Page 88 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
“You look sad,cariad.” She runs her fingers through my hair.
“I’m tired, is all.”
“That brain of yours moves too fast even for you to keep up with it.” Mam sighs. “Rest.”
“I can’t.” I screw my eyes shut, a barrier against the tears welling in them.
“Why?”
“I have too much to do.”
“Don’t we all?” Mam laughs.
I can hear her heart beating in tandem with mine in the very walls of the house, but I know better. This was how she looked when I last saw her—a sick, waxy flush to her cheeks and promising she would be fine.
By the time I got home, she was in bed. She’d never leave it again.
“Rest,” she insists. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“You can’t.”
“I’m your mam.” A tear leaks out, bleeds into her skirt. “Of course I can.”
“I used to believe you.”
“That’s what’s so lovely about belief; you can always find it again.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand plenty,” she says in thatno argumentstone. “You have your mission. Look after Gran and Ceridwen. I know what your dad is like, and I know you’re too like him for your own good.”
“I promised,” I tell her.
Dad only asked because there was no one else. He knew that I could carry it, even before I did.
Still, I throw my arms around her, burying myself into her chest, as if I can burrow home inside her. Mam holds me like she wants me to.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Because you’re here, love.”
It may be our mine, but it’s become Eu gwlad’s as well. The magic, no matter how twisted, has made its home in the coal. It’s only right that those trapped within its walls get to come home, too.
I lift my head, sniffling. “I have to find Ceridwen.”
“Is that all?” Mam strokes my cheek. “She’s upstairs waiting for you.”
My head snaps up to the ceiling, then back to Mam.
Ceridwen isupstairs. After all that wandering and nonsense, I’ve found her. I know I should be on my feet, running to my sister straightaway, but when I try to rise, my legs don’t obey.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I tell my mother.
She wipes a last tear from my face. “I wish I got to see who you’re going to be.”
“You won’t like her,” I whisper as the knife turns in my chest. “I don’t.”
“Then that means you aren’t done yet,” Mam says. “We never stop changing, Sabrina, even when you’re as old as me. That’s the beauty of it. If you’re not happy, then you’re not at the end.”
