AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lena shakes her head and gets lost, looking around the room once more.
“You’ve never been here before?”
“No. I think our moms were friends back in the day, but mine left when I was little. Your mom was already gone by then. Never really had a reason to visit.”
I press my mug to my lips and hum, gleaning just enough information from that statement to know that it’s not really something Lena wants to talk about. My mom might have left the island, but I was with her. It doesn’t sound like that was the case with Lena. Still, I can’t help but pry a little. I’m not a saint, I have a curious nature.
“It seems like none of you guys really had the best situations growing up.” Not like mine was amazing, but I knew my mom loved me, no matter how many times we moved or the fact that I never knew who my dad was. Well, until recently, and I would have preferred that information to have stayed unknown forever. My mom always made me feel like a priority and one she relished, not hated.
Lena stands up, clutching her arms by the elbows as she wanders around the room.
“You can look around. I can tell you want to.”
Lena flashes me an excited and shy grin. “Are you sure?”
“Watch yourself, you’re just adding fuel to the fire.” Ruby gives me a wicked grin from her spot on the velvet chaise, looking like a painting all draped over the thing. All she needs is someone feeding her grapes.
“Yes, just let me know if you find any secret passageways. I really don’t want to stumble onto any more of those.” I laugh as I get up and continue my inspection of the room. There’s a little of everything in here, classics, nonfiction, an entire section on horticulture that I’m excited about to a stupid degree. I haven’t seen any romance novels yet, which is what I assume Ruby meant earlier. I’ll have to rectify that. I peek over at her and whatever she’s reading has her completely absorbed.
Lena and I drift across the room, sharing the space but managing an odd peace with the company. Having them here is almost like being alone but with someone else there, which is an odd yet comfortable feeling.
I figure Lena’s going to continue ignoring my earlier comment since it’s been a few minutes since I asked about their families. She surprises me when she speaks, all while looking at the books instead of me.
“Most of us were babies when Anthony and our parents tried to form an Axis. Not all of them were affected, but most were in some way. It changed them. At least that’s what other people say. It was like they became a different person. I was too little to remember my dad being any other way than he was.” She turns and looks at me. “He isn’t a good man.” There are nightmares in her eyes, and I instantly regret asking about it.
“They’re all fucking gems” Ruby pipes up from the couch and the ghosts of Lena’s past instantly disappear as she shakes her head.
“Is that why everyone is scared of a new Axis forming?”
Lena pauses with her fingertips lingering over the spine of a book. Ruby’s eyes are on her like she’s waiting to hear how Lena’s going to respond. “I think it’s in the forefront of all of our thoughts.”
“Why did the Axis make them change? Obviously, I know next to nothing, but is it inherently evil? Or is it because it opened up more magic for them?”
“I don’t know for sure. I was reading through that journal Archer and Davis found last night and I wonder if they got so messed up because the Axis was forced. As far as we know there wasn’t a catalyst who started the naturally occurring process. That’s just a guess. We can’t exactly ask anyone who was in the Axis. They’re either gone or… not willing to share that information with us.”
We both fall into silence once more as I let Lena’s words sink in. I wonder if the Axis affected my mom? By all their accounts, she was part of that group, and it sounds like everyone else suffered a lasting impact from it. I wish I could ask her.
My thoughts trail to Davis without my permission. He’s this odd enigma to me. One second, he’s giving me the cold shoulder, the next he’s on me like he can’t help himself. Maybe he can’t. And the push and pull I feel with him, is it the magic of this Axis forcing us together? Is that the only reason we keep ending up in situations where I want to shove my tongue down his throat? It doesn’t feel like I’m being magically compelled to want to jump his bones, but would I even know?
“Oh!” Lena’s whispered exclamation snatches my attention from a book on cultivating your garden. I’ve been staring at it, not reading, while my thoughts are consumed by Davis.
“I swear if there’s a secret passage, I’m going to stop exploring new rooms.”
“No, look at these.” Lena holds up a spiral-bound notebook. The cover is made of fabric and dotted with tiny flowers. I cross the room and peer over her shoulder and find pages full of hand-written notes. It’s another journal. Great.
“There’s at least a dozen.” Lena flips it open to the first page where the name Evelyn Wilds is scrawled. “Is that your mom?”
My heart leaps up into my throat as I look over Lena’s shoulder and down to the elegant scrawl of my mother’s writing. She always had beautiful penmanship. Something I noticed because my own looked like chicken scratch.
“Yes,” I whisper, and Lena hands the journal over to me, setting it in my hands like it’s a baby and she doesn’t want to jostle it. It almost feels that way to me, too, and I gingerly take it from her. I trace my fingers over the writing, fighting back the sweeping sadness that washes over me.
Most days I try not to think about my mother because it’s too painful to consider the world without her. If I stuff down the fact that she’s gone, then I don’t have to examine any of those feelings. But seeing something she left behind, almost a piece of her soul on the pages of a book, is too tangible, and I suck in a choked breath.
“Wow.” I gently flip through the pages, wondering when she wrote this. At the beginning of the journal, she has her name and age, twenty-five. She had me when she was twenty-six. “Thank you for finding this.”
Lena is tense next to me, and I barely manage to rip my gaze from the journal to look at her. “What is it?”
Lena bites her lip, pushing her dark-rimmed glasses up her nose. “I think she mentions the Axis.”
