by Sarina Dorie
I placed my hand against the glass. The silver barrier rippled. The smooth surface was warm, soft where he pressed his palm. The glass bent and yielded as I touched Thatch’s face. He pulled back, staring at his reflection.
Elric ceased pacing and looked around, confused. “I feel Fae enchantment at work. Something is happening with my wards.” He strode past the desk to the window. “It isn’t the Raven Court.”
“No, of course not. It’s Clarissa. Did you really expect she wouldn’t find a way to spy on us? She’s resourceful, intelligent, and tenacious.” Thatch winked at me.
I laughed.
“What? Clarissa is spying on us?” Elric whispered, though it was a little too late now. “How much do you think she’s overhead?”
“Enough.”
“And you knew she was spying, didn’t you?”
Thatch shrugged. “You would have figured it out had you been paying attention. Part of the problem with thinking you’re superior to everyone is you often underestimate people.”
“Superior? You of all people are calling me superior? You with your high-minded ways and arrogance.”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” His eyes fixed on mine. “Clarissa, give me your hand.”
I pushed my fingers through the glass, the sensation like breaking through the surface of jelly to meet air. The surface sucked at me. I placed my hand in his and held on as I came out the other side.
I tripped over the bottom of the frame. Thatch caught me, smiling down at me.
Elric shook his head. “Why can’t you just be a good girl like Vega?”
I glanced back to the mirror.
“Oh? Was Vega eavesdropping too?” Thatch asked. “It seems, Elric, you really need to keep better tabs on your women.”
I straightened my dress and looked Thatch in the eyes. “So what’s the big secret you’ve been keeping from me?”
“Nothing.”
“Sorry, that won’t work. I’ve already heard too much.”
I pointed a finger at Elric. “That amulet you gave me that granted me three opportunities for assistance. . . . I used up my last wish to save myself from the Raven Queen. That means my soul is owned by the Silver Court. I’m in their debt. Is that correct?”
“Technically, you are owned by me, and you are only in my debt. I have disowned my family.” He lifted his chin haughtily.
“So that they can’t use me?”
Elric didn’t answer. Thatch nodded, confirming my suspicion.
“But there’s a magical imbalance until you collect a debt from me, and mutually enjoyable sex isn’t really the favor. I have to give something to you.” I dreaded saying the words out loud. “I have to give you a child.”
“That had been the . . . original intent of the necklace. Yes.” He looked away. “I’m sorry. I had hoped you would never have to use it.”
I sighed in relief. It wasn’t my first choice of payments, but the truth was out in the open at least. My momentary respite solidified into a lump of anger in my belly. “And that’s what you didn’t want me or Vega to know? It’s what you’ve been keeping from us?”
“I had hoped it would just happen naturally and my powers would return to normal.” He shot a look at Thatch. “He didn’t tell me you might not be able to conceive.”
That was another matter. I had to finish this one first.
“And if I do conceive, then what? What will you do with that baby?” If I could have shot lightning at him with my gaze, I probably would have.
“I will raise him or her as my own. You will be granted full access to your child. I won’t keep your baby from you. I know it can make social affairs . . . uncomfortable for a lady who has a child born outside of wedlock. If that is your concern, we can say the child is Vega’s and mine.”
“Like hell we will.” Vega leapt out of the mirror, the silver surface wrapping around her body and twisting the light. She emerged in a black dress, the pink one gone. Apparently, she had her getting-down-to-business dress on.
She prowled toward Elric. “I am not raising Clarissa’s child.”
Elric backed up from her, wide-eyed. “Or we can say the baby is Clarissa and Thatch’s. But that child will be one of my heirs, and I expect that to be acknowledged when the child is old enough to understand.”
Vega shook her head. “This is so fucked up. You and your Fae bargains.”
Elric placed a hand on her arm. “I gave Clarissa that amulet before I ever agreed to marry you. When we married, I explained I had certain obligations to Clarissa. You weren’t ignorant of this.”
Warmth brushed against my fingers. I looked down to find Thatch’s hand next to mine, inviting me to take his. I did so.
“Which is why you shouldn’t attempt to keep the truth from me.” Vega drummed her lacquered nails against the mantle. “Red affinities are supposed to be fertile, even with Fae. It’s a wonder Clarissa hasn’t conceived by now.”
I looked to my husband. “Now it’s time for you to reveal your secrets. Why can’t I have a baby? What happened to me with the Raven Queen?”
“It has to do with the state you were in when I brought you here. Physically and energetically.” Thatch swallowed. “The Raven Queen stole your mum to lure us. Then she stole your dignity and . . . my firstborn child. Our firstborn.”
All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I had suspected something along those lines, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it.
My voice came out a hoarse whisper. “Aubrey wasn’t your sister’s baby?”
“She’s ours.” He drew in a deep breath, exhaling slowly, measuring it out. “She . . . was ours.”
I recoiled from him. “You kept this from me? You lied to me?”
“You weren’t supposed to return for me. You were supposed to allow me to be of service to the Raven Queen in whatever way she saw fit.”
I drew in a fortifying breath, projecting confidence I didn’t feel into my words. “Well, we’re just going to have to get her back.”
