by Sarra Cannon
I waited in silence as Jackson went over Angela's wounds one-by-one. He wasn't a powerful enough healer to get rid of them completely, but he was able to stop most of the bleeding and hopefully take away some of her pain.
I bit my lip, clutching her hand in mine. "Should we take her back through the portal?" I asked. "Our father could heal her in an instant."
Jackson shook his head. "It's too risky," he said. "Every available witch is going to be searching for us. If anyone saw us pass through that portal, it would put the entire city in danger."
I lowered my head to her hand. He was right. I hadn't thought about what might happen if the Order found my father's secret portal. We couldn't risk it. Especially not so soon after we'd rescued her. Still, I knew I would have to at least try to get word to him that we'd gotten her out safely.
Maybe it would change his mind about what was possible in the fight against the Order.
I sighed. "I just want her to be okay."
"Thanks to you, she's going to live," he said.
"Thanks to Zara," I said. "I never would have survived down there if it hadn't been for her. Honora's power was so much stronger than I imagined."
"When I first saw her walk through the door at Winterhaven, I didn't know what to think," he said. "I had no idea if she was on our side or theirs, but she just walked right up to me and put her hand in mine. She told me exactly what we needed to do to make the memory potions and the one that would wake Angela up from that nightmare. I don't know how she found out I had experience with potion-making, but she knew."
"The Winters know everything," I said. "I think they must have spies everywhere."
"Maybe," he said. "When her sister Selene finally came to find us, we had the potion and everything ready for her. I think she was so surprised by Zara, she forgot to put up a fight. You were right about trusting Zara."
"For a minute there, I thought it was the other way around. It's so hard to know who to trust," I said. I thought about Lydia Ashworth's story. How she’d stolen her sister's life and how no one even knew or remembered. Who else was not as they seemed in Peachville?
I stared down at my sister. Even she had turned out to be someone completely different than I expected. I knew she was a good person, but she'd been one of the Order's trusted leaders for years. I smiled as I thought of how shocked Priestess Winter must have been when she found out the person training future initiates was a half-demon.
Probably not as shocked as she was when she found out we'd gotten away. She couldn't have taken that news well. So far, she'd avoided getting directly involved in my capture. She'd sent everyone from the tiger witch to hunters to her own daughters after me, but she'd never actually come after me herself. I had a feeling next time I wouldn't be so lucky.
Jackson stood and turned off the light in the room. He stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders. "Let me know if she wakes up," he said.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to help the others get the rest of the village set up," he said. "There's still a lot that needs to be done."
I knew I should offer to help, but I didn't want to leave Angela's side. I wanted to be here when she opened her eyes.
"I'll bring you some food in a little while," Jackson said. He kissed the top of my head. "Get some rest if you can."
I nodded and gave him a weak smile. "I'll try," I said, knowing it would be a very long time before I would allow myself the luxury of sleep.
I Don't Think She's Acting
Over the next few days, we each took turns sitting with Angela. I spent the most time there by far, but I took breaks to eat and stretch my legs every once in a while.
Essex came in late one afternoon and offered to take over while I got some dinner. "Mary Anne insists you need food to keep your energy strong," he said. "I will let you know if there is a change."
Reluctantly, I stood and stretched. I hated to leave her side, but we'd been here three full days and there'd been almost no change. I had already decided if she didn't wake up within a week, we were taking her through the portal to our father. Risk or no risk. We'd have to find a way.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," I said.
"Take your time," Essex said. He settled down in the chair next to the bed and opened a book he'd been reading. "Enjoy some food and you will be feeling better."
I smiled. He was really such a sweet guy. He was definitely a welcome addition to our group of friends.
I yawned and made my way outside.
I gasped. This entire side of the village had been transformed into a garden of pink and white blossoms. Zara walked among the flowers and as she placed her index finger on the petals, they lit up from within. Mary Anne stood off to the side with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
"You realize this is basically blasphemy, right?" Mary Anne said. "If my family was here, they would absolutely die to see it turned into a pink flower shop."
"Well, your family isn't here, are they?" Zara said, not pausing in her work to light up the village. "Besides, this place is depressing. We need to stay positive if we're going to have the energy to fight."
"And you think flowers will make us feel positive?"
"Of course," Zara said. "You'll see."
I had to smile as I watched them argue. They were such opposites, but at the same time, they had so much in common. They had both grown up around horrible, evil women, yet they had both somehow found the courage to stand up against them. They'd also both sacrificed everything in their lives to save me, and I had no idea how I would ever repay them.
"If you're going to light them up like that, can we at least make them a darker color?" Mary Anne asked, wrinkling her nose.
Zara brought a finger to her mouth, studying her flowers. "What about dark pink?"
With one wave of her hand, the flowers deepened in color.
Mary Anne threw her hands up in disgust. "How is that better? Pink is not a dark color," she said. "I meant something like deep red or blue or something."
"I think it's pretty," I said, stepping onto the black pathway that connected the houses.
