“Hi, I’m Evelyn. I’ve seen you around a few times. If I’d known you were looking for Erin, I would have let her know she had a returning guest.” I’ll give it to Ms. Harp, she was covert and smooth at letting me know she’d seen him around and when her eyes slipped in my direction, watching me for a response. Her intel wouldn’t stop with just her; she’d relay the information to Asher. I didn’t like having a spy in my building.
“Erin, would you introduce me to your friend?”
No.
“We look out for each other, so we like to know who’s coming and going. You can never be too safe,” she continued when I didn’t respond.
Trying to read my father’s eyes, I wasn’t sure if he was buying it. The affable curl of his lips didn’t change, but he didn’t offer a name and I didn’t put the effort into making one up.
“Thank you, Ms. Harp, for checking on me. My guest and I need to talk. Will you excuse us?” I wasn’t ready to give her any more information to report. And I really wanted to talk to Daddy Dearest.
Responding to her narrowed gaze with a pleasant smile, I started for my apartment with my father close behind. Ms. Harp made it back to her apartment, throwing off her geriatric facade with a shrug.
“Enjoy your guest.” She’d managed to keep her same sweet tone while scrutinizing us.
Enjoy your snitch call to Asher.
If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn she read my thoughts because the purse of her lips profoundly said: so.
Opening the door, I took a brief account of my room, doing a mental sweep of where I stored my weapons and how quickly I could get to them. The magic coming off him might prove to be more than I could handle without my own magic. I kept a closer distance than I wanted between us. I could take his magic if necessary.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Nolan.” He paused in consideration. “You don’t want to call me Father?” His genuine query stunned me into silence. Confusion, anger, frustration, fear, and sadness all roiled inside me, and sorting through them and trying to think clearly became a monumental task. I hated every minute of it.
“No. If you were my father, I’d know your name.”
With a pained expression, he closed his eyes. How could that hurt? He didn’t know me.
“I’ve done what I could to protect you. If people knew of your existence, you never would have been safe. In the Veil, you wouldn’t have been safe. You weakened her. Those who answer to her and share her beliefs would have murdered you to restore her power.”
He was wrong. The Immortalis wanted me alive long enough to serve my intended purpose—to free Malific. Those who thought I could be used to break the Omni ward probably would have wanted me dead, if they’d known of my existence.
All the questions scrolled through my mind and I tried to order them by the most pressing, but they all seemed so important.
“Why are you here now?”
That wasn’t really the question I wanted to ask but it was the one that came out first.
“Malific is no longer imprisoned. I have no idea how she did it. Her abilities and cunning never cease.”
For someone who had a child with her and, I’m assuming, some form of relationship—possibly sordid and dysfunctional—he seemed to hold her in contempt.
“I know.”
His brows inched together in question.
“I died and it released her,” I told him. Each time I said it, it got easier. Pretty soon, I’d be like, “Hey, I died, pass me the Nutella and bagel, will ya.”
His eyes closed and he whispered something. A prayer? A spell? A request for forgiveness? I looked at my arm, hoping there was some indicator that the restriction had been removed.
But there wasn’t. The raven hadn’t appeared and there wasn’t any magic coursing through me. Just the empty feeling of something missing.
“I did everything to protect you. You were left with someone I knew would take care of you. A sister I felt would do the same. I never…” He blew out a breath, his expression bleak. “I thought you would stay with them. For the two weeks I watched her with her child, I knew she’d take care of you the same way.”
“She gave me to her best friend because she couldn’t have children. Madison is my sister. We were raised as sisters. Always told we were.”
I hated that I was relieved that my explanation offered him some comfort.
“When your identity was discovered I made sure no one ever found out.”
The incident. He was referring to that. Everything about meeting Hudson had seemed coincidental. Two people who met at a bar, finding comfort in people watching and dancing. We weren’t friends, acquaintances at best. He’d never struck me as the type of person drawn to the appeal of cheating death, or the euphoric pleasure from drifting in that liminal place between life and death, or some sadistic appeal to my magic. When I acquired a new spell book, he seemed genuine about wanting me to explore it by letting me borrow his magic.
Before I could stop myself, I’d stepped back several feet from Nolan, trying to shake off that entire day and the fallout from it. The tailspin my life devolved into. That incident changed my life.
“What did you do?” I hissed.
Silence ticked by and flashes of that night replayed in my head in an erratic blur: Me waking up confused, finding Hudson dead, the call to Madison, the arrest, the plea deals, my stay at the Stygian, my court-ordered appointments with Dr. Sumner, and the hateful way River looked at me each time he saw me.
I slammed Nolan into the wall, the point of my karambit at his throat. “What. Did. You. Do?” I pushed out through clenched teeth.
“I protected you,” he said, lifting his head and baring his neck to me. He didn’t want to do that, because my fingers ached to pierce his skin with the weapon. Every attempt I made to slow my breath failed. Shuffling back from him, I forced myself to take slower, deeper breaths or I was going to pass out.
“What did you do?” I whispered, my voice cracking.
“He was there to kill you. To restore Malific’s power. I just wanted to make things right. You saw me and I—” He stopped. Pain filled his eyes before he cast them down to the floor.
