by A. M. Hudson
“Yeah. Thanks.” I offered a smile and wandered away, practicing what I’d say to Morgaine in my head. It was time for a little clever leading.
***
“Morgaine?” I shoved her door open without knocking, startling her.
“My Queen?” She dumped her book on the bed and stood up. “What brings you here?”
“You’re off the council.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You are officially fired.”
“Why, Amara?”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice, though I wanted to shout and scream in her face; she wasn’t proven guilty yet, but my gut was very rarely wrong. “You and I both know why. You’re a liar and a traitor, and while I promised Drake not to expose you,” I lied, “that affords you no place in my good graces, nor among a group of people I trust implicitly. You’re the enemy, Morgaine, and I want you out of this manor.”
“Drake told you?”
“He told me many things. I know all about the dagger. I know all about the contract, and I know that this child I carry is. . .” I paused, hoping she’d fill in the rest. I needed to see just how much she really knew.
“Anandene,” she said to her feet.
“How long have you known? How long have you been aware that David and I would bear the Antichrist?”
“She won’t be the Antichrist, Amara.” She moved closer, dropping her reaching hand when she read the very clear signal I gave off not to touch me. “She’s a pure vessel. She’ll be—”
“She’ll be fine until her memories return, and then she’ll be an evil witch that’ll seek to marry her own uncle.”
“I know.” She tucked a strand of her cherry hair back, shaking her head. “I didn’t want this any more than you, but—”
“So you knew? You forced David and I together so we’d have this child—letting us believe she’d kill Drake—bring peace? Why?”
A frown crinkled her brow, narrowing her eyes as they moved onto my face. “If you don’t know the answer to that, then Drake didn’t tell you anything about who I am or what I’m doing here. Nice try, Amara.” She opened her door. “You can leave now.”
My hand shot out and slammed the door closed again, holding it in place. “I’m not going anywhere until I get the truth.”
“The truth?” She took a few steps back. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“That. Is where. You are wrong,” I said through my teeth. “You owe me for your safety. Your freedom. And you will either tell me the truth, or I will torture it out of you.”
“Fine.” She stormed off and sat down heavily on her bed. “But you won’t like it. And when you find out what it is, you can’t touch me. You can’t force me to leave, and you cannot tell a soul, because if you do, my uncle will see to it that the dagger is used for its true purpose.”
The floor fell out from under me. I stood frozen on the spot, clutching my tummy to stop the tightening. “Your uncle?”
She drew a breath and let it out, averting her eyes. “My name is not Morgaine, Amara. It’s—”
“Morgana.” I exhaled the word, standing there like a fool for a few seconds after as it all sunk in.
“I’m not helping Drake because I want him to have a happy ending, Amara,” she said, folding her legs up under her on the bed. “I just want my mother back—want the life back that he took from me.”
“Took from you?
“Yes. Took.”
“Okay, I’m gonna need you to elaborate, Morgaine.”
She kind of groaned, rolling her eyes as most people did when I didn’t ‘catch on’ to the full story immediately, despite not having any of the facts.
“From the moment he met Anandene,” she began, “all he cared about was being with her. He stopped caring about his little sister, and when he became my guardian, he didn’t even care that I was left without anyone to love me—a small child dumped in a cottage on the outskirts of town until I was twenty-five, with nothing but monthly visits from my uncle to tell me I’d see my mother again when she’d completed her task. I never even got to say goodbye to her.”
“I’m sorry, Morgana. That’s. . .” I walked over and sat down slowly beside her. “I can’t even imagine how awful that would've been.”
She offered a smile. “My grandmother lived there too. I guess I wasn’t really alone. And she taught me witchcraft and told me stories, but I never saw any other children, never saw the world. Never really knew my mother. Never even knew why she left me.”
“Drake didn’t tell you?”
“Not until I was old enough to leave the cottage on my own. By that point, he’d lost the child of my mother’s re-manifested soul, and all hope with it. He told me I’d never see her again but that he could feed me blood—make me immortal—if I promised to hide my true identity.”
“So you became Morgaine, a Created Lilithian.”
“Yes. And I built an army—destroyed the last page of the contract, and made it look like a prophecy so that, if Drake’s Warriors ever found another Lilithian, my army could “save” her and keep her safe, without Drake being implicated and the truth about Anandene coming out.”
“So, he knew you built the Core?”
She nodded. “It was his idea.”
I rubbed my brow. “Why did you need to hide the truth about Anandene so deeply?”
“Because many would seek to stop it happening—on the belief that bringing things back to life in that manner is the devil’s work, that it’s unnatural and will bring a curse.”
“Is there any truth in that?”
“None,” she said with a gentle laugh.
“But there are so many lies,” I said, looking off at nothing, amazed at the depth of it all and how the hell she kept up with it when even I couldn’t. “You’ve clearly had to rearrange the story every time we turned over a new leaf, right—reformat them to make them fit?”
She nodded.
“Why not just tell me the truth in the beginning?”
“And have you thwart a mission that has taken centuries to complete?”
