by Sarah Piper
That she’d wanted to protect us was clear. That she’d truly believed she was doing the right thing was clear.
But none of that changed the outcome, and that’s the part I just couldn’t get past.
“You were a baby, Gray,” she said. “A minor child.”
“This isn’t family court,” I snapped. “Why would my minor status make a difference?”
“No. I fear you would’ve had a better chance in family court.” Deirdre offered a quick smile, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “In the court of hell, only Sebastian’s rules matter. As your sole guardian at the time, I was able to assume temporary power and dominion over your soul, which allowed me to make the deal for your protection and sign it with my own blood on your behalf.”
“But it’s not your blood he’s after now,” Haley said.
“No. That honor goes to the Silversbane witches. You four, and your mother, of course, though she’s managed to evade him thus far—a fact that torments him endlessly.”
“What is it that makes Silversbane blood so special?” Haley asked. “There has to be more to it than magic words in an ancient prophecy.”
Deirdre sighed. Under the guise of making more tea, she got up from her chair and headed to the stove, but it was obvious she was merely steeling herself for the rest of the story.
The tension in the room felt thick and sticky, and my sisters and I exchanged dark glances, just as rattled as Deirdre seemed to be. Even without speaking the words, I knew we shared the same understanding: things were about to get even more complicated—for all of us.
“There is more to it than the prophecy,” Deirdre confirmed, her back to us as she watched the flames flicker to life beneath the tea kettle. “A lot more.”
Fifteen
GRAY
Time slowed to an impossible crawl as we waited for Deirdre to prepare her tea, my sisters and I perched on the edges of our chairs, desperate to hear the rest of the story.
My mind was swirling with possibilities, none of them good.
By the time Deirdre rejoined us at the table, the only thing I knew for certain was that nothing she revealed, nothing she said, nothing she did would ever come between me and my sisters again.
“Your matrilineal ancestors lived in what we now know as Ireland,” Deirdre began, and my sisters drew closer to me. I reached for each of their hands beneath the table, clasping them tightly, making physical the connection I’d already been feeling. Magic hummed in their veins, calling out to mine as we touched, wrapping us all in a blanket of support and rightness.
It felt like coming home after a day spent trekking through the snow, that first wave of welcoming warmth as you opened the door, the rich scent of hot chocolate beckoning you to step inside and take off your boots, slide into your slippers, and come sit by the fireplace.
“They were among the first witches chosen by the elemental source as guardians of the earth’s magic,” she continued, and I nodded—she’d told me that part of the story the day we’d met in Las Vegas, when I’d first learned about the Silversbane prophecy. “At that time,” she said, “the fae, who were among earth’s first inhabitants, had already been living here for eons. They’d had their own magic, and had successfully connected with earth’s innate magic to become quite powerful beings—perhaps even more so here than they’d been even in their home realms. So you can understand why they’d be reluctant to share. They were not pleased to learn that the source had gifted humans access to that magic, as well as naming them its sole guardians.”
“They’ve always believed magic was their domain,” I said. “They’ve never fully trusted us—that hasn’t changed.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Deirdre agreed, blowing across the top of her tea, making the steam swirl before her. “This is all legend, of course, but there is always some kernel of truth to be found there. As the tale was told to me, the fae decided that the best way to keep the magic within their sphere of influence was to mate with the first witches and mages, creating a new, even more powerful fae bloodline, melding the best of both magics.”
“But witches can’t become pregnant by supernaturals,” I said.
“Not naturally, no,” Deirdre said. “But with a bit of fae magic, all things were thought possible.”
An image flitted through my mind—Sophie and Jael. I wondered if they would’ve had children together. Beautiful, magical babies with her gorgeous red hair and Jael’s penetrating yellow eyes…
“Humans had always been enamored of the fae,” Deirdre said, pulling me back to the present. “And a bit intimidated by these beautiful, otherworldly beings who’d kept themselves largely apart for so many years. When the fae rulers brought the proposal to the covens, the witches, who were quite open-minded and keen to further the protection and stewardship of all forms of magic, saw it as a great honor. And so the mating rituals began, but no children were born. Years passed, and still, not a single heir, though not for lack of trying.”
At this, Deirdre smiled, lost in the story. I felt my own lips twitching into a smile; fae were rumored to be extremely passionate lovers.
“According to the old tales,” Deirdre said, “a young fae prince had a prophetic dream about a witch who was recently born in the mortal realm to one of the first witches, with violet eyes and silver-white hair. In the dream, her mother allowed him to hold the child, and the moment he gazed upon her face, he fell in love with her. When he woke up that morning, he told his court of the dream and declared his intent to marry her, sending his emissaries to scour the mortal realm for the child who matched the description. She was found in Ireland, and her family was presented with the prince’s proposal, along with the promise of more wealth than they could ever imagine.
“The family saw this as a high honor, and accepted the proposal, on the condition that they be allowed to raise their daughter Finnabair and keep her at home until she reached the age of twenty. The prince agreed, and the wedding date was set.