“You took my memory, but you didn’t protect me.” A lump formed in my throat, making it difficult to speak. Karambit still in hand, I went to the kitchen, yanked open the cabinet, and pulled out the vodka Mephisto had given me. It was to be savored, not guzzled the way I was doing it. It tasted like ash and I quickly put it down.
I turned away from Nolan when the tears that welled in my eyes spilled down my cheeks. “You didn’t help. You screwed things up. People thought I killed him. I thought I killed him. All these years, I’ve walked around thinking that I was capable of murder.” My voice broke. No longer believing I was capable of making rational decisions when it came to preserving Nolan’s life, I laid the karambit on the counter.
He eased toward me with the caution of someone approaching a potentially dangerous animal. At his approach, I stiffened.
“Once he determined you were the one marked with the raven, he would have killed you.”
“Why a raven?”
His lips lifted in a half smile. “You have a small mark on your leg that looks like a raven.” No, it didn’t, it looked like a small splat of discoloration. His smile disappeared. “And Malific is your mother. Most see her as portentous, a prelude to death. You are her daughter,” he whispered.
Unable to continue to hold his gaze, I looked away. “I never killed anyone. You did.”
“Let me take that burden from you. I did it. I made it so. I thought I was protecting you. You’d be hidden where no one from the Veil could get to you. You should have been at the Enclave. I underestimated Madison. She is…impressive.”
And you bungled your so-called protection by making it worse. Ineffectual and catastrophic. With protection like his, I didn’t need enemies.
“If Malific is out, you will need your magic to protect yours
elf. I restricted it to keep you hidden, but now it will only serve as a weakness. Let me lift your restriction.”
Breath expelled out of me that didn’t seem like my own. I nodded.
His lips lifted in an appreciative smile as if he had been expecting me to decline.
He looked at me and said, “We need to visit my sister.”
CHAPTER 20
Sister? Sister.
Was this really my life?
In silence I got out of the car and moved toward the house with Nolan next to me. We made our way toward the labyrinth of trees that existed only to create mental confusion and distort the direction to the home of the Woman in Black, the trickster. The purveyor of strong enigmatic magic. And my father’s sister, Elizabeth. My aunt.
This time, a Mirra of fire didn’t rise as it had when I came here with the Huntsmen. Nor did a persnickety imp confront me and Cory at the entrance only to pepper us with inane riddles to prevent us moving forward and to cheat and deny us admission by claiming the answer we gave was incorrect.
Again, out of my peripheral sight, I found myself examining my father’s features, wondering which part of me was Malific. The stiff silence between us became more strained with each passing moment.
My attention was drawn to the ranch home a few feet away and the bridge that formed, allowing us passage. The dangerous-looking fish with the fang-like teeth sprang out of the water, going from one end of the bridge to the other, forcing us to stop or get smacked by them or, even worse, bitten. Not something I ever wanted to explain as a reason for an injury.
Elizabeth emerged before we could get to the door. She was dressed in the image presented to those who sought her out. Her hair was pulled back into a sleek high ponytail, her lips stained a dark wine, her eyes coated in dark liner. A black coverlet covered a half-petticoat revealing slim-fitting black pants. She contrasted the attire with an oversized man’s shirt tied at the bottom. It was an eclectic combination of styles that marked her as the goth trickster, a misnomer of the Woman in Black or the Woman in the Forest.
The stern look she gave me softened at the sight of her brother. She embraced him for a long time. Sighing when she pulled away, she directed her attention back to me.
“The Raven.”
“Don’t call her that. She’s Erin,” Nolan corrected before I could.
“And Malific’s daughter.” Venom laced her words and hard eyes narrowed on me.
I was still grappling with everything that had transpired over the past few days regarding my mother. It made it hard to find the right words.
“You’re my aunt?” I asked, my tone harsher than intended.
Stopping mid-step to her house, she took me in with a disdain she’d never shown me before. “No, I’m his sister,” she said airily.
“Elizabeth,” Nolan snapped. Then he said something in a language I didn’t understand. His tone was gentle but obviously chastising. Her response to him was a sharp rebuke. I might not have known the language, but their nonverbal communication spoke volumes. He was the peacemaker of the two.
Knowing that I was there to have my restriction removed and that when I left, I’d have magic, was the only reason I continued to follow the bickering siblings. They needed a time-out.
“We’re removing her restriction?” Elizabeth ground out through clenched teeth once we were in the house.
“Yes, we can’t leave her defenseless.” He kept his voice even despite the hostility in hers.
“We’re just going to unleash Malific’s daughter on the city, with magic. Malific destroys the lives of those who live within the Veil, and you’ll have her daughter destroy the ones outside it. She’s a Naut, like us, and able to move through this world and the Veil with ease. Perhaps she’ll sow chaos that rivals her mother’s. Will that make you happy, brother?”
“She’s not Malific, she’s my daughter.”
“The only reason she exists is because of your foolish optimism and convoluted plan to make Malific pay. But it was foolish in its inception. To create that.” She waved her hand in my direction, and a flurry of magic drummed into me, nudging me back a few feet.
