Page 47 of Sustaining
All that calm breathing and ridiculous focus I’m putting on filling my lungs and emptying them is interrupted by the very distinct sound of clunking horse hooves. It’s a repetitive drilling clacking that’s only drowned out by abrupt cheering from down the street. I pause to look past the door Kain is holding open.
The sight of a shining navy carriage pulling up makes all my careful breaths halt, forgotten in my lungs. And the way Molly’s little legs wobble her ass on over to that carriage causes stinging vomit to crawl up my throat in place of the air I’ve abandoned.
Fuck.
Kain’s hand on my back grows heavy, and he shoves me inside. I stumble but rush into the calming scent of warm bread and sugary sweets.
“Mom.” My voice is a sort of breathless scream as I stride behind the counter. My gaze shifts over the perfect mounds of dough rising on the back counter near the door. Flour is scattered here and there. The heat of the cooking bread warms my skin, but the actual baker of all of these goods is nowhere to be found.
“Mom?”
A beat passes as I peer into the back room. The teal tissue papers, ribbons, and white boxes are the only things back there.
“I’m upstairs, I didn’t realize how much of a mess you guys made up here. There’s dried blood on the floor, Arrie. Blood!” Her lecturing voice is muffled, but I can hear the disappointment in her voice loud and clear.
“Mom, I have to go.” A hammering thumping of my heart starts up as seconds tick quietly by, and I continue to stare up at the dark stairwell that leads to the attic space.
“Okay, sweetheart. Give me just a minute.”
“Mom.” To say my voice sounds frantic is a desperate understatement.
Words hum into the room as a figure steps in front of the thin teal curtain over the door. “I’m just saying she’s a girl like any other. You’d know a mage when you saw one. Arlow Winters is no mage. The woman can barely walk and talk at the same time, you said it yourself.” The proper tone of Linden’s voice teeters just slightly, and I realize his back is to me, blocking someone in front of him.
His father.
Sinister’s gaze locks on the two men just outside of the door, and with incredible silence, he waves his hand and soundlessly turns the deadbolt into place with the gentlest magic I’ve ever seen from him.
I look to the men standing ominously outside the one place I’ve ever felt safe. My gaze shifts over the mess of white flour, and my finger swipes through it, feeling the familiarity of my childhood sift beneath my fingertips.
It’s a shift in all four of them. Kain guides me toward the door at the back of the shop, Sinister keeps close behind me, and Rime and Chaos keep their attention held on the door while backing slowly away.
The handle turns, and forceful pressure jars into the locked door just as the five of us rush out. My feet never stop—it’s a blur of brown bark and the cracking sound of breaking branches as we run out into forest. Tree limbs scrape against my skin, catching at my clothes, but I don’t pause once. The farther we run, the less and less trees there are until we halt in the middle of a chopped-away clearing. Splinters of lumber and tattered leaves scratch at my feet. I heave painfully for air, and it hits my lungs on burning inhales.
There’s too much frustration building within me, but I try to relax. Now is not the time to be irrational. I need to think everything through.
It probably wasn’t how my mother wanted it, though. Hell, it wasn’t how I wanted it either. But before we ran out, in the flour that I hope she notices once the confusion and anger have settled, is a simple note.
It says ‘With love. Goodbye.’
Nineteen
Dangerous Secrets
In the clearing,between several stumps and a nice divot of mud, I place the lock of mermaid hair.
“Now, we’re doing this right now?” Sinister lifts his hands from his sides, and he’s barely containing his breathless outrage.
“I’m limited on the places I can vanish us away to. Quite honestly, Attika sounds like a fucking vacation compared to all of this. I just need to know.” There’s so damn much I need to know.
“It’s fine. Arlow actually needs to do it sooner rather than later, because if she harms someone new then it’ll be the mermaid incident all over again.” Kain nods sweetly, and despite him taking my side, the word ‘incident’ grates on me. Maybe I’ll make a rule that we’re just no longer going to use that term anymore… “Get your answers, we’ll keep watch.”
Kain’s big hand brushes down my knuckles before he slips me a tiny glass vial, and then Kain and Chaos turn their backs, watching for movement from the village we just left.
With a deep breath, I lower myself, taking out the little glass vial of my mother’s lonely tear.
“Will the King take your mother?” Rime’s attention lingers on the muddy area I’m throwing things into.
“No. She’s smart. She’s made a perfect life out of being completely ordinary. She’s never had a slip up. Never used her magic in the entire time I’ve been alive. She didn’t tell me. I’d had slip ups that I didn’t understand when I was younger but I didn’t find out until I was older. I found out myself when I was thirteen and snuck out of my room to meet a boy. I fell. A scream tore from my throat for a long, long time, and I realized I was still screaming when I opened my eyes and found myself suspended, my face poised just above the smooth cobblestone street. When I told her about the levitation, she was furious. Now that I’m older, I realize she was just afraid. Over the next several years, I had so many slip ups just like that, and in all that time, she never did. She’s entirely ordinary. Ask any person in that village. Her mundaneness will protect her.”
