by A. L. Knorr
"Okay." Saxony looked around the room. "I need something metal. I won't wreck anything, I promise."
"Will there be smoke?"
"I won’t let smoke come.”
Before I could ask her to elaborate on this strange statement, she pointed at one of the chairs. “Aha." She squatted, pointing at where a screw fastened the leg to the body of the lounger. She rolled up the sleeves of her bathrobe. "Observe."
I put a hand on her arm. “Don't set off the fire alarm.”
"Relax." Saxony began to rub her hands together, her pupils flickered with an inhuman glow as the banked fire inside her flared to life. She focused on the screw and put her hands out as though warming them. Waves of heat shimmered in the air.
I got down on my knees on the floor beside the chair for a better view.
The waves baking off Saxony's hands narrowed to a point—the screw, which slowly and steadily began to glow. I didn't understand how this wouldn't ruin the chair, but I bit my tongue.
I gasped when the metal of the screw turned soft and began to drip. But true to her word, there was no smoke, and the wood around the screw seemed undisturbed. But surely there would be a burn mark beneath that melted metal?
"Saxony ..." I bit my lip against my protest.
The heat waves changed direction and the melted metal reversed direction, climbing back up the wood. The screw reformed, its central hole changing from a shapeless dimple back into a square. The screw darkened as it cooled, and Saxony took her hands away, leaving the screw and the wood of the chair exactly as they had been.
"That was amazing!" I cried, relieved that she'd been true to her word.
Saxony sat back on her haunches. “It’s called prescriptive combustion. It's the ability to laser-target the heat in such a way that only what you want to get hot, burns."
"But you didn't just pinpoint the heat, you reformed the screw out of a glob of molten metal.”
Saxony nodded. "That's an entirely different skill called exploitation where I use the heat to move the molecules. It has to be glass, or metal. It doesn't work with wood or plastic. It takes a lot of practice because each metal has its own properties and melting point. That screw is made of carbon steel wire, which I know the properties of well enough to manipulate it the way I showed you. If it was nickel or brass, I wouldn't have attempted it because I haven't worked with those metals enough."
"I'm beginning to understand why fire magi need a school," I said, staring at the screw.
Saxony nodded. "There's a lot to learn. But Arcturus means to offer students broad exposure to a range of talents and uses for the fire within us, not necessarily to help us master just one."
I looked at the screw thoughtfully, marveling at Saxony's skill and wondering if I could be as prescriptive with my own power.
The punch line came later when Saxony beckoned me to the back door while no one else was around. She opened the door on the pouring rain, stuck out her face, and released a long stream of smoke from her mouth.
Chapter Nine
Later that afternoon, as I went into my bedroom to hook my phone up to my charger, I took a look out the window and into the back yard.
My breath stalled as I spotted my mother sitting on one of the benches in the garden all by herself. She held a black umbrella over her head and wore a red waterproof trench-coat. It was atypical of my mother to be sitting out in the rain. Liz didn't like things that could potentially destroy her updo. I realized with a start that this was my chance to get the truth out of her. She was smack in the middle of the ros fírinn.
I snuck to the back door and pulled on my rain gear, slipping outside without alerting anyone. Winding my way to where my mother sat, I opened my own umbrella. Light rain spattered against the fabric, and the smell of the roses hung heavy in the air. My pulse quickened as I approached the bench. Mom looked up as she heard my footsteps and gave me a thin smile. She moved over to make room for me.
"Don't those roses smell lovely?" I settled on the bench next to her and took an exaggerated inhale, hoping the roses were strong enough to coax a confession from a resistant subject.
Liz tilted her head back and closed her eyes, breathing in the garden. "Mmmm. Gorgeous."
"I'm sorry if I made you feel interrogated before, Mom." I gripped the bottom of the bench and looked down at the mossy hard-packed ground. Closing my eyes, I felt the root system below throbbing with subtle power.
