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“Not happening,” I said coldly. “Whatever perversion of nature I am, I’m not passing it on to a baby, and he isn’t going to violate his people’s law for me. That’s not fair.”
“Geneviève!” My mother had tears in her eyes now.
But I was not going to console her. Not now. I stood and stepped away to prevent myself from hugging her. “What were theexactterms of the bargain, Mama?”
“‘Your beacon to the grave would be tamped down. Yourdraugrtraits tamped down. Until you met a true partner, loyal and able to stand at your side. So mote it be.’” She spoke the words like a recitation.
“That’s not romantic in wording!” I turned and hugged her. “Eli is my businesspartner. Your wording left room for interpretation. He’s safe.”
“Geneviève . . .”
“This is fine.” I kissed her head. “So, it’s just a learning curve, right? Like puberty.” I thought about all the corpses I summoned my first few periods and winced. “Hopefully, notquitelike that! But I get more juice since I have a business partner.”
Now that I knew the words she’d used, I felt relieved. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell Eli, but I suppose I probably needed to. He was the one who’d had to deal with my come-here-dead-things pulse the other night—and my temper being touchier. He deserved to know about this. Well, parts of it. He didn’t need to know that for just a moment the thought that the decision was out of my hands made me practically quake with a twisted mess of fear and desire and hope. If we were bound, I’d have to face whatever this was. We weren’t, though.Partners.
“Geneviève, honey.” Mama Lauren pulled me close and put her hands on my face. “That bargain was intended to be about being loved, about you not being alone once I die. I asked for yourbashert, your soulmate.”
“Those weren’t the exact words of the bargain, though, and faery bargains are notoriously unreliable. You were had. You might have been seeking my destiny, but Eli is my business partner. I used that word, and this is the result,” I insisted, shoving the thought of being loved by Eli far away. I gave Mama Lauren a tight smile and said, “I’m going to enjoy the farm before sunset.”
“Geneviève?”
I paused and looked at her, half-daring her to argue, but she just sighed and said, “I’ll freshen your room. Stay away from the bayou.”
And I went to ramble the fields where I’d grown up. I could roam, and with my speed, I’d be at the water. Sometimes, when I was a little girl, my mother allowed it. It made her nervous, despite my best intentions. If I wouldflow, she couldn’t keep up.
It hit me that this was what I was with bindings. I wasn’t going to think about what it would mean to be unbound. I wasn’t going to think about bad faery bargains. I’d called Eli my partner more than once. The bargain was worded as “partner,” and that was that.
The alternative, the thought that she could trap him with her bargain and I could cost him his heritage, filled me with sorrow. And in my deepest of hearts, I could admit that there was a fear that if I had the chance to be fully loved by Eli I’d be destroyed by losing it—and I would have to lose it. People near me were at risk. Even my friends were kept at a distance. What if I lost control? What if my ancestry changed me little-by-little? What if I couldn’t stop from summoning the dead? I was too dangerous to love, and caring about Eli—which I could admit to—meant making sure he didn’t get too close to me. My mother had the right of it living alone. I followed her example these days. No roommates. No permanent relationships. Limit time with loved ones, including my own mother. There was no way to know what I would evolve into, but I had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t going to be cute and cuddly.
I kicked off my shoes and stepped into the grassy soil that nourished me. Coming home wasn’t easy, but it had perks. Rich soil and open space, fresh moonshine and Mama Lauren, I wished briefly that I could stay. I supposed it was hiding, but I preferred to think of it as a retreat. Strategic withdrawal. Returning home.
I was stronger, and maybe there was a way to stay here now.
Tonight, I was going to enjoy a little country peace. If I was wrong about the bargain, I’d burn that bridge when I got there. And if all else failed, I knew a faery. Maybe I could make a new bargain to bind my cursed traits.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning,I felt refreshed and optimistic. My mother’s tinctures and teas—and the secret she spilled—made me feel better than I had in months. My magic being erratic was temporary. Hell, maybe once the dust settled, I’d be stronger and surer.
By early afternoon, I felt positively energized.
“You understand why I did it, then?” Mama Lauren asked again. “You were just so young, and I was hiding you. They started showing up when you weren’t even teething yet, and I was a single mother and . . . scared.”
There was no way this conversation was going to good places. She was a single mother to an aberration by her own choice. She took fertility teas for months and actively tried to conceive me with adraugr.I wasn’t a miracle baby, an oops, or even a birth control failure. She chose me.
“I don’t blame you for binding me,” I said. I kept the list of things I did blame her for to myself. We both knew it was there just under the surface.
“No child has been as wanted as you were, Geneviève.” My mother stared at me, and there was no way to deny the sheer love in her expression. She had wanted me enough to break the laws of nature. There was power in her that few people realized. She had done the impossible.
I knew, though. She was a terrifying woman, a powerful witch, and a devoted mother. I would rather face a field of angry corpses than my mother when she was angry. I still asked the detail she’d pointedly ignored addressing: “What did you give in exchange?”
“It doesn’t matter, Geneviève.” She waved her hand as if she could physically ward off my words. She could, but to get her anger to the point of silencing my voice was a thing I hadn’t managed since killing the corpse that fathered me—and intended to use me like breeding stock whether I agreed to it or not.
I shoved that thought back into the recesses of my mind to address more pressing issues. “So . . . the fee was huge then?”
“Geneviève!” Mama Lauren looked at me and sighed. “It’s a favor for a faery called Doran. That’s all.”
“To do what?”
