organizing to cover my hand with her own. Though it still holds her natural color, I swear her skin feels different. Softer, more fragile than ever.
“I can’t.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Please, Mama. Just give me a few more days.”
“The augurs leave for their retreat the day after tomorrow,” she says softly. “They won’t be back for a month. We both know I don’t have that long.”
The world halts. For all the horror I’ve just absorbed, none of it compares to this. Everything I’ve known staggers in this moment, erupting in a way I didn’t know was possible.
After what happened with Harrison, I should know not to be surprised by the people I thought I knew best.
I reel out of Mama’s touch, staring at her as if she’s a stranger. Maybe she is. Shemustbe, because I’ve realized something I should have before. Something so obvious I can’t help wondering if I knew, subconsciously. If I protected myself, buried the realization, just like Secora did with my memories.
“The augurs’ retreat,” I say. The words feel numb falling from my lips. I clench the arms of my chair, staring at Mama as she looks back in pure confusion. My mind is reeling, and I don’t know how to make it stop.
The augurs go on a retreat every year for an entire month. They travel from village to village, looking for promising witches. Mama Iyle goes every year. She was gone when Harrison raped Secora. And she was gone when I killed her son.
That means she was gone when Harrison evaded punishment. That means it wasn’therwho got him out of trouble. It was the council. And if it was the council…
