“Mother is dying, don’t worry about your books,” I snapped. I should have been gentler with her. Bella was sensitive. But she needed to get used to it, unfortunately. She would soon realize the world was cruel and did not care about her books—or anything else, for that matter. “Quickly. Come.”
I waved to them and my sisters rushed over to the other side of the bed, grabbing our mother’s hand. The rest of Bella’s book disappeared. She sobbed as she put her head to the bed, and Courtney’s eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t make a sound.
Mother gasped as she looked at each of my sisters, her eyes soft and filled with love.
“I’m sorry for leaving you,” she said. “I never wanted to… you have both been my shining light for all these years. You’re all… I love you all…” Her gaze swung around to me, wildness and panic clear in her gaze. “You cannot search for him, Ava. You mustn’t.”
My immediate instinct was to roll my eyes. I got commands, my sisters got love.
So unfair.
I pulled in a deep breath. I didn’t like when my mother got the best of me, but then I realized I wanted no part of being bitter.
Mother is dying. Yet, it was difficult to ignore the emotions taking hold of my rationality.
I clenched my teeth against the command that had held me prisoner for too long. My mother’s prohibitive magic had stopped me from searching out the other half of my family. My father.
And once she was gone, her hold on me would be gone too. I could make my own decisions. Figure out what was best for me.
“Why?” I couldn’t help asking, but I wasn’t going to get another chance. “You never told us. Why can’t we search out our father?”
When I was ten years old, my mother revealed to us who our sire had been. Our father was the strongest, most powerful Warlock in the universe, and he lived in the Magic Realm.
We had never been there. I never thought we would, especially since Mother wanted us to have nothing to do with him. It was a place she had forbidden us to go, so we had complied.
“Because… if they find out…” She tried to speak, but she was fading.
The light in her eyes was disappearing.
I should have told her how much I loved her. I should have made any promise she wanted. But I couldn’t.
“If who finds out, Mother?”
She didn’t answer me.
I narrowed my eyes and grabbed her arm. “Who!”
Her eyes widened and she stared at me like she didn’t recognize me.
I squeezed. “Tell me! Please. If you want me to save my sisters, you need to tell me everything. I can’t prepare myself if I don’t understand what we’re to face.”
For a long moment, I thought she wouldn’t tell me. I thought she would die with her secret still hers. But she blinked once, then twice. I didn’t think she would open her eyes after the second time.
But she did.
They locked on mine. Her mouth curved down, eyes narrowed. She was angry at me for pushing her. I didn’t care. I needed to know.
“The Council… they arranged his marriage.” Her voice sounded raw. Each breath was a wheeze. “They…”
She was disappearing, like an ethereal ghost before me. The ground beneath our feet began to shake like an earthquake was ripping through the land.
My sisters shrieked and clung to the bed. I tightened every muscle in my body.
Oh, God. We’re going to die
I tore my concentration away from my mother and focused on saving us. I sucked in another deep breath and closed my eyes. I needed to concentrate. It was difficult to do so, what with the ground shaking and Mother dying, secrets floating between us like ghosts.
I gathered my magic and released a breath. I opened my eyes, murmuring a protective spell I’d learned many years ago from my mother. It was simple. I’d mastered it rather quickly, though not quickly enough for my mother’s taste.
I pushed my hands out, throwing my magic out and around the bed like an impenetrable bubble. A shield, protecting my sisters and myself as well as my mother from the crumbling house, as they cried out in terror.
“Mother!” I yelled down at her. I would grab her arm again if I could, but I needed to hold my magic up with both hands. I needed her to get out of her head and give me what little of herself she had left. “If you want me to protect Bella and Courtney, you need to tell me! Who do we need to avoid and why?”
She met my gaze as her eyes glossed over, losing all color and becoming a milky white void. “The Council… the assassins. They’ll kill you if they find out who you are…”
She was speaking nonsense. I wanted to shake her, but the earthquake was doing enough shaking. More than I ever could.
My heart cracked wide open as my mother continued to disappear. It was difficult to maintain my anger when she couldn’t even speak sense.
“Take the locket. Quickly.” Her voice was a whisper, but I didn’t think she meant it to be. She gestured toward the locket that still lay on her chest. She wasn’t able to move it off herself. Her strength was diminishing more quickly than I thought it could.
My mother’s essence was fading and yet I could see the locket changing. The middle of the gold, where a picture should be, glowed purple. Violet, like the flecks in my mother’s eyes.
I had to let go of the spell as I reached out and grabbed the locket, throwing the chain back around my neck so I didn’t lose it in the maelstrom that was heading our way.
“Mother!” Bella screamed, her face raining tears. “Don’t leave us.”
And in a second, she was gone. Before my very eyes, before my sisters’, my mother faded into nothing.
In the blink of an eye, she ceased to exist. It wasn’t just that she’d died, but her physical body was ash and dust, trailing off into the vibrating wind, leaving the three of us on our own.
A sob wracked my body and I reached for her, or rather where she should have been. I was met with air. I did not know what else I expected.
My sisters sobbed in pain.
I couldn’t dwell on the hole in my heart for long, though. I was the oldest, after all. It was my responsibility to protect us.
I let out a breath and wiped my eyes. Someone had to be strong. Someone had to hold us together. And right now, someone had to keep a cool head on her shoulders in order to figure out how to get us out of this mess.
A mess that could have been avoided had Mother been more forthcoming.
I shook my head. I had to take the conflict of emotions roaring through me like thunder across a heavy storm and use it to create a spell to protect the three of us.
The bed my mother had been on vanished. My sisters shrieked.
I grabbed the girls up in my arms. This was going to be horrible, but we’d get through it if I concentrated properly.