“But the prince, who dreamed of her nightly, grew impatient. When the child was only four years old, he sent his emissaries to her home to request that she be released into his care immediately, vowing to raise her himself until she came of age, at which time they would marry as planned. Horrified at the thought of losing their precious daughter sixteen years sooner than they’d agreed, her parents outright refused.” Deirdre’s eyes misted. “The emissaries slaughtered her parents and siblings, kidnapping the girl to the fae realm and presenting her to the prince anyway.”
Deirdre paused to sip her tea. Next to me, I felt Addie curling inward, her shoulders hunching. After everything she’d just been through, I wasn’t surprised the story was upsetting her.
“Addie, do you want to get some air?” I asked softly, squeezing her hand. “We could take a walk.”
My sister shook her head. “I want to hear how this ends.”
“I’m sorry to upset you,” Deirdre said kindly, “but know that this particular story has a happy ending—at least for Finnabair. You see, she was a clever child, and though the prince had treated her kindly, and sworn his love and loyalty until the end of time, she still remembered her homeland, and what had been done to her family on his orders. Biding her time, she waited until midnight the night before her twentieth birthday—what was to be her wedding day—and made her escape, knowing it would cause the prince the most pain to lose her so close to the moment she was set to become his for eternity.”
“Fucking badass,” Addie said, and we all laughed, breaking up the tension a bit.
“Oh, but the story doesn’t end there,” Deirdre said. “The prince did not take her departure lightly. The moment news reached his ear that his bride-to-be had run away, he called in a favor to an allied court in the north, rumored to have the most powerful and destructive army in the realms. The ally sent him four elite fae warriors, and the prince sent them to hunt Finnabair down. He wanted her executed on site, and as proof that they’d completed their duty, they were to return with h
er long silver braids as both a trophy and a lesson to anyone who might think to betray the prince in the future.”
“So much for his so-called love and loyalty,” I said. “Asshole.”
“Though the prince claimed issuing such an order broke his heart,” Deirdre said, “he could no longer trust her, and could not allow such a betrayal to go unpunished, for to do so would be a sign of weakness, and his rule would most certainly be challenged.”
I rolled my eyes. It always came down to the same thing with these guys—power. They spent their whole lives coveting it, and once they got a taste of it, they spent the rest of their lives trying to hold on to it before the next upstart got his claws in. It was a vicious cycle with no end and no winners.
Beyond that, something else about the story was making me uneasy, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. A question struggled to form from the mist of my mind, but no matter how hard I tried to focus, it wouldn’t coalesce.
“The soldiers tracked her down in a matter of days,” Deirdre went on, “for though she was clever, and very much at home in the forests of fae she’d essentially grown up in, she did not know how to get back to the mortal realm. But despite their training and the prince’s orders, none of them could bring himself to execute her. They continued to send dispatches back to the prince that they’d yet to locate her, hoping they could buy themselves enough time to figure out what to do, but they were running out of options. Eventually, Finnabair cut off her own hair, soaked it in animal blood, and had the men send it to the prince, declaring they’d done their duty—that she was well and truly dead and buried. But the prince knew this was another trick, and demanded the soldiers return to him immediately. If they refused, he would consider it an act of war from the allied court—the soldiers’ homeland—which would leave him no choice but to retaliate.”
“Please tell me they told him to fuck off,” Addie said.
“Essentially, that’s exactly what they did. The soldiers had fallen in love with Finnabair. They refused to turn her over to such a cruel fate.”
“So wait—all four of them fell for her?” Haley asked.
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” Haley nudged me in the ribs, laughing. “Where have we heard this story before?”
“What happened next?” I asked, ignoring Haley’s teasing.
“The prince followed through on his threats, and a long, bloody war ensued. There are differing accounts as to how it turned out, but one outcome was certain: the allied court was completely ostracized. They were branded as traitors, their reputation destroyed along with most of their lands and a good deal of their people. Despite the skill of their armies, they could not defend against the prince and the other allies he’d rallied against them.”
“I thought you said this story had a happy ending?” Addie said.
“For Finnabair, yes.” At this, Deirdre smiled. “Ironically, the union of the warrior fae and the silver-haired witch was the first of its kind to create a child. From their love, a new bloodline was born.”
“Silversbane,” Haley whispered, and a shiver rolled through my body. Silence floated between us, and I closed my eyes, walking backward through Deirdre’s story, back to the start. I’d been so caught up in Finnabair’s tale, I’d forgotten why we’d started talking about it in the first place.
And now that I was thinking about it more clearly, the nagging question I’d been chasing finally reared it’s big, ugly head.
I opened my eyes, meeting Deirdre’s across the table.
“Which court?” I asked, my voice low, my jaw tight. Deep inside, where magic and intuition lived, I feared I already knew the answer, but I had to ask anyway.
Deirdre nodded slowly, her smile fading. She’d known this question was coming. “You’re asking about the northern allies. The warriors.”
“Our ancestors, Deirdre,” I clarified. “Aside from Finnabair, whose blood runs through our veins?”
