Page 19 of The Last Wish of Bristol Keats
“Leanna Keats said those things, and that woman no longer exists, if she ever did. She was an illusion, a life I tried to live for over twenty years.”
“Are you saying you never loved Daddy?”
She recoiled at a truth she couldn’t face. “Where is he?” she demanded.
“I’m the only one who knows where he is. I haven’t told anyone. I need to know he’ll be safe.”
“Tell me.”
Bristol hesitated. Her mother’s face was lined with rage. Maybe she really was finished with him.Only I can reach her. Was her father right, or was that his delusional optimism? He would be destroyed without her either way. Bristol had no choice but to take a chance and trust in her long-held beliefs about their love for each other.
“He’s at the cottage on the Runic River where you keep your loom. He’s waiting for you to come to him.”
Maire’s head wobbled slightly, like she was disoriented. “He’s going to ruin everything.”
“Ruin what? Your plan to rule Elphame?”
“To give my family a future! Kormick came to Bowskeep and warned me that Danu was closing in on our trail. Who do you think we were running from for all those years? But Danu only wanted me, not any of you. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t do it to my family. When I returned to Elphame, their pursuit was over. They know exactly where I am now. I made that clear to them as soon as I returned. I’ve sacrificed everything to save you, and now your father is ruining—”
“He’s not ruining anything, Mother. Kormick is. He was the one hunting us down.Hewants your power. He’s using you and your fear to take control of Elphame.”
“Kormick? Using me?” She paced, biting her lower lip. Now she looked like Leanna Keats, the one who grew restless, bottled up tight like a forbidden potion, weighing silent strategies, simmering herbs on the back of the stove, the mother always ready to move on. To run. And Bristol thought maybe that was exactly what she was about to do.
“You can’t—”
“Quiet!” Maire whirled around abruptly and glared at Bristol. Her glamour faded, her horns and formal gown returning. Her eyes held the cold edge of winter, cutting through Bristol, her power and beauty frightening. “Let me tell you something, dear daughter who thinks she knows everything about this world—and me.” Her lip lifted in disgust. “Youthinkyou know. I’ll spare you the uglier details, but after my parents were murdered, my uncles moved in and claimed their house—and me. I was twelve the first time they chained me to a post out in the yard. It was punishment for an endless list of offenses, for not jumping fast enough at their orders, for not sweeping the floor clean enough, for weeping when I missed my parents, but mostly for creating portals to other parts of the Darkland Forest to escape from them and their vilest demands. My problem was I didn’t escape far enough. The forest was all I knew. They always found me and chained me again—if not in the yard, in the house. They did this when I was fourteen.” She motioned to her silver hand. “They thought if they chopped it off, it would end my magic. It didn’t.
“We lived off a tiny road in the forest, a dark byway. The only ones who used it were those going somewhere they shouldn’t, which is probably why they ignored me. For two long years, I watched lords and ladies pass by on the lane in their golden carriages, their voices tinkling from their windows like cut glass raised in a toast, their laughter and chatter far more important than my cries. And when nobles weren’t passing by in their carriages, they passed by on great white steeds with their fine cloaks billowing out behind them like wings, indifferent to my state. That’s what I prayed for every day, wings to deliver me from my misery. But those wings didn’t come. If anyone did take notice of the ragged girl in the yard, my uncles explained it away with a multitude of excuses. I was possessed by a demon, they said. Or it was to protect me from flinging myself off a bluff. I finally stopped calling out to those passing by, because they wouldn’t look my way. My screams flew past them like I was one of the chickens squawking from the henhouse.”
Her pupils became furious pinpoints. “The only one,the only one, who ever bothered to stop and inquire at any length about me was Kormick, the king of Fomoria. He alone cared about the crazed girl chained in the yard. He gave my uncles a great deal of gold to let me go, and he took me to his home in Fomoria. He gave me food, clothing, a warm bed, a new right hand . . . and my own servants. He gave me a lot of things no one else ever did. Time. Education. Understanding. Power. He gave me the wings I so desperately needed. If that’s using me, give me more of it.”
“And revenge? He gave you that too?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Maybe that was the best thing he gave me. For that I owe him everything.”
Her answer was crisp and practiced. A memory she clutched so tightly, no others could wedge their way in. But Bristol needed a wedge, one that would make her mother remember other things that had once mattered to her more, and Bristol delivered it.
“Then why would you leave Kormick in the first place? Why not stay? Had he shackled you with a different kind of chain, one that grew too short? Did he limit your choices? You were allowed to take as many lovers as you wished, weren’t you? As long as you didn’t take just one? As long as you didn’t fall in love? And then you betrayed him because youdidfall in love. You left him when you promised not to. Is that the deal you and Kormick have? You’re not allowed to be devoted to anyone but him?”
Maire faltered, her bright eyes turning the color of a dark forest—a color Bristol had seen before.Come away, child. Desperate for Bristol to stop challenging her. To listen to her.Come away.
This truth stabbed too close to her mother’s heart. She had escaped one kind of prison, only to walk into another. A prison that gave her the power to kill, the power to unleash legions of demons, to exact revenge and instill terror, but not the freedom to love.
Her head cocked slightly to the side, like a painful memory had wormed its way into her head. “No,” Maire said, rubbing her temples. “No, it’s not—I—” She searched for words that wouldn’t come. Words and thoughts that Kormick had buried.
Her gaze whipped back around to Bristol. “You’re going home. Now. You don’t belong here. The Danu Nation will not destroy what I have created. You’re going back to Harper and Catalina, and the three of you are going to run. You’ll keep moving the way we taught you. You will have a life that is not under anyone’s thumb.”
She spun toward the towering cliff behind her, her palm raised in concentration like she was pushing against it. Light glittered around her eyes, traveled down her shoulder to her arm and then down to her hand. A swirling ball of silver light hovered just in front of her palm. Bristol watched awestruck as the sparkling light lengthened until it reached the wall, then spread out, rippling like gushing water. Maire mumbled words, and Bristol heardthe meadow,the old green barn,the split oak tree,the windmill. Coordinates. Bristol knew the exact place her mother was describing—a place on the outskirts of Bowskeep. At the sound of those words, the silver light spread out along the cliff wall, and Maire’s arm shook. Her pale cheeks warmed with color. The light grew to the size of a barn door, and as Maire dropped her arm back to her side, it vanished. She picked up a stone and tossed it toward the cliff. It disappeared through the rock, and a green meadow briefly appeared. “There,” she said. “It leads to Bowskeep. Go back to your sisters.”
Bristol stared at the door. Her mother had created an entirely new portal in less than a minute? It didn’t take days to construct, then, as the historical records claimed.
Only the strongest of bloodmarked can open the Abyss. Or close it.
How powerful was Leanna Keats? Far more powerful than Bristol had imagined. It had taken Bristol several tries to close the one portal just outside Timbercrest, and even approaching the Abyss portal had left her hand badly blistered. And she still hadn’t been able to create one. Her mother had done it with ease.
“Now,” her mother ordered, pointing at the door.
When Bristol didn’t move, Maire pounced on her, her fingers wrapping around Bristol’s wrist like an iron bracelet, and she started dragging her toward the portal.