"Whatever," Mary Anne said, glaring at Zara before she turned her attention to me. "How is she?"
I glanced back at the blue house. "She's still unconscious."
Mary Anne walked over and placed a sympathetic hand on my arm. "I'm sure she just needs some extra rest while her body heals," she said. "She's going to be fine."
"I hope so," I said. I turned to Zara. "Have you ever seen someone recover after taking the potion?"
She pressed her lips in a tight line, her shoulders slumped. "No, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible," she said. "I know they've woken people up before, but they usually only do it to torture them for more information."
I swallowed back my disgust. "How could you live there knowing your mother kept so many prisoners in the basement?"
I crossed over to a dining table that had been brought out from one of the larger houses and sat down. I propped my elbows on the table and cradled my head in my hands.
Zara and Mary Anne sat down across from me.
"My mother does many things I don't approve of," Zara said. Her clear blue eyes darkened. "That's why I had to find a way out."
"I don't understand how you put up with it for as long as you did," I said, wrinkling my forehead. "I would have gone insane if I had to see her every day, knowing what she was capable of."
Zara placed her hands in her lap and dipped her head. "Believe me, I have struggled with this for a very long time," she said. "Family is complicated."
"Tell me about it," I said. I'd only had a father for a couple of months and it had been amazing and awful at the same time.
She took a slow breath in, then looked around as if afraid someone else might be listening. "To be honest, I don't even know if Priestess Winter is really my mother."
I wondered if I'd heard her right. "What do you mean?" I asked. "Who else would she be?"
She folde
d her hands together and pressed them so tight they turned pink. "I'm not sure," she said. "She looks exactly like my mother, so at first I thought I was just crazy. But deep down, I know something is wrong about her. See, when I was really little, I had a great relationship with my mother. I think she kind of favored me over my older sisters."
There was a sadness to her smile. She sniffed and when she looked up, her blue eyes were full of big tears.
"I was afraid of the dark when I was little," she said, a quiver in her voice. "My grandmother said it was a terrible weakness. She told my mother not to spoil me by coming into my room to comfort me when I would cry. My mom would sneak into my room most nights anyway. It was our secret thing, and it always made me feel better."
Mary Anne and I listened, leaning forward against the table.
"Well, on my fifth birthday, my grandmother died," she said. She looked around again, reaching up to play with a loose strand of hair. "I knew I was supposed to mourn with everyone else, but to tell you the truth, I was kind of glad she was gone. She was mean to me, always saying that if I ever wanted to be a warrior like the other thirds in my family, I had to toughen up."
"So your mother took over as Prima?" Mary Anne asked.
Zara curled the hair around her finger, then uncurled it. With wide eyes, she nodded, one of the tears finally escaping down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her free hand. "She went through her final joining ceremony that same night," she said. "Of course, I was too young to attend. Back then, I didn't even understand what was going on. I knew the women in my family had magical abilities, but I had no idea about the demons. After my grandmother died, though, everyone started calling my mother Priestess Winter. She had all these new responsibilities and she hardly had any time for me. When she did see me, she was different."
"Different how?" I asked.
"Cold," she said. "And she stopped coming into my room at night. Even if I would cry. I used to wait for her after the lights went out, but she never came to comfort me again."
Mary Anne leaned back and shrugged, unimpressed. "That doesn't prove anything," she said. "She took on a new role that took up a lot of her time. She stopped babying you. What's the big deal?"
Zara dropped her hands into her lap. "She didn't just stop coming into my room at night. There was more to it than that. When I got home from school one day about a week later, I found her in my bedroom. She had completely changed it. She'd taken all the nightlights out and turned everything from a beautiful light pink to this dark jet black," she said.
"What's so wrong about that?" Mary Anne asked.
"I was horrified," Zara said. "It was like a cave in there, and at night it got very dark. My mother never would have done something like that. When I asked her why, she'd looked at me with such cold eyes. She told me I needed to toughen up."
Zara swallowed hard. When she spoke again, her hands had begun to tremble. "Her voice sounded exactly like my grandmother's. It scared me."
"But don't you think that could just be due to the fact that she'd taken the prima demon into her body?" I asked. "I mean, maybe the demon changed her somehow?"
Zara shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "When I was little, I didn't understand what was happening, but even when I learned more about the process of a witch's initiation into the Order, I knew there was more to it when it came to my mother. She was never herself again."
I thought of Brooke and how much she'd changed after her initiation too. "I've seen it happen before," I said. "People change after they take the demons inside them. I don't think it's so unusual."
Zara's shoulders stiffened. "You don't understand." Her voice cracked. "I may be young, but in my short lifetime, I've seen more than a hundred possessions. I've seen the way people change. Sure, the Order gives them a mission that might change their ambitions and dreams, but deep down, they're still the same person. I'm telling you my mother was gone after that day. I could feel it. She even started doing things only my grandmother used to do. Like the way she would scratch her nails against her skirt. Or how she always put exactly two teaspoons of sugar in her tea. My real mother never used to do those things. It was eerie."
