Page 156 of Wings of Lies
“Then who is?” I said, standing. The calm vanished, replaced by a building pressure. And my mom, so overcome by her own emotions and thoughts, didn’t know.
“Do you remember the poem and story I used to tell you?”
“The Daughter of the Seven Circles? The one who destroyed Elora and lives in an ice palace with her father the…” I trailed off at her nod. Her face contorted in pain, tears flowing freely.
“It wasn’t a story.” She wrung her hands together. “The Daughter of the Seven Circles was a prophecy given to me at the time of Miriam’s death. A warning to me about my future daughter as she died protecting her son.”
No. No way.“You’re saying I destroy Elora? That I’m Lu—” I couldn’t say his name.“Hisdaughter?”
I stumbled back, tripping over my slippers and falling into my chair.
“Does he know?” I asked. My heart sped up.
“Maybe,” she answered, resigned. “He can most likely sense your power when you use it since you’re his daughter.”
Oh, my heavenly hell. “That’s why you always suppress me, why we move the moment I so much as flame up. Not just so the entirety of Elora doesn’t find me. But so he doesn’t either.”
“Lucy,” her voice cracked, and so did my heart.
“How could you keep me so in the dark?” I cried. “I’m her. I’m, I’m—” The pressure intensified, needles stabbed at my skin. I sprinted for our front door, wrenching it open. She called out to me.
“Give me aMinute!” I yelled back before sprinting into the pouring rain.
That wasn’tthe only dream memory I walked to. I walked further into the past, witnessing:
My father’s torture.
My mom’s pain.
Public school, then home school.
Lying on my father’s cuts and crying myself to sleep.
Begging my mom to soothe the fear and pain.
So many verbal fights with my mom.
Meeting Aspen.
Then Marcus came—him and his small army.
They were the ones to surround my mom that day. But she forced me out of the house before I could listen and understand why she had chosen to poison me.
When my dream-walks released me, I found myself lying flat, staring into shadows, absorbing the radiance of my power.
All my energy drained away. Probably from all the tears that spilled on the ground. Or from reliving the worst and best parts of my past.
Chapter
Thirty-Six
Igroaned as I woke up, ears ringing, head pounding, ribs aching. I attempted to lift my arms to clutch my head, but they halted abruptly, clinking against metal. The sound and my immobility snapped my bleary eyes open.
“Mom?” I gasped, wrenching against the black chains wrapped around my body, holding me to a metal table. “Mom!”
She lay beside me, strapped to a table with a lone bag of black fluid feeding into her veins. My purple flames erupted, coating my body and spreading ice over my chains.
“No!” I slammed against them, ignoring the agony in my side. The ice shattered. I dove deeper into my Infernus, strumming the cords of the black flames. They replaced the purple, but no matter how high they flared or how hot they burned, they didn’t help me. “Mom!” I screamed again, a heaviness seeping into my body from the extreme amount of power I used. I dove too deep.