"That's alright, Poppet. I'm sorry for the way I reacted. I practice so much in my work life to keep the emotion out of everything. Seems like that makes it harder, not easier, to do the same in my personal life."
I nodded, not looking up. "I get it."
She went quiet.
Looked like I needed to manipulate the situation a little. Nudging their energy to flow toward my mother, I felt a slight redirection from the roses. Like tiny leaves in a stream—the hybrid's energy drifted toward my mother.
"You're entitled to ask, Georjie," Mom said quietly. "I never told you before because I was embarrassed." Her cheeks flushed. This admission was so unlike Liz that I had to hide my surprise. Rearranging my features into something neutral, I waited.
"The truth is that I don't entirely remember the circumstances of your conception."
I felt like she'd whacked me in the gut. "You don't remember?"
"It's spotty, and totally black in places. For a while I thought I'd been drugged."
Wow. Okay that was unexpected. "You don't think that's the case anymore?"
"I don't know. I can't deny that there is something unexplained about you, Georjie, especially since coming back from Ireland last summer. Since then, I ... well, it sounds a little crazy."
"Please don't worry about sounding crazy, Mom."
I had used my powers to heal my mother when I'd come back from Ireland, not realizing that it was my powers that had made her sick in the first place until it was almost too late. We'd been at such a low point in our relationship, I felt neglected and short-tempered and let my emotions get the better of me. A Wise who doesn't have control over her negative emotions could actually harm someone. I'd flown home in a state of panic when I'd learned my mother had been hospitalized. I'd been able to heal her in a way that fell just a little shy of appearing miraculous, but someone intuitive could have figured out the healing had to do with me. My mom had never addressed it directly.
"When I think back to my time in Scotland ..." She shot me a look. "Yes, you were conceived in this country, Georjie. Not in Canada, and not by Brent."
I closed my eyes and dropped my chin in relief. Finally, the truth was coming out. The roses were doing their work. Liz was opening like a rose herself.
“When you came to Scotland for work?"
She nodded. “A colleague of mine from Canada had relocated to Scotland and wanted help with his firm, just temporarily, and I wanted an excuse to get away." Mom shifted the umbrella from one hand to the other, looking mildly surprised at what she was saying.
"From Brent?"
"From everything, and yes, from Brent, too. I loved him, but he was young, irresponsible, and took me for granted. Even with my heavy workload, I felt like I had a kid to look after instead of a partner to help bear life’s burdens. I thought that if I spent some time away from him, made him feel a little threatened, then he'd understand what he stood to lose. A few months away and I expected to come back to a proper grown up."
I wondered if she could hear how manipulative she sounded. What she'd admitted fit the kind of behavior I expected from her. Make a strategy to achieve her goals and maneuver anyone standing in the way into accepting it. I didn't respond, just waited for her to go on.
"I enjoyed Edinburgh very much, and I met a man. A lovely, kind man with beautiful eyes who listened to me. It seemed like he would listen to me all night if that's what I wanted. I don't actually remember being intimate with him, that's the strangest thing of all. I remember not wanting to cheat on Brent but not being sure I could be strong
enough in the face of my attraction."
"What was his name?" In spite of the cool weather of the day, my palms felt sweaty. I pinched them between my knees and noticed the dark color of the stone where they'd been gripping the bench.
"I wish I could remember, Georjie. I really do."
"What did he look like."
It jarred me to see a tear in the corner of her eye. She dabbed at it delicately with a manicured finger. "He looked like you, Poppet. Tall, blond, brown eyes. Kind of Scandinavian and very handsome."
"But you don't remember sleeping with him?"
Liz shook her head. "I do have a memory of waking up in my own bedroom in the college dorm. There was a dent on the pillow next to mine, it was clear there'd been someone there, but I can't remember the details about the night before. I've even been to a hypnotist to try and recall it."
My pulse quickened. "You have?"