"Wait a second," I said, trying to figure out just what she was suggesting here. "Are you saying the demon caused her to act like your grandmother?"
"Not exactly"
"So what are you saying, then? Exactly?" Mary Anne asked.
Zara pressed a hand to her chest. "I don't think she's acting," she said. She shook her head and twirled her hair around her finger nervously. "I don't know. This is the first time I've talked about it since I was a little girl. I tried to talk to my sisters about it back then, but they said I was being ridiculous. I know it sounds insane, but I can't help how I feel."
I tried to make sense of what she was telling us. "Zara, are you saying your mother somehow became possessed by your grandmother's spirit?"
She lifted her chin, but her lip trembled and for a second, I thought she might cry. "I don't know," she whispered. "I only know that after that day, my mother might as well have been the one who died."
Her words hung around us all like a cloud of sadness. Still, something about her story chilled me to the bone. What had really happened to Zara's mother? Was it the demon who had changed her? Or some other dark magic?
"I have wanted to get out of there for so long," Zara said. She sniffed, her nose running from crying. "I was so happy when they told me I was going to be guarding you and training you. The day I met you was one of the happiest days of my life."
I reached across the table and took her hand.
"Then, everything fell apart," she said. "I never expected my own mother to try to kill you."
"Can I ask you a question?"
She nodded. "Sure."
"How did you know to give me the crystal butterfly pin?" I asked. "If you didn't expect her to try to hurt me, how did you know I would need it?"
Zara smiled through her tears. "I created that butterfly for our training," she said. "You were learning so fast and we were so close to moving on to more dangerous spells, I thought it would be neat for you to have a sort of talisman. A shield against my magic. That way I could really test you by using real magic against you. If you messed up and any magic got through, the shield in the pin would protect you from getting hurt. It was never meant to be used in a real battle."
"How did you learn to do that?" Mary Anne asked. "Imbue stones with magic shields, I mean."
"I mostly taught myself," she said. "My sisters and I got the spell from my aunt's spellbook when we were little. We used to take the stones from a box in the ritual room at Winterhaven. There are tons of them down there just like the one I used. We would perform the spell to imbue the stones with a protection spell and then we could practice throwing fireballs and other magic at each other without worrying about getting hurt."
"Which is why Honora's spells couldn't hurt me." I shuddered to think of what would have happened if her spell had hit me. I might have been hanging in an iron cell in the basement of Winterhaven instead of sitting here talking about it.
"Yes," Zara said. "We never got to use it in training, and when I found out my mother's plan to lure you to Winterhaven, I prayed you still had it and that it would at least buy you some time if it came down to it."
I removed the butterfly pin from my pocket. The blue stone in the center was cracked in several places, but it still glimmered in the light from Zara's garden.
"Thank you," I said, meaning it in the deepest part of my heart. "I know you took a huge risk giving Coach King that note."
Zara squeezed my hand. "You took a risk coming back to save your sister," she said. "You had to have known it was a trap."
"It was foolish, I know, but I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I didn't at least try to save her."
"Not foolish," Zara said, her eyes gleaming with tears. "Brave."
The Typical Human Lifetime
Sometime that
night, I finally gave in to exhaustion and collapsed in a bedroom Jackson had set up for me. He'd picked out a gray house for the two of us to share and spent a lot of time making it liveable. I hated being away from my sister's bedside, but I couldn't keep my eyes open another second.
Hours later, Jackson burst into my room, out of breath.
"What is it?" I asked, terror gripping my heart. Were we being attacked?
"She's awake," he said, a smile dancing in his green eyes. "Your sister's awake, and she's asking for you."
My heart skipped.
I jumped from the bed, ran down the stairs and out into the street. Zara's flowers were still bright, lighting up the entire village. Essex and Mary Anne sat in two chairs they had dragged from one of the houses nearby. I didn't even care about my tangled mess of hair or the fact that my clothes were probably crazy wrinkled. I just wanted to see my sister.
I wanted so badly to shift and travel to her faster than my legs could carry me, but we'd agreed not to use demon powers if we could help it. It was too easy to track. I ran instead, barreling up the steps to the small blue house. I tore down the hallway and pushed into the bedroom.
Zara sat by the bed, but stood when she saw me. She smiled and stepped quietly out of the room.
Angela King's eyes met mine and my heart overflowed. I sat down on the bed and took her hand. We couldn't stop staring at each other.
"Oh Harper, I don't even know what to say." Tears filled her eyes as she gripped my hand tighter. "I want to yell at you for risking so much to come get me, but I also know I can never thank you enough for what you did."
"I couldn't just leave you there," I said. I wanted to throw my arms around her, but was scared I'd hurt her. "And after seeing what they were doing to you, I'm so glad we got you out of there. How are you feeling?"
She shuddered. "It was horrifying," she said. "I kept having the same nightmare over and over. Everyone and everything I've ever loved kept being ripped from me. It felt so real and so painful. I feel much better now. Just a few sore spots here and there."