“No,” Thatch said firmly. “This is why I knew I couldn’t tell you. I don’t want you to return. I don’t want the Raven Queen to hurt you again.” He crushed me against him. “If it isn’t me she forces to sire a child with you, it will be someone else. We’re safe here. You can bear Elric’s heirs, and then he will be obligated to take care of you as the mother of his children. Even if he should have to go back to the Silver Court, you will be granted certain liberties as his mistress and the mother of his children.”
“This is patriarchal bullshit.” Vega smacked Elric in the shoulder and then strode across the floor to kick Thatch in the leg, narrowly missing me. “You two are as bad as unicorns with a virgin obsession. Clarissa and I are far more useful than to be delegated the task of popping out your babies.”
Thatch loosened his grip on me. He turned to face Vega. “As inconvenient as it is that the Fae Court runs on a patriarchy, the Fae are a dying race who are obsessed with curing their sterility. They will use you as vessels, whether it offends your feminist sensibilities or not. You would do well to remember that is how this world works.”
Vega hooked an arm through mine, tugging me away from him. “And both you fucktards would do well to remember, I make my own rules.”
Elric placed an arm around her. “Not this time, love.”
“Oh really?” Vega wrenched away from him. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about Galswintha the Wise’s prophecy?” She quoted:
“One student, a misfit of the affinity fire, unable to be sorted,
Will be the chosen one who will rise with power.
She will bring back the lost arts.
This will unify all Fae and Witchkin.
Or lead us into war.”
Vega crossed her arms. “Who do you think that is about?”
Elric’s voice grew rough. “I had once thought it was about Dox.”
“I had thought it was about Alouette Loraline,” Thatch s
aid.
“Well, it wasn’t. They’re both dead. Who is left? It’s about me or Clarissa.” She patted me on the head as though I were her obedient dog.
Or the prophecy could be about Thatch. Or Imani. Only she was now captured. It could be about any Red affinity.
I turned to Thatch. “I need my memories back.”
“No. You’ll see me as a monster.”
“I love you.” I smoothed my hand over Thatch’s jaw, sensing the chasm of loss he’d been hiding. “I will always love you. Monster or hero.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know what I know.”
“Then let me see and be the judge of that.”
“You were never meant to come back for me. I wanted a better life for you. A normal life.” He kissed me, tenderly at first. His lips parted mine, the fervor in his touch growing more passionate.
“Get a room,” Vega groaned.
I ignored her. Thatch didn’t stop kissing me. Magic tingled against my lips.
“Come on, love,” Elric said quietly to Vega. “Let’s give them a moment alone.”
At first, I thought Thatch meant to use my affinity as a distraction. Then I realized he was using my affinity to fuel a spell. Energy from inside me was being siphoned off into a twisted maze of wards that knotted up in my limbs. Memories came back to my hands first, then the muscles in my arms and legs. My skin held memories of pleasure and pain. That chasm of emptiness inside me burned with the ache of what I had once held. Knowing filled my body before the fog of disillusionment left my brain.
I felt a thousand emotions in that kiss all at once. My past flooded through me. I understood what had happened in that foggy time I hadn’t been able to grasp.
Guilt and sorrow shook me, and I collapsed against Thatch. If he hadn’t been holding me and stroking my hair, sending new sensations of the present from my skin to my core, I might have been consumed by the past.
I could see what he had been keeping from me and why. Seeing the truth as it flashed before my eyes was a thousand times worse than hearing Thatch and Elric talk about it. I didn’t agree with his decision, but at least I understood.
And yet, out of that misery, a bubble of hope surfaced.
I knew where a dragon nest was hidden. I knew Thatch and Elric were wrong. Vega and I were right. With that dragon egg, we could crush the Raven Queen.
The Red Court would rise again. We would fulfil the prophecy.
THE END
The Joy of Hex
BOOK SEVENTEEN PREVIEW
PROLOGUE
A Trip down Memory Lane
In Which the Reader Travels Back in Time to the End of Hex Appeal, Book 15
My memories returned, flooding into me in an overwhelming tide. I understood why my husband, Felix Thatch, had thought it was for the best that I didn’t remember my past. I saw with perfect clarity what had happened to my fairy godmother, my baby, and us. I understood the Fae Fertility Paradox, the truth about the Ruby of Divine Wisdom, and the Lost Red Court. It was more than my past I saw. I understood the significance of Thatch’s bargain with Elric and his depression. I understood my own.
It was all connected.
Felix Thatch had feared if I remembered everything, I would see him as a monster.
He hadn’t known I would see myself as one as well.
I went back to the moment the queen had stolen my fairy godmother and husband from me. . . .
The Raven Queen’s castle loomed above the trees, radiating evil. It felt as if a thousand eyes watched us from the spindly spires. Felix Thatch ushered me out into the forest, away from the castle after his sister, Odette, who carried Abigail Lawrence, my fairy godmother. We had to hurry if we were to save her.
Abruptly, Thatch stopped walking. He drew me into his arms and kissed me. When he broke away, he said, “Promise me you won’t come back for me.”
“No,” I said.
