Ash and Ember: Book 2 of the Scorched Trilogy

by Lizzy Prince

  Just as I was about to open my mouth to ask where she was from, she stood up, glaring down her straight nose at me. She didn’t even try to mask the complete look of disdain painting her delicate features.

  “I’d be careful who you show that off to,” she said, pointing down at the dark rune that sat just below the crook of my elbow, which was visible now that I’d taken my sweatshirt off. Before I could utter a confused huh? she continued with her bitchtastic advice.

  “It’s not really something to be proud of you know. Losing complete control of your magic. I’d suggest some long sleeves,” she said the last bit with exaggerated slowness as if I wouldn’t get it if she spoke at a normal speed. Then she scrunched her nose up and waved her hand over her arm as if to indicate where I should be covering myself.

  My reaction was stunted like I was moving in slow motion. I could only stare at her in confusion until she must have thought I was daft because she sighed in exasperation and moved off to join everyone else in the kitchen. Munro had a mark on his hand. Did she shame him about his loss of control and tell him he should be covering his mark up? What the hell?

  Maggie placed a hand on my arm, and I turned to look at her still trying to sort out what the hell Lola had been talking about. Maggie’s face was deathly serious, and I hoped she wasn’t going to ask me what that was all about because I had no idea.

  With a pitiful look on her face, she spoke in complete seriousness, “I’m really jealous of Lola.”

  I looked at Maggie, my confusion over everything only growing until she continued, “It’s obvious you guys are going to be besties. I just don’t want to be left out of the hair braiding and nail painting.”

  “Oh my God, you are such a dick.” I laughed half-heartedly, and the pouty look on Maggie’s face cracked into a wily smile before she looked at my face and frowned.

  “What happened out there? You look like you’re about to hulk out.” Maggie asked, nodding her head in the direction of the front door.

  “I just found out my mom had a sister.”

  “Holy shit Annie!” Maggie yelled and Butch popped his head around the corner of the kitchen for a second before he disappeared again. “That’s incredible.”

  I smiled at Maggie, feeling a little tremble in my chin. “I know right.”

  Maggie wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug, and I sagged into her, letting my best friend help hold all my pieces together.

  ***

  Everyone decided it was best for Munro and me to leave for New York as soon as possible. Well, Lola didn’t seem to give a crap and just wandered out of the room while we were discussing our plans. The rest of us quickly made plans, all propelled by the same sense of urgency that demanded we figure out how to fix all of these problems. It was agreed that Munro and I would leave in the morning from the Cedar Rapids airport. There was a small airport in Dubuque, but there was no way we’d get out on a flight without Maggie’s mom Sara knowing about it. Cedar Rapids was a little more than an hour’s drive, and from there we could get a direct flight into LaGuardia airport.

  Maggie was going to cover for me with Sara, but the timing might have been the only good luck we’d had so far, since winter break had started, and school was closed for the next two weeks. The plan was to be back on a flight late that night, hopefully with Mari in tow. We weren’t leaving ourselves much room for error, but Munro and Ryan agreed it would be important for Mari to see me herself. Not to mention I was anxious to meet her. I didn’t think anything could have convinced me to stay back while someone else went.

  It was still dark when Munro picked me up the next morning. I felt hungover and disoriented from having to get up so early in the morning. I’d been having dreams again, only this time they weren’t about the night of the fire. Now I was dreaming about a man, and the only thing I could recall was that I loved him to the very depths of my soul. I knew I’d only been having the dream the past few nights, but there was a quality to it that left me with a distinct sense of Deja vu. As though I’d already dreamt it countless times, but I couldn’t recall ever having these dreams before now. It was a haunting feeling.

  Once again, my dreams were messing with my sleep, and I’d done the bare minimum to get dressed before Munro showed up, opting to stay in bed for five extra minutes instead. It didn’t really matter anyway because a morning of travel wasn’t going to make me look any better.

  Barely getting my face washed and teeth brushed before I ran out of time, I tossed on some jeans and a hoodie, opting for a worn-in pair of sneakers and my warm puffy coat since I figured we’d be doing some walking once we got to the city.

  I’d barely come down the steps when I saw the headlights of a car flash over the front of the house as Munro pulled up in Ryan’s car. We were planning or maybe just hoping, that Mari would come back with us. And the three of us squeezed in the front of Munro’s truck for an hour and a half didn’t sound so amazing. Instead we’d decided to bring Ryan’s car in hopes that things would work out. Quietly opening and closing the front door behind me, I felt like a thief trying to sneak out of front a heist.

  The anger from the night before was still simmering in my veins as I mumbled a hello when I got in the car. Munro was holding a coffee and a donut and extended them out to me once I was buckled in.

  “Mmm, caffeine and sugar. Hello, my lovelies.” It wasn’t like the gesture was enough to earn my forgiveness, but I’d be damned if I turned the food away. I sighed as I took a deep smell of the coffee. Beside me, Munro made a sound that was almost a chuckle as I tucked into my donut.

  I polished off the donut in three huge bites which earned me an impressed grin that I returned with a nervous one of my own. Now that we were confined to the small space of the car, I realized how awkward and uncertain I felt around him. Our recent issues had left me feeling like I had no idea how to be normal with him.

