Page 10 of Dark Night of the Soul

“Then we need a plan.” But I hadn’t a clue what that plan was.

I wasn’t prepared for this threat. I was prepared to fight demons, and that was about it. This… this was totally different. The game had changed. The pieces were different.

I told him I faced Lucifer, that I could handle Sebastian. Perhaps I didn’t understand the rules.

I started to walk away, but she caught my arm and stopped me. I met her gaze.

“They won’t knock on the front door this time,” she said. “They’ll come when you least expect it.”

“Then we have to be ready.”

The manor felt too open. Too exposed.

I pulled from her grasp and walked away from her feeling like I’d lost everything in one morning.

Back outside, I stood a moment to take in the early summer breeze. I looked across the lawn to where tent city used to be, where the Fae had camped after their sacred forest burned to the ground courtesy of Lucifer. Now, they’d moved into the woods that bordered the manor. Killian, the last standing Fae king, had made their home into something incredible.

I wondered if they could help, but I didn’t feel like I had a right to ask since they’d lost so much already.

Then I caught sight of my mother rounding the back of the manor toward the gardens. Her dark hair was pulled back at the nape in a low ponytail. She wore faded jeans, a pale t-shirt, worn sneakers. Garden gloves. The side of her face coated in sweat. She was laboring to carry a large bag of potting soil. I jogged over to her.

“Here, let me help.” I held out my arms as I reached her.

She gave me a grateful smile and handed over the bag. “Hi, Anna. Thanks. Will you bring it over here?”

She motioned toward a raised planter. I nodded and followed her.

It wasn’t as though the bag was heavy, but she was still trying to regain her strength. She had moments of clarity where she remembered who she was and who I was. Calling me Anna was a good sign. That meant today was a good day.

Her true-born name was Annabelle—like me. But she called herself Natasha these days. Or rather the men who modified her called her that. It stuck, and she hadn’t bothered to change it back. I think because she wanted to hang onto it to remember who she had become and what she had to endure to get there.

When I was an infant, the Knights of the Holy Lance captured her, put her in captivity, and altered her mind. They turned her from a dream walker, like me, into what I called a super dream walker. She had this ability now to kill with a thought.

It had been a long recovery road from the day I found her in Antarctica to now. But she was surviving, and that’s all that mattered.

At the raised planter she paused. I dropped the bag and watched as she ripped it open and started shoveling handfuls of dirt into the planter.

“What are you planting?” I asked.

“Herbs,” she said with a smile in her voice. Like this was something she’d always wanted to do.

It surprised me.

I don’t know why. I guess because I’d never seen her do anything outside of the manor.

“Grace said gardening was therapeutic.”

Grace. I smiled. My adoptive mother had a gentle way about her that seemed to keep everyone on an even keel.

I watched Natasha’s gloved hands as she continued to shovel in the dirt, then smooth it out as she prepped to plant seeds.

“Is something bothering you?” she asked.

Like she sensed it.

“No,” I said.

She gave me a knowing, motherly smile.