I closed my eyes. The three of us crouched over, trying to make ourselves as small as possible on our feet. I began the protector incantation in a low voice. A spell that would at least save what we had on our persons. Our clothes. Jewelery. If nothing else.
After a moment, the protection spell coiled around us tightly, shielding us from the chaos that surrounded us. I continued repeating the words over and over as my love for my small family beat with every pulse of my heart.
Courtney and Bella clung to me. They shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. Their shoulders shook with each sob. I held on to them tighter. I wanted them to know I was here for them, that I would always be here for them no matter what we faced. They screamed with terror, the sound muffled in my clothes.
I wanted to calm them. I wanted to run my fingers through their hair and tell them that all would be well. But I couldn’t. I didn’t even have time to explain to them what was happening.
All around us, the house we’d lived in our whole lives crumbled, like a giant gingerbread house that had been dropped and stomped on. It was fragile, something a gust of wind could have destroyed. How had my mother been able to maintain such a thing?
Our beautiful big mansion. Our country home. Our bedrooms and library and spell room. The hardwood hallways Courtney would slide down and find new ways to injure herself. The nook in the library where I could hide away from my sisters and my mother, and lose myself in a world more captivating than mine.
Our servants, Gemma, Elinor and Henry, all people I thought I knew, all people I considered part of our family. The flowers Courtney had planted, the drawings Bella had created and insisted we showcase like she was an artist. All disappearing.
The lush curtains crumpled and the roof began to cave in. Sunlight from outside—the real sunlight and not one Mother had created for us—surrounded us. I was forced to squeeze my eyes shut, not being used to the brightness.
“Ava!” Bella screeched as she grabbed tighter to my arms. “What’s happening?”
I continued to hold on to them both.
“Hold on,” I said. “Don’t run. Don’t leave this circle. I’ve got you.”
I made sure to lock eyes with Bella and then Courtney. I wanted them to believe me. Just because our mother had lied to us did not mean I would lie to them. In fact, I didn’t want any lies to pass between us. Never again.
The roof fell on top of my protective bubble, making a sound like thunder. It vibrated through my body. Judging by the whimpers coming from my sisters, they felt it as well.
Courtney dropped to the ground, screaming. Both her hands clutched her ears, like she couldn’t stand the sound of everything we knew, everything we considered a home, collapsing to dust. I bent over so I could grab her hand in mine before she disappeared along with the house.
“Don’t let go!” I shouted.
Courtney got to her feet, tears streaming down her face. My sisters continued to cling to me, and I wrapped my arms around their shoulders, pressing their heads to my chest.
I was almost afraid they, too, were part of the façade my mother had created. But they couldn’t be. I loved them too much.
Their sobs rang in my ears as the house slowly but surely fell away. I didn’t even care that my ears pinched with pain because of their screams. At least it reiterated the fact that they were as solid as I was. That they wouldn’t be leaving me too.
The noise coming from the crumbling manor was the hardest thing to block out. I could close my eyes against the visions of our artwork turning to dust. As the farm we loved was no more. But the noise… it would haunt my dreams for years to come.
The sounds of shrieking wind, of ripping fabrics, of a building crumbling to the earth echoed in my head. Stone hitting grass. Ash fluttering in the sky. Even the smallest of things, the rustling of the leaves overhead. I could hear everything with such clarity, like a wolf tracking its prey.
Finally, it stopped.
I opened my eyes, keeping the protection spell around our bodies and enforced as strongly as I could manage. It sounded like the devastation was over, but I couldn’t be sure.
After a moment of stillness, I realized my level of magic was no longer necessary. There was nothing left. Nothing but a vacant plot of land. The farm we’d grown up with, nurtured and loved, was gone. The animals we raised as beloved pets were no more. No chickens, no cows.
There was nothing left. We were truly alone.
A ringing silence hung in the crisp air. It pinched my cheeks, as though it wanted to remind me that this was my new reality. Encompassed by space, encompassed by silence. It was a straightjacket I could not see or feel.
I could not bring anything back. I could not make life the way it was before our mother died. But I could attempt to soothe my sisters as much as my magic would allow.
After a moment, their sobs faded as well.
Not a speck of my mother’s magic lingered. She was truly gone.
Finally, I could let go of my spell and take my first breath of truly clean air. It was a bittersweet moment. I’d lost my mother. I’d lost my home. I’d lost everything I knew to be true.
And yet, now I was free.
It was a strange revelation, to consider myself free from something good and true. Something that was vital to my identity.
From now on, I was free to make choices. I was free to do as I wished. Consequences were more dire—Mother was not here any longer to offer her guidance—but we could start a new chapter in our lives. Something real. Something that couldn’t be taken away from us.
We were three adult witches standing in a field, clinging to one another for dear life, and I had no idea what the next step was. I took a breath of the fresh air, then another. My lungs expanded. It was almost painful.
Courtney looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Ava, what happened?” she said, whimpering. Her big blue eyes were wide, filled with vulnerable fear. “Where’s our house?”
I clasped my sisters’ hands in mine and told them everything I knew, and everything I didn’t. I was as honest with them as I could possibly be. I knew they wouldn’t like it. I knew they wouldn’t understand. But I didn’t want to keep them in the dark if I didn’t have to. I wouldn’t do that to them. Not any longer.
One thing I did know for sure was that my mother’s magic no longer held me. She couldn’t command me to obey her and I didn’t have to match her ridiculously high expectations. Expectations I struggled to meet, let alone exceed.
And she couldn’t stop me from fulfilling the only wish I’d ever had for myself—finding my father. Through him, I hoped to finally understand who I was.