When I got my footing but before I could think clearly, a blade was in my hand and it was pointed at her to warn her off from doing it again.
“I give you Malific’s daughter. She’ll slaughter me as I stand here, although I’m poised to help you give her magic. And this is what you want?” A scowl of abhorrence marred her face. I wasn’t going to receive any maternal regard from her.
“You provoked her.”
“How many others will provoke her? You give her magic, you’re unleashing a person with both god and elven magic. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
“Malific is free. What should I do, leave her unable to defend herself and then—” He snapped his mouth shut and when he spoke again it was in their language.
“Your plan was for naught? You having a child with Malific for the sole purpose of weakening her and making her vulnerable so she’d be forced to live that way was foolish. If you had the chance to kill her, you should have taken it.”
Nolan closed his eyes and inhaled. In that moment, the dullness of his eyes, the folds of his frown, and the furrow of his brow aged him.
“People think that the most fitting revenge is death. It isn’t. It’s making that person live a life they aren’t likely to survive. People who need power wither when they are powerless. Dominators shatter when forced to capitulate. Those who need to lead an army are at a loss when they have no one but themselves. That is what I wanted to do to Malific. Leave her in a way that she’d live her immortal life doing the very things she hates. That was a fitting punishment for such a monster.”
Elizabeth’s expression softened as she turned to her brother who spoke with conviction, in a manner that couldn’t deny he felt he’d done the right thing. She pressed the palm of her hand to his cheek.
“The cost of vengeance is often too high, Nolan. You paid dearly.” Her eyes slipped to me. “This is the debt you will continue to carry.”
The room became too crowded, shrinking to a fraction of its size. My breathing became forced and labored as I processed exactly what had taken place between Nolan and Malific. I wasn’t the love child of a man with questionable taste. I was a plan.
Nothing felt more devastating than to discover my life, my very existence, was a strategic maneuver. I was a pawn. For my father, I was a tool to weaken Malific and exact his revenge. For my mother, I was a sacrificial lamb to gain her freedom and return to her life of mayhem and destruction.
I needed to get the hell out of the house and away from them.
“I’m not a this. I’m a person and I’m standing right here!”
Her eyes flicked in my direction and she dismissed me just as quickly. “But you shouldn’t be.” Returning her attention to Nolan, she said, “Malific is free because of Erin. The Omni ward that imprisoned her was linked to Malific, and the only way it could be released was if Malific died, or Erin was magically linked to it, and died in her place.” I received another wave of her pure disdain, but this time without the magical assault.
“Erin should have been discovered and killed. Never allowed to be used as a means of releasing Malific.” Her voice lowered when she turned her attention to me. “How did you do it? With the Huntsmen? They discovered who you are and yet here you stand.”
Seething, it took all my effort to keep the knife at my side where I’d lowered it. Going through the Mirra was her effort to expose me to the Huntsmen. I was positive she had revealed to Mephisto what my markings meant, putting in motion a means to my death.
“You revealed me in the hope that they would kill me?”
A solitary blink was the only response.
“Put your weapon away,” she demanded. Eyes locked on her, I was slow to move, evoking a response of magic winding around her hands.
Anger and the need for violence rampaged through me and I was unable to rein it in. I hated
her. I hated this situation. And I hated that I needed her. The strength of my emotions made my face as hot as the fury alight in me.
Nolan stepped between us. After a sharp command from him in their language, she extinguished the magic.
“Peace,” he demanded, giving each one of us the full intensity of his stare. He might have requested peace, but it belied the harshness he directed at Elizabeth.
Without looking at me, she said, “You must come closer if we are to remove the vinculum.”
Sheathing my knife took a lot of effort because I really didn’t trust her. But I did it and cautiously moved closer. Rolling up the sleeves of her shirt, she revealed the snake that gave the impression of being jewelry but that I knew was more. Leaning into it, she whispered something, magic thrummed through the room, and before I could gather what was happening, the creature struck, latching on to my arm, sinking its fangs into me, and drawing blood. It pulled from me roughly, leaving a fang trail on my arm.
“Elizabeth,” Nolan warned.
She brushed off his chastisement with a shrug before extending her arm for the serpent to wrap around it.
“What are you?” I asked.
“An elf like you?” Elizabeth said.
“She’s elf and fae, I’m half human. It’s the reason we both were needed to put the restriction on you. We used elf magic to restrict it so that only our magic could lift it,” Nolan clarified.
“And warded it with elven magic, too,” I added.
His head barely moved into the nod.
He split his attention between his sister and me as she gathered things and started to mix them together. The final ingredients were the combining of the elven blood, mine and theirs.
I wasn’t sure what I expected my magic would be like. A tsunami of magic racing through me, a jolt that floored me as the restricted magic surged back into me, or a metaphysical display of me levitating with arms outstretched, body glowing as magic flowed over me. I admit, I expected something spectacular. What I got was a light dusting of warmth that eased over my arm. The distinctive raven flashed before swirls of black and gold from the markings meshed together, pulled from my skin, and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. My skin was unmarred, and I didn’t feel in any way different. Not even the way I felt when I borrowed magic.
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