  I’d spent the last few months fantasizing about making out with his face and now, after everything that had happened between us, I wasn’t sure how to feel. Those feelings—hell it was a physical craving—didn’t just disappear, but my mind was waging its own war of sensibility. It was telling me that Munro had kept secrets from me, and I shouldn’t entrust my heart in his keeping. No, I should be pissed and I was.

  The physical memory of his fists was still fresh, but for some reason, I was able to compartmentalize what had happened at the warehouse. When it was happening, I’d figured out Munro was not himself. Finding out Hattie had done something to him, that he hadn’t been in control of his faculties, made me just as angry for him. He’d been violated too, just in a different way. We were both victims, and I could forgive him for something he couldn’t control. What I couldn’t forgive was how he'd mislead me and not told me massively important pieces of information, like the fact that Hattie was his mother. That was not something I was going to get over in the blink of an eye.

  The silence in the car dragged on, and we could both feel the tension growing between us. Munro eventually cleared his throat and flicked his eyes briefly in my direction before he looked back at the road.

  “Annie, I need to apologize.”

  The instinct to deny him, to tell him he didn’t owe me an apology, was on the tip of my tongue. I think I had this pathological need to dismiss apologies because they made people uncomfortable, even when they were warranted. But I held back, waiting to see what he had to say. Maybe he needed to get the words out as much as I needed to hear them.

  His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly before he eased his hold and continued speaking. “What I did to you.” He took a deep breath, the sound ragged. “I would never… I hate that I…” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m sorry.”

  I chewed on my lip as I considered the strain on his face. It wasn’t the apology I wanted, but I understood his need to apologize for what had happened at the warehouse.

  “Munro, I know that wasn’t you. Even before you explained everything yesterday, I knew those actions
weren’t your own. I don’t need that apology but thank you anyway.”

  Munro’s brow was furrowed as if he didn’t quite understand what I was saying. He cocked his head to the side and looked at me again for a brief moment.

  “You said that apology. You mean the secrets?” There was a cautious note in his question.

  Oh God, it was too early in the day for this serious of a conversation, but I’d given him the advice the day before to just rip the Band-Aid off, and I needed to do the same. To clear the air between us so we could function around each other once again. There was too much craziness going on for us to be at odds with each other.

  The car had warmed up considerably, and I was starting to feel smothered in my overly warm coat. I unzipped the coat and shrugged out of it, using the movements as a way to delay my response. After I folded the coat over my lap and settled back in my seat, I finally answered him.

  “Yes, I need you to stop keeping secrets from me. Whatever the rationale is behind keeping them, you need to stop.”

  Munro’s shoulders tensed as I took in his reaction. The sun was rising, and the warm amber glow was shining behind us. From my seat, Munro almost appeared to have a halo ringing his head. The sight nearly took my breath away, because he was always handsome but right now he radiated a godlike glow.

  “We never meant to keep secrets, Annie.”

  I heard the sincerity in his voice, and I believed him. Kind of. He may not have set out to lie to me about Hattie being his mom, but by not telling me, he’d left me vulnerable. His secret made it feel like it was them against me. He’d given her power over me because she knew things I didn’t and used it against me. And not telling me about my aunt. Honestly, he had no way of knowing that my mom had never mentioned her sister. So the blame couldn’t be entirely his to shoulder. That didn’t make it sting any less. I just wished I’d known about her before now. For the last few years. For my entire life. Some of the anger drained out of me because my mom had chosen not to tell me for a reason. She was protecting me, maybe my aunt too.

  “Even if you didn’t mean to, you did, and Hattie was able to use it against us.” I looked away from him, focusing on the road in front of us. The warm air blowing from the vents began to irritate my eyes, making them feel dried out, so I pushed the vent down, diverting the air to my lap instead. All of this was just a distraction so that I could avoid looking at Munro.

  Munro’s head jerked just the slightest before he nodded.

  “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything.”

  I heard the ache in his voice. He wanted, no needed, to make things right between us. As I thought about all the things I needed to know, words spilled from my lips as though my heart were controlling things instead of my brain. Because it certainly wasn’t the most important thing we needed to talk about.

  “Can Lola see your mark?” I asked, pointing to the black rune that was shaped like a triangle made from bold slashing lines. It sat on his hand between his thumb and pointer finger.

  Munro’s reaction surprised me. He looked uncomfortable and started shifting in his seat before he answered. “No. She can’t.”

  Even though I’d asked the question, his response still stunned me. “Why can’t she see it?”

  “I have it cloaked”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, there was so much about magic I still needed to learn. “Okay, at some point I will want to know how, but right now I’m more interested in the why. Why would you cloak it?”

  Munro’s fingers were drumming a steady tattoo on the wheel, betraying his discomfort with their movement. “I told you that the mark appeared when a large amount of magic is used.”

  “Yes,” I prompted.

  “That’s true, but there’s more to it than that.” He moved his hand to the shifter even though we were on the highway and wouldn’t need to shift gears anytime soon.