Another tear escaped. "It didn't work, though. I was ashamed and embarrassed. How could I have been so irresponsible? So terrible to Brent? How could I not know what had happened? So, I convinced myself that nothing had happened, that I only imagined the sheets and pillow were rumpled."
"What were you doing the night before? Do you remember that much?”
"I was out with some other students, having a laugh at one of the pubs on the Royal Mile. There were dozens of us."
"Was that where you met my father?"
"Yes. I mean, I think so. I had had a few drinks, but not so much that I was drunk. I remember coming out of the ladies and going to the bar for a glass of water when I saw him. He smiled at me and looked so inviting. I sat and talked to him for a while. He asked me all kinds of questions. Good questions, the kind someone asks when they're really interested in you as a person."
"Like what?"
She gave a light scoff. "It was so long ago, Georjayna. I barely recall talking to him at all. I just remember the way he made me feel. When my friends left, he walked me home. I remember him kissing me on the cheek, but after that …" She shrugged and shot me a look. "Please believe me, Georjie. I'm telling you the truth. I swear it."
"I do believe you, Mom."
Her expression melted. "It wasn't until three weeks later when I realized I was late that I bought a pregnancy test. I thought it was Brent's because I was home by then and we'd had a nice reunion. I thought you were Brent's until you were almost a year old."
She surprised me again. A year was a long time to forget that your kid was not your husband’s.
"I had no memory of sleeping with this other ... Scandinavian, or Dutch fellow. That's how I thought of him because he was so tall and striking. It wasn't until you grew a little and you were so long and so blonde, so unlike either of us, that a memory of something sparked in my mind. I ignored it, but when we tried for another baby and Brent got tested ..." Her throat moved as she swallowed.
"You learned he wasn't able to have children."
She canted her head and looked at me. "How did you know that?"
"I called Brent." The words slipped out so easily and so smoothly, before I even thought about it. Such was the power of the ros fírinn, I realized.
She considered this. "I shouldn't be surprised by that under the circumstances." She looked at the ground. "I needed Brent, and you needed a father. I wanted our family to work, and there was no way I could have withstood the humiliation of my dirty laundry aired in public, especially infidelity. There was too much on the line with me headed straight for a position on the board. It wasn't possible to admit it to anyone, even to myself."
"You lied to yourself just as much as you lied to Brent." I wasn't sure if that made me feel better or worse.
Mom agreed. "Sounds crazy, but it’s true."
"What do you think happened now that the years have gone by?"
She shrugged. "A rape drug seems like an explanation, but ..."
I swallowed down the nausea that twisted my throat at the thought of my mother having been assaulted, that I was the result of a rape. "But?"
"It’s unlikely. I was very attracted to this man. If he wanted to be with me, he needn't have assaulted me. I had no signs of abuse on my body. I only remember feeling like I'd had a good sleep with good dreams, and the kind of euphoria that comes from ..." she blushed and looked slightly scandalized at what she was admitting to her daughter.
"Good sex."
She cleared her throat. "Yes. Goodness, this is the most honest conversation we've ever had." She took a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed her eyes.
I gave a bitter smile and only just stopped myself from telling her it was thanks to the roses. "So you don't think you were assaulted?"
"No. But I was on medication at the time."
"For what?"
"Anxiety. They weren't meant to be consumed with alcohol. Perhaps the combination did something to my memory."
I thought it far more likely that the fae man she'd slept with had done some magic to make her forget him. But why? Had he just wanted a romp with a college student and didn't want to deal with her in the morning? He was fae. His actions could be totally unpredictable and bizarre to me but make sense to him, whoever he was.
"I'm sorry, Georjie." Mom shifted to face me on the bench. "I never planned on telling you any of this; I didn't want to hurt you, to send you on some fruitless chase after someone there is no way of tracking."
"It wasn't right, Mom. You know that now, don't you?"
Her brows tightened, and she looked distressed. "No. I'm not sure why I've spilled everything, it's only going to cause you strife, and that's the last thing I would ever want for you."
"I deserve to know the truth."