“Morg,” I said, and waited for her to look at me. “If you told me it would be my life instead of David’s, I’d have signed the dotted line myself. Don’t you know that?”
Her dark eyes studied mine intently, flowing past them and over the shape of my cheekbones, my lips, and back to my eyes again. “I didn’t know that then. I thought the only way to bribe you into ruling the people and having a baby would be if you could kill Drake. When that wasn’t enough, I had to find your currency.”
“Currency?”
She nodded solemnly. “I realised that life was more important to you than death, so I told you about freeing the Damned. And that’s the moment everything changed—when you finally snapped out of that trance you’d been in and found the will to fight.”
“So you used my love and compassion to make me do what you wanted, just so you could have your mother back?”
“Yes. And I don’t regret it, Amara. I never cared about the safety and freedom of the Lilithians—every one of them can die for all I care. And, as for the Damned . . . they’re better off dead.”
My teeth ground tightly in my mouth. I just wanted to hit her. “Why tell David he had to die then? Why make up the lie about the dagger?”
“I didn’t. That was Drake and Jason’s fault.”
“How so?”
“A few centuries after I realised Drake had failed and this child would never be born, I took the dagger as an insurance policy—to put my mother back together. All I needed was the key to her tomb and the child who had her soul. Drake knew I took the dagger and hid it here, but he didn’t know where. He created a parchment that told of the dagger’s power, said that it would kill him, in the hopes someone might try to do just that.”
“And he’d get it back.”
“Yeah. He sent Arthur to find it for him so I couldn’t ruin his plans and bring my mother back before the child was born. But Jason found t
he document and sent it to David anonymously. From then on, everything changed, and it was no longer about using the power of the child to free the Damned and kill Drake. It was suddenly about David being the martyr.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I had to go to great lengths to slow things down,” she added. “I made up the bit about the hand of the king needing to drive the dagger to give us time. Otherwise, he’d have left to kill Drake that day, and he wasn’t even planning to say goodbye.”
“So, I guess I owe you thanks, then?” I asked sarcastically.
“Well, no, because it wouldn’t have worked. And Drake wouldn’t have killed David. He needed him to make a baby with you.”
My hands went absently across my belly. “This is all so messed up.”
“Imagine how I feel then?” Her neck jutted forward a bit. “I wasn’t built to lie, Amara. And this whole thing has been one big lie after another. I lost track so many times I don’t how any of you possibly believed me.”
I laughed, though I wasn’t amused. “You did a pretty good job.”
“I know.”
“So, what’s your plan now, Morgana? Are you helping Drake or trying to resurrect Lilith?”
“Honestly?” Her brows rose, prompting my response.
“A shred of honesty would be great.”
“I need the key to her tomb. I have the soul, I know where the dagger is, and all I need is that damn key, and then I’ll free my mother.”
“And I’ll die.”
She shrugged dismissively.
My shoulders dropped. “Where’s the key then?”
“I don’t know.” Her arms wrapped both her knees. “Drake has one key, which I will never, in a million years, get my hands on. And the other key . . . it was held by the goddess Lilith, my great grandmother.”
“So. . .where is she now?”
“Here.” She motioned around the place. “She’s the guardian of the earth. You call her Mother Nature.”
“Oh.” My stomach dropped into my feet. I was pretty sure then that I knew exactly where that key was. “And . . . what does the key look like?”
Morg shrugged again. “All I know is that it’s enchanted—has a life force of its own. You know it only by the energy it carries—something that makes it seem . . . alive.”
I laid a hand to my chest, right over the key I’d found on my Walk of Faith. Silence hung in the room for a while then, the clock on her dresser keeping the time with a steady tick. “What if you never find the key?
Her dark eyes moved onto mine. “Then I go with plan B.”
“Plan B?”
“Help Drake get Anandene.”
“Neither of which will be possible for you now, Morgana,” I snapped. “I can’t just let you walk around freely, plotting against us.”
“You have no choice,” she stated.
“Actually, I do, and—”
“And I bet Drake threatened you, forced you to keep everything a secret on pain of death, and I doubt it was your death but, rather, someone you love,” she suggested.
My nails formed deep impressions on my palms. “You know him well.”
“I do.” She tapped my hands, making me unfold them. “A few centuries alongside one man will do that.”
“Alongside?” I asked, hinting on the rumours I’d heard about her Drake having been . . . together.
“Yes. Alongside. But not in the manner your tone suggests, Amara.”
“I heard you slept with him.”
“We started that rumour because it was the only convincing reason why he would be so protective of me, you know—allow a Lilithian to walk freely.”
“So, it’s not true? You never, er—”
“No.” She laughed. “I did spend many nights in his bed, but not for impure reasons. I just . . . I was safe there—with him.”
“Safe? Weren't you safe anywhere in the castle if you were Drake’s girl?”
Her head moved sideways. “I killed a man once—a vampire.”
“Killed?” I frowned, and then it clicked: she had venom like mine.
“I was asleep one night when I heard my door open and then close again. I called out to see who it was, but no one answered. Next thing I know, there’s a man pinning my arms down. I screamed out, tried to fight him off. But no one came. So . . . I bit him. And he died. Uncle Drake had to go to great lengths to cover it up. He hid the body in the floorboards and that’s where it stayed. It’s still there now.”
