Page 33 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"In the gap, where that thing abandoned it forty years ago." Her voice dropped and scraped raw beneath the weariness. "It had me dragged most of the way through a breach. Building the bridge tore me loose and slammed the seal shut over the piece already on the far side. I have been two women in two realms from that night to this one."

"You reached into my sleep with that broken half." I pressed before she could leave. "Count them before you trust them. That was you knocking with the only hand you had left."

"That was the half of me with no mouth on the other side of the veil. It was clawing toward the one mother who might outlive the warning long enough to save me." The tremor running through her hand wasn’t faked. "I don't get to choose whose sleep I wash up in. That thing's hunger drags my far half toward whatever it sets itself to hunt. I follow like a leaf down a gutter, until a door opens and a woman looks at me as though I'd crawled straight out of her worst night. Yours was the first face in forty years that looked back instead of through me."

"Mom, can I talk to you for a minute?" Jean-Marc interrupted, his expression immediately pulling my attention away from the table.

Something in his face tightened my stomach. I'd learned long ago that my children rarely wore expressions like that over anything good. I excused myself and followed him into the laundry room, shutting the door behind us.

"What is it?" I asked as I studied him.

Jean-Marc reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive. He placed it in my hand before answering. "Nina and I found something last night while we were researching," he explained, waiting until my fingers closed around it.

I glanced down at the drive. "Okay," I prompted. "And what is it?"

"We found Orenthiel," Jean-Marc answered grimly. "Well, we found photographs of him."

I stared at him for several seconds before my brain caught up with the words. Entire organizations had spent centuries hunting for proof that Orenthiel existed. They'd accumulated witness accounts, journals, sketches, myths, and enough speculation to fill libraries.

"You're sure?" I clarified, keeping my voice steady through sheer force of will.

Jean-Marc nodded without hesitation. "As sure as I can be. We scoured through old research, notes, maps, and observations." His expression darkened further. "We came across some photographs that are different. Those are the reasons I came looking for you."

Less than an hour later, I sat in my office scrolling through the files while Aidon stood behind my chair. The deeper I dug into the folders, the more obvious it became that this wasn't the work of someone casually looking for answers. It was an obsession. Every page reflected years of relentless pursuit. Then I opened the photographs.

The creature standing in the center of the first image was tall and somehow seemed to consume the light around it rather than reflect it. His face was smooth and featureless. The darkness surrounding it appeared unnaturally dense. And in several frames, the space behind it looked torn open, revealing something vast and impossible beyond the edges of reality.

Aidon's hand settled on my shoulder as I stared at the screen. "I don't like this," he admitted quietly, his fingers tightening slightly.

"Neither do I," I confessed, unable to pull my gaze from the photographs. “He looks like he could be a powerful god. Could he be from another pantheon?”

Aidon lifted one shoulder. “Anything is possible. I don’t know all the gods out there.”

CHAPTER 13

Nana was hopping mad when she heard what happened with Melaina. "Morrigan, if one thread of your magic drifts toward my grandchildren again, I will shoot you in the head and let Aidon decide what happens to the rest of you."

Morrigan stood in my kitchen with her hands folded over the head of her cane, looking annoyingly composed for a woman who had nearly been murdered in my nursery in the middle of the night. "Your threat has been added to that of your granddaughter and grandson-in-law. There is no need for every family member to add what they would do to me. I get how serious you all are," she replied, her gaze sliding toward Aidon before returning to me.

"Phoebe needs to decide whether you want me watched or useful, because the ritual will fail without the wards I came here to draw." She was very good under pressure. The very real threat of death didn’t bother her one bit. I couldn’t decide if she was really good at hiding her fear or just seriously mentally ill.

Aidon shifted Nyssa higher against his chest. The baby's shadows curled around his wrist as if she had opinions about Morrigan, too. "You will be both," Aidon informed her in a voice cold enough to frost the rim of his coffee mug. "You will tell us what you are doing before you utter one word or cast one line. Our scholars will verify and countercheck it. If you’re honest and don’t try to fuck us over, Phoebe will decide whether you keep breathing after."

Nana set a plate of brownies on the island and shot Morrigan a smile that should have made the woman pee herself. "I will be standing close enough to shoot her if she gets creative," she added as she nudged the plate away from Morrigan's reach. "Nobody feed the liar sugar. Cruel and unusual are how we roll. It’s time to embrace it fully."

Morrigan's mouth twitched as if she respected the insult against her better judgment. "You people conduct crises like a church picnic with weapons," she observed. "Someone needs to bring me bone ash, moonstone, salt that has never touched iron, and a space large enough for forty-seven souls to pass through without brushing your house."

Mom tightened the blanket around Thaniel and glared at Morrigan. "You will get supplies after you tell me why the first ward goes near the nursery windows instead of the ritual site," Mom countered. "You mentioned a thin place near the heart. Explain that in plain terms, or I will assume you’re trying to draw attention away from where it belongs."

Morrigan tapped one finger against her cane. "Children leave echoes where they have been loved," she clarified as her gaze drifted toward the ceiling. "Your nursery shines brightly with the love you all have for them. If Kaltherax probes for the bridge once Phoebe opens it, the babies' bond to her will get his attention before anything in the yard does." For once, her answer came without flourish.

Her explanation made my skin feel too tight. I wanted to snatch all three babies and drive until the road ran out. I would have if running had even once made a monster less interested in us.

"Then we glamour the shine to mirror the magic of the land around us, and tuck the bridge away behind it," I murmured, shifting Melaina higher on my shoulder when she grunted a sleepy complaint into my collarbone. Her fist had a death grip on a hunk of my hair, and I didn't bother prying it loose. I needed her closeness as much as she needed me.

Morrigan dipped her chin, and the candlelight dragged across the bruised shadows under her eyes, aging her a full decade past the woman who'd swept through my front door. "It'll work," she allowed, trailing one finger through the salt I'd scattered on the island, "but only if your eldest daughter stands at your side. Without a second Pleiades thread woven into it, Kaltherax will look straight through the lie and laugh."

The kitchen went quiet the way a room does when every adult in it has the same thought at once, and not one of them liked the idea. I felt Aidon go still at my back. My spine was a second behind his. I froze, and my gaze cut to Nina before I could leash it. It was an old reflex. I wanted to fold her behind me and call the discussion finished.