  Each of his fidgety movements pointed to his discomfited state. Of course there was more to it, this was exactly what I’d been talking about. Just because he wasn’t straight out lying to me about things didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping things from me.

  “Go on,” I grumbled out as Munro’s gaze quickly dashed over to me than right back to the road.

  After a pause, Munro spoke. “Do you remember the story of the two sisters? Cailleach and Áine.” His accent deepened. Their names sounded like Call-ya and Awn-ya in his lilting brogue, and a little tingle tickled at the back of my mind. It was similar to the feeling when you leave the house and can’t recall if you left your curling iron on or had somehow forgotten to turn the stove off. I had to wonder if I’d buried a memory of something that was too deep in my subconscious for me to pull it out.

  “I do.” And I did remember, but I also remembered a lot of his details on the sisters had been pretty fuzzy. Munro must have sensed my struggle to recall parts of the story, so he reminded me of the tale.

  “They were twin sisters, born of a human and fairy. They were the first known witches in our history, although their story is more mythology than fact. They were said to balance each other, to be a perfect complement of light and dark, and together they could control the four elements with perfect ease.

  “Áine fell in love, and her sister Cailleach felt she’d been abandoned by her sister and resented that she had to share Áine’s love with another. The legend says that Cailleach tried to kill her sister’s lover, so she could keep Áine for herself. The story that I remember doesn’t say if she was successful or not. It’s all very fuzzy on the details, but essentially Áine couldn’t forgive what Cailleach had tried to do to the man Áine loved, and the sisters fought. In the end, Áine used her magic to put Cailleach deep in the earth.” Munro stopped to take a deep drink of his coffee, like he needed fortification before he recited the rest of the story.

  “Some stories say Áine stole Cailleach’s power when she buried her, others that Cailleach stole her sister’s powers while she was being buried, and now all this power rests beneath the earth, unbalanced and volatile. I don’t know how much, if any of, it is real. My gran always told it as a fable with the lesson being that your actions can backfire when you do things for the wrong reasons. Cailleach lost her sister just as she feared she would, except it was because of her own actions.”

  The story was coming back to me, and I replied with what I remembered, “And no one knew what happened to Áine and Cailleach’s lover, right?”

  Munro nodded, rubbing at his eyes as if tired of staring at the road, and it made me realize how worn out he looked. The last few days had been hard on him too, and I was only now grasping the physical toll it was all taking on him. His voice sounded drained when he responded, his accent thicker as it tended to get when he was weary. Like it took focus to keep the lilt out of his voice, and when he was tired he didn’t have the energy to bother.

  “That’s right, the story always ends with multiple possibilities. Some versions of the story say that Áine’s lover killed Cailleach instead of her being buried, others say that Áine was the one buried and that Cailleach enslaved the lover and kept him by her side for eternity. But it’s all just lore.”

  “Do you think any of the story is real?” I asked, wondering if he believed in the legend.

  “I do,” he said as he kept his eyes on the road. He was fidgeting less, now that we were focused on something other than us.

  “In some form at least. I don’t know which version is true, but there are parts of it that feel right to me.” His head tipped in my direction, and I nodded at him. I believed it too. There was no reason I should believe this old story his grandmother used to tell him. But I sensed there was a thread of truth that wove through his words and it made me certain it was real. At least some parts of it.

  “What does it have to do with the mark on your hand? And the one that I have on my arm?” I asked, brushing my fingers over my mark as I spoke about it. The need to touch it instinctive and necessary.

  “It’s another bedtime story
, but one that many young witches are told as a cautionary tale.”

  I swallowed thickly, knowing I needed to hear the story, but apprehensive about what he was going to share.

  “I told you the mark appeared when a large amount of magic had been used.”

  I nodded, remembering what he’d shared with me that day at the Mines of Spain, when he’d dropped the bomb on me that I was a witch.

  “It is, but that’s not the whole story.”

  “Of course not.” I slowly shook my head and glared at the road as Munro grimaced and looked at me apologetically.

  The radio was playing quietly in the background, and the beat from the music was the only sound I could hear, like it was amplified by the renewed tension in the car. Wasn't this the perfect illustration of my relationship with Munro? He shared things with me, but they were partial truths. He kept holding things back that he shouldn’t.

  “This mark comes from a dark place.”

  Goosebumps spread over my skin. “You mean like, mentally dark? Like an emotionally troubled place?”

  “No,” was all he said, and I was about to start pulling my hair out when he finally spoke again.

  “When I told you about our magic, I explained that it came from the Earth, that we pull from the four elements to use our magic. I left out the part about the fifth element.”

  I scowled at him with a frustrated growl, and he held up his hand in surrender but also to stop me from interrupting.

  “The story was that witches of great strength and power could access a fifth element, which was said to be magic from the soul.”

  I shivered as his words beckoned to some knowledge I had buried deep inside me.

  “Soul magic is thought to be a myth and partially superstition, but it’s said to be volatile and uncontrollable magic. When wielded, it’s more powerful than all the other elements, but it is dangerous and can be deadly. The stories all say that when you use soul magic, your body bears the brand for the rest of your life because of the magnitude of power that flowed through your body. It sears through you leaving your body to bear the mark like a scar.”