He kissed me again. I knew what he was doing—or trying to do. He kneaded his fingers into my hips, attempting to arouse me. His touch was so full of desperation he couldn’t make me forget the sorrow in my heart. I didn’t lose myself as I had before when he’d tried to manipulate me.
“Promise me,” he repeated.
I twisted away. “Stop it. I’m not going to promise.”
“You have to,” he insisted. “You need to stay at Womby’s where it’s safe.” There was a strange echoing quality to his voice.
He felt insubstantial in my arms. “What’s happening?” I asked.
“My queen is summoning me.”
My hand went through him, scattering his chest into swirls of vapor.
He touched his lips to mine, the sensation cold and ghostly. “If you loved me, you would leave me be.”
It was a cheap shot, and it wasn’t going to work. He faded from my sight.
“No,” I said. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
“The competency lozenge—” I started to say. We could use its knowledge to help us.
Thatch’s voice came as a breath of wind. “It didn’t work. The Raven Queen’s wards made them inert before you’d ever swallowed it. Go. Before she changes her mind.” It sounded like he said more, but the distance between us was too great.
If the competency lozenge hadn’t helped me in the first place, was he saying I had figured out how to master my affinity all by myself? Yet, if the competency lozenge had worked, I would know how to solve this problem. He might have more at Womby’s. If I could get there in time. . . .
“Clarissa,” Odette Thatch called from the shadows of the trees. “There isn’t much time.”
I ran into the shadows off the path toward Felix Thatch’s sister. Odette had my mom standing on her own feet. That seemed like a good sign. Only, my fairy godmother’s face was mottled, the texture of the freckles and dirt on her face wrong. Her eyes were closed, and she swayed.
Odette swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“Undo it. Felix said to undo it. You have to.”
The calm mask Odette had worn in the Raven Court was gone, replaced by regret. “I can’t. I’m not strong enough, nor have I the skill.”
I searched myself for the knowledge. There had to be a way. I would not accept this as an answer.
Abigail Lawrence stretched her arms up to the sky. She dug her toes into the earth. Amni Plandai magic rolled off her. I didn’t want her to turn into a tree, especially not here, so near the Raven Queen’s castle. The gloomy palace crested over the trees like a half-submerged monster ready to strike at any moment. If my fairy godmother transformed here, the Raven Queen could chop her down at any time.
We didn’t have a lot of time. I shifted my awareness outside myself, trying to see the magic Odette had used. Fractals of green were woven into a mess of red light. The magic was knotted and twisted together in a jumble of patterns.
I reached out with my mind, trying to untangle a knot around my fairy godmother’s heart. I pushed the fabric of spells back, but they kept growing and closing in on her. For every jumbled mess I unraveled, two more were created. I tore through the weaving as though it were the fragile silk of a spiderweb.
“Careful,” Odette said. “You’ll hurt her if you aren’t gentle.”
I didn’t want my mom to suffer. I wanted her to be safe at home. I wanted her to be happy.
How could I be gentle and quick? If only time would slow for me again and my senses speed up as they had when my enemy, Quenylda, had been about to strike. I needed to burn through the spell Odette had used. I pushed at the tangle, trying to force it away from my mom, to place my will between her soul and the magic as a shield.
The competency spell was supposed to help me learn faster, but I had to have a foundation to build on. All I knew how to do was shoot out magic to kill someone or cycle my energy into another Witchkin. That wasn’t going to undo a spell made by a Red. It would only feed it.
A reedy sound came from Abigail Lawrence,
pain and anguish in that inhuman breath. My inaction only furthered her suffering. I had to do something, but I feared I would make the wrong choice.
With all the electricity I had left in me, I projected it out of my hands and into the strands of the spell. My magic traveled out of my body and into hers, breaking into fractals as it split along branches of the magic.
Either this would cure her or it would kill her.
“No!” Odette said. “You’re going to feed my magic with yours.” Odette shook me and tried to break my hold. “You’re making it worse.”
I had suspected this might happen. I’d nourished the spell. Opening my eyes, I found my fairy godmother transformed. She wasn’t a woman as before, nor was she completely tree. She was halfway in the process of changing. Her branches shifted in the breeze above my head, and in that wordless lullaby, I heard her song of pining.
I didn’t know how to cure her or turn her back. I did the only thing I could do. I pushed more magic into her so that her metamorphosis would be complete. My store of energy felt depleted, even as I churned the electricity in my core to generate more. I thought of Thatch’s lips on mine, hoping to inspire pleasant sensations.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I gazed at the woman who had raised me. It was difficult to have happy thoughts to inspire touch magic.
I dug deeper inside myself and willed everything I had into the oak woman before me, strengthening the spell. It still wasn’t enough. I gathered strength from the trees around me, adding to the Amni Plandai magic. I drank in Odette’s own affinity, her hand on my arm lending me more power, whether she intended to do so or not.
I poured magic into the tree until she stood tall and strong. Abigail Lawrence was just another tree in the forest, though whether that would conceal her, I didn’t know.
Odette dropped to her knees, gasping for breath. My magic had petered out. I also fell to my knees, hugging the tree as I sobbed.