“Your lineage can be traced back to Darkwinter,” she confessed. “That is why you’re so powerful. You—all of you—are descendent from the powerful union of a daughter of a first witch and the warriors who sacrificed everything they’d ever known and cared for to keep her safe.”
Addie was out of her chair, pacing the kitchen before her. Haley got up to get her some water, but I was pretty sure nothing would ever wash away the memories of what she’d suffered. The memories of the torture and torment Orendiel and his knights had doled out.
“Understand, girls,” Deirdre said, “Darkwinter were not always as they are today. Their hallmark hatred and violence—that was made, not born. Your line was not created from such darkness, but its opposite. The Knights of Darkwinter called upon by the prince were brave and true. That they loved Finnabair, that they protected her, that they sacrificed so much to keep her safe—that is where the true source of the magic of Silversbane lies. The friendship, love, and union of the fierce witch and her brave, honorable fae… All of it came together to create the most powerful bloodline in history.”
“That may be so,” I said, “yet somehow along the way, that line became corrupted.”
“I will not excuse Darkwinter’s actions now, but as I said, that hatred was born of war, evolving over centuries of being ostracized and attacked on the orders of a cruel, vicious prince bent on power.”
“Do they know who we are?” I asked, my head spinning from the direction this crazy story had spun. “Orendiel and his army of glitter-dicks? Do they know they’re hunting their own…” I trailed off, unsure what to call it. Blood? What the hell did that even mean anymore?
The word itself felt strange to me now, its meaning so diluted it may as well have been a foreign language. Did it mean family? A bond? A promise? Or was it no more than the red stuff oozing through us all—the stuff that made my heart beat? The stuff Darius and I and others of our kind needed to swallow in order to survive?
“They know of the stories, I’m sure,” she said. “It’s part of their ancestral lore as much as it’s a part of yours. But you have to remember, Gray. It’s not as if you’re fae. We’re talking about thousands of years, hundreds of generations of blending bloodlines. They don’t necessarily know that you girls are the four Silversbane descendants—the witches of prophecy.”
My sisters joined me back at the table. Seeing Addie’s red, puffy eyes made me want to stab something.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” I said to Deirdre. I’d been caught up in the story about Finnabair, but that didn’t change the fact that my grandmother was the one who’d sold my soul to Sebastian. I understood her reasoning—why she thought she had no other options—but no matter how hard I searched my heart, I just couldn’t find forgiveness there. Not for her. Not yet.
“Gray, I understand you’re upset with me,” she said, “and you have every right to—”
“I’m not upset,” I snapped, but that was just a reaction. The moment the words were out, I knew they were true. All the anger I’d felt when Deirdre had first begun this confession had somehow evaporated.
I wasn’t upset. Wasn’t mad. Wasn’t even marginally annoyed.
The only emotion swirling in my gut now was disappointment.
Again, I thought of Finnabair. Not the woman who’d fallen in love with the fae warriors sent to execute her, but the violet-eyed, silver-haired newborn the prince had first dreamed of.
Deirdre had glossed over that part of the story, but in my mind, it was the most important part. The origin, without which the tale could not have unfolded as it did.
Emissaries of the fae prince had arrived with promises of prestige and money, and without a second thought, Finnabair’s parents made a deal. She was days old, and they’d agreed to trade her away, completely trampling her sovereignty, cashing in her future for their own personal gain.
And right here in America, thousands of miles and thousands of years away from Finnabair’s Ireland, the same cycle played out again when a sixty-three-year-old witch made a b
et on the devil and lost.
I looked at my sisters, wondered again at the abuses they’d suffered, both at the hands of the same men. Hunters who’d been trying to kill us for millennia. Fae who had no idea they’d been chasing down their own descendants.
I thought of Norah, a witch so many others had trusted and venerated. A witch who later turned over her own kind to the enemy, trading their lives, their blood, their souls for a shot at saving her own ass.
I thought of my rebels. I thought of all the battles we’d faced so far, all the power games we’d been forced to play and play again, all the fights still banging on our door, looking for a way in.
We had so many enemies, yet in the end, the people with the greatest power to destroy us weren’t our enemies at all.
They were our own flesh-and-blood families. The ones we hadn’t chosen ourselves. The ones who hid under the twin banners of blood and loyalty while they sharpened their swords, waiting for the day when they’d shove them straight through your heart.
“Girls, what can I do to make this right?” Deirdre asked. “What do you need from me? Please tell me.”
In her eyes, I saw the same desperation she must’ve felt when she’d realized her granddaughters would never be safe—the same desperation that had driven her to Sebastian—and I knew she’d meant what she said earlier. That she would do absolutely anything, even now, to help keep us safe.
All I had to do was ask.
I reached for my sisters’ hands, holding them tight, the three of us a unified front. The tight, unbreakable bond of our magic flowed between us, connecting us, strengthening us.
I had a single thought, and in that moment, I knew my sisters shared it.
“We need you to leave, Deirdre,” I said. “Permanently.”