Her tone became softly pleading. "It's not about what you deserve, Poppet. Knowing some things only makes life harder, and I only ever tried to make your life easier."
"You don't think letting me believe that Brent rejected me because I was inadequate or unworthy of his love was hard?" I fought to control my voice as disappointment simmered deep in my gut like a toxic brew.
"Why do you think I fought so hard for him to stay?"
"You mean for the lie to continue?"
"Yes," she admitted openly. "At least I could blame Brent for bad choices instead of having to admit that the whole thing was my fault and I couldn't even remember ..." She blinked as she heard herself speak, and her hands pressed against her cheeks.
"Are you hearing yourself, Mom?"
She nodded. "Yes, and it sounds much worse when I say it out loud." She got up. Water poured off the umbrella as it shifted, soaking the knees of my jeans. "I'm sorry, but I can't handle any more of this, Georjie. I don't know what's come over me. I need to lie down."
Without waiting for a response, she hurried toward the rear entrance of the castle. I watched her go, a knot of confused emotions tightening my chest.
At least now I had the truth, or part of it.
Chapter Ten
I followed my mother back into the castle after a few minutes, feeling dazed. As I traded rain boots for indoor sneakers, Saxony came out of the kitchen holding a cup of coffee. She smiled at me and held up the cup.
"Java? It's hot and fresh."
"You made that for yourself; I can get another." I smiled at her as I hung my coat on a peg and headed for the kitchen.
She followed me down the stone steps. Everything was tidy and clean, a fresh tablecloth had been laid out on the long table and a few pillows artfully arranged on the bench against the wall. Saxony slipped her legs over the bench and sat down, reflective eyes tracing my every move as I went through the motions of making myself a coffee. She tapped her fingernails against her cup.
"I know there's something that you're not saying, Georjie."
I paused in scooping the coffee grounds into the espresso maker then forced myself to continue. But of course, she'd noticed my hesitation.
"It's okay, you know," she added quickly.
My gaze flicked to her. She had both elbows on the table and both
palms cradling her mug of coffee, fingernails still tapping.
"What's okay?" I finished scooping the grounds, closed the coffee canister, and twisted the top on the espresso maker.
"Having secrets. Just because we're friends doesn't mean you have to tell me absolutely everything all the time. Sometimes you have to work things through on your own."
Quietly astounded at Saxony’s sudden maturity regarding secrets, I set the espresso on the stove and lit the flame. Leaving it to heat up, I took the chair at the end of the table near her. Saxony was known to pester and cajole until she got every last bit of private information out of you. She used to drive me crazy. Her apparent understanding was a sign that she was growing up.
"Spoken like someone who recently had to do such a thing herself?" I raised my eyes to hers.
She tucked her hair behind her ears, looking young and earnest. "Sort of. Just, don't feel bad if you have stuff going on you don't want to talk about. Just know that I’m here for you."
I nodded and played with a strand of my hair, absently. "I want to tell you, Saxony. I really do. I just ... I don't think it’s the best idea."
She nodded and took another sip from her mug. I could tell she was exerting great effort not to badger me.
The espresso began to bubble, and I got up to turn off the stove, swallowing the things I wanted to say, my heart arguing with my head. Tell her, don't tell her, tell her.
"I do have something going on that I feel I can't talk about, but maybe I could ask you a question without having to explain why I'm asking it?" I poured my steaming coffee into a mug.
"Anything." She sounded so eager to help that it made my heart ache with longing for days gone by. Days when we were carefree, before our supernatural abilities took shape. Pouring cream into my coffee I watched as the liquid swirled and changed color. Putting the cream back in the fridge, I retrieved a spoon and returned to the table to sit down.
“There’s a possibility I might have to kill somebody," I whispered, eyes on the tablecloth. And there it was, my authentic fear put into words. I wanted to trust the queen, but she was fae, after all. The little voice inside that said she couldn’t be trusted was quiet, but it was there all the same.