I rubbed my head. “So you had venom, vampire-killing venom, all this time? And you never helped the Damned, or—”
“I don’t care about the Damned, Amara! If I used my venom to help anyone—if Drake used it to help anyone, it would have given me away. The whole mission could've been compromised.”
“So you let them suffer because you wanted your mom back?”
Her jaw went tight, eyes small and sharp. “What would you do, Amara, to bring your mother back?”
“Well, that wouldn’t even be a question if Drake hadn’t killed her!”
“He—” she started, but mashed her lips tightly together and folded her arms like a smug little brat. “It was a means to an end.”
“A means to an end!” I stood up. “A means to an end?”
She stood, too. “Your life means nothing, Amara. You are a means to an end—all of this is. And as soon as that child is born, none of you will exist.”
“That’s where you're wrong,” I said smugly. “Drake swore to leave David on the throne, and that all my friends, my family and my people would be safe for eternity. And. . .” I paused to build suspense, just enjoying this moment: when she found out what else he promised, it would hurt her just as deeply as it hurt me to know my mother died for this cause. “He promised me eighteen years to raise my child.”
“What!”
“You heard me. He has the dagger now, so you won’t be seeing your dead mommy any time soon, Morgana. And, in the meantime, you need to find yourself a new job—and a new home.”
“You can’t kick me out!”
I turned toward the door. “I just did.”
She grabbed my arm and spun me around. “If I leave, people will ask questions. And Drake will just put another spy in place to watch over you.”
My eyes closed involuntarily around the truth.
“Better the devil you know,” she added.
“Fine.” I opened my eyes, hearing the old idiom in my head: keep your enemies close. “Stay. But you’re no longer on my council. Neither is David. And you will move your things out immediately and take them down to Jason’s old room.”
“Old room?” She frowned. “Where’s his new one?”
I rolled my head slowly higher, smirking. “You’re standing in it.”
“But—”
“You have twenty minutes.” I turned on my heel and walked from the room, leaving the door open on my way out.
Life is never lonelier than when you hide a truth that’s weighing you down. I looked across the dinner table at Falcon, then at Jason, just wishing I could tell someone, anyone what Drake had told me. All my council even knew was that Morgaine had been fired for siding with David too often and that we’d recently discovered the Dagger of Yahanna was useless. I didn’t tell them I’d met with Drake and I didn’t tell them I was the living re-manifestation of the former queen’s soul. I did lie and say Jason might have a toxic potion that could kill an original, and that was the only thing that kept them in their seats when they realised David couldn’t. The people, however, would remain under the impression that the dagger was safe and still as useful as before.
With time to think after the meeting today, everything Drake said sunk in bit by bit—pieces I didn’t want to think about rising to the front of my thoughts all afternoon. I wanted to fight—to find some way I could stop him from killing me in eighteen years, but that would mean putting the baby in danger and possibly making Drake angry enough to break our agreement.
But it wasn’
t just that. I slumped on my hand. He killed my mom and my baby brother, and he did it because I refused to go to my dad’s that year. If I’d just gone—if I’d just stuck to the plans we made every year, they’d still be alive.
“Baby?” Mike laid his hand over mine.
I looked up from my lap and smiled.
“You okay?” he mimed, not actually speaking.
I nodded, rearranging my napkin in my lap.
“You look like you’re about to cry.”
My stupid chin quivered then. I drew a quiet but jagged breath and forced another smile, catching Falcon’s eye when he looked up. He gave me that look—the one asking what was going on, and when Jason frowned, noticing the exchange then turning his worried eyes on me, I couldn’t help it; a soft breath burst from between my lips, and I sobbed hard at the dinner table, with Mike’s arms suddenly wrapping me, my tears falling onto my plate.
“What’s going on?” David stood and threw his napkin down.
“Uh, just . . . pregnancy hormones,” Emily said casually, running over with her arms flailing about in the air.
A few people laughed affectionately, and I was swept out of the room, not really knowing whose hands were guiding me.
“I don’t know,” Mike said, answering some question I hadn’t heard. “I asked her what’s wrong, and she just. . .”
“Mike, don’t you know? Never ask someone what’s wrong if they look they’re about to cry,” Emily said, sliding her arm around me. “Ara? What happened? Did David—”
“No.” I moved away from her. “David didn’t do anything. I . . . I just needed some air.”
She looked at Mike, and he threw his hands up, backing away. “Girl stuff. Got ya. I’ll leave you to it.”
I wanted to grab him and ask him to stay—wanted to tell him that the woman he grew up with beside me died for no good reason. It wasn't an act of God or Fate. It was murder. Senseless murder. But he would, at the very least, cause a scene over it. No one would understand my anger and agony better than him. But I just couldn't trust him to stay calm if he knew. So, I let him walk away, Em and I smiling as he gave some obviously hilarious explanation to smooth things over back in the Great Hall. David made a smart remark that I didn’t hear, but I also didn’t care what he said about me.