AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mother patted my shoulder. “Eden is feeling gloomy, so I thought gardening with her mother would cheer her up.”
“How nice. I should be getting back to home to Blaze anyway.” Trinity stood and wiped her dirt-coated hands clean before hurrying up the stairs, as usual not keen on lingering around me any longer than necessary. Mother rolled her eyes as she took Trinity’s place and motioned for me to join her.
“Pairs are ridiculous. All they think about is one another when there are considerably more important things worth focusing on. Pathetic.”
At the mention of Pairs, Darius’s face bombarded my mind, uninvited. Once there he wouldn’t leave, and I found it impossible to resist thinking of him, too exhausted from the constant fight to resist him now.
Mother handed me garden gloves. “Do some weeding while I focus on the finer magic of nourishing these cultivations.”
I slowly pulled the gloves on, my mind still whirling with Mother’s harsh words about Pairs. “You don’t like the concept of Pairs?”
Mother snorted. “Certainly not.” She narrowed her eyes as I gaped at her. “Don’t loiter. Weed.”
I hastily obeyed. I managed to keep my burning question silent for several minutes as I yanked out weeds and Mother pruned her unique plants before my curiosity caused my words to tumble out.
“Why don’t you like Pairs?”
“Pairs make one weak. They’re a permanent leech you’re bound to forever, a parasite that robs you of your powers.”
I froze, the weed in my grip half-tugged from the soil. “Pairs areparasites?”
“The worst sort. You saw Trinity just now—she can never be away from Blaze for long, and he’s just as bad. I warned him against Pairs before he met her, but he disobeyed me. Now he’s chained to Trinity forever.”
I frowned. Blaze and Trinity didn’t seem to view their relationship as a prison sentence; it seemed to bring them nothing but joy, the most deep and lovely kind of magic, something I ached for myself.
“I think the Pair relationship is beautiful,” I murmured.
Mother stiffened, her mouth twisting in disgust. “Beautiful? They’re nothing of the sort; they’redangerous. For your protection and the protection of your powers, you’re forbidden from having one; I won’t allow it.”
My frown deepened. “But the Pair relationship is determined by magic. If I did have one, you couldn’t prevent it.”
Her expression hardened. “Don’t think I won’t. Your powers are far too unique to share with anyone. I refuse to allow you to weaken yourself forlove.” She scoffed as she returned to pruning, sprinkling her sparkly power onto the soil and kneading it around the plants with her trowel.
My heart hammered wildly. As strong and unusual as her magic was, surely she couldn’t truly keep me from pairing should I find my heart’s match...could she? The idea that she would try filled me with more fear than I’d ever allowed myself to feel since entering this dark world, especially as Darius’s image had never once left my thoughts throughout this conversation, never mind he torturously seemed to be paired with another already.
“I myself refuse to ever become paired,” Mother continued.
I paused in tugging out another stubborn weed to stare at her. “How can that be? Surely you and my father—” Was the reason they were no longer together and Mother refused to talk about him because she’d viewed him as a parasite?
She rigidly shook her head. “My powers are far too unique to share with anyone. I’ve never regretted my decision.” She smiled at me, more warmly than usual. “Besides, either of us having a Pair would hurt our relationship; I want nothing to come between us.”
I bit the inside of my lip. Despite my fierce need for her approval and for her to want me, her words caused my stomach to knot, and I wasn’t entirely sure what about them made me so ill at ease. Perhaps because I was beginning to recognize how much the relationship I desperately wanted with her was hurting.
As quickly and unexpectedly as Mother’s smile had appeared it melted away. “Why do you look so gloomy? You have no reason to be unhappy, not when you possess such incredible power and have such a bright future ahead of you.”
The main source of my unhappiness—more painful to admit to myself than it’d be to admit to her—was that the one I wanted desperately to be paired with wasn’t available. But I couldn’t confide this to Mother, not when it was clear she’d be unsympathetic to my pain.
“I miss my old home and my old friends.”
Mother scowled. “How could you miss anything about such a horrible place, where you didn’t even belong? How can you want for anything when you’re with me?”
I avoided her eyes, staring determinedly at the pile of weeds lying discarded around me. Mother sighed and rested her hand on my shoulder. I stiffened at her touch.
“I know this has been an adjustment for you, but really it’s for the best. This temporary unhappiness is necessary for you to reach the full potential of your powers, which would grow faster if you stopped resisting them. You need to not only embrace your magic, but try harder when you search dreams for the emotions I require. Can you try to do that for me, Eden?”
I managed a nod and we each returned to our tasks. Despite the unhappiness constantly hovering over me like a dark cloud, it was almost...comfortablebeing with Mother in this way, the way we used to be often in our old home on Earth, back when I was still developing the powers I’d kept hidden from her, back before I entered the Dream World for the first time.
It felt so long ago, back when we used to be closer—Mother softer, me more content—and had spent nearly every afternoon gardening, just the two of us...before she’d disappeared from my life, only to return and find nothing but disappointment in me.
