“What’s wrong?” He reached up and touched my forehead. “You’re making your worried face.”
“Oh I just realized someone kidnapped me from here last night in the middle of a ball and my poor mother and grandmother—”
“I’m sorry,” he groaned. “I told you, I’m not good at peopling sometimes.”
“You’re adorable and terrifying. I like the combination.”
I unhooked my legs and jumped down — and bounced off the ground. I flew into the air and screamed. Malachi appeared in front of me in an instant, his arms snaking around my waist and pulling me flush to his body. His brow was furrowed low as he narrowed those gold eyes on the ground like there was an ambush awaiting us. Slowly, he lowered us down but held me up higher so his feet touched first.
He landed on the gray stones near the door and then lowered me down. I gripped his arms and tried to land but couldn’t. It was like something or someone was pushing up against me, like holding two magnets together and trying to force them to touch. Something was repelling me. I jumped but I bounced off the invisible barrier like it was a trampoline. He cursed in that language I didn’t recognize. He was frowning at the ground, his eyes distant like he was thinking real hard.
“Uh…Malachi, what’s going on? Why can’t I touch the ground?” I tried again, but every time I hit an invisible wall.
“This estate sits on Holy Ground.”
I froze. “What does that mean for this?”
“I used demonic spells to try and get it off. It shouldn’t have prevented you from touching Holy Ground but…” He cursed again. “Lilith’s power is growing stronger in the pendant.”
Cold hard dread filled my stomach. “Get it off of me.”
His eyes met mine. “I’m trying. I promise. Lilith is powerful and conniving, but we can figure this out.”
“But I can’t be here? I can’t go home to my own house anymore?”
“Yes, but…I am the Prince of Hell. That comes with its own tricks.”
He pulled one hand free from my grip and held it in the air. His fingers curled in and the veins in his forearm darkened. He whispered in a language that sounded dangerous. It sent a shiver down my spine. Black smoke swirled between his fingers, growing bigger and bigger until it was a few inches tall. Then he flicked his wrist and the black all flew right at my feet.
Hot air coiled around my feet like I’d buried them in hot sand, but it wasn’t painful. My body lowered toward the ground. I didn’t get all the way down but the invisible wall now hit me about an inch off the stone.
I turned and hobbled toward the door. Walking while hovering on black shadows reminded me of trying to wear my mother’s heels when I was little. I grinned. “It worked!”
He stepped up beside me. “Just be careful.”
I kissed his cheek, then hopped over to the door. The second I landed in front of it, the wooden door swung wide open. Warm air hit my face and I sighed. Home. I stepped to my right and stopped beside the coat rack, taking a moment to hang my Burberry coat in a safe spot. Then I turned and skipped toward the living room, but I only made it five feet before that invisible barrier shot a foot off the ground and I flew into the air.
“CHLOE!” I heard my mother and granny shout my name but I was too busy flipping upside down.
Black smoke wrapped around my body, flipping me right side up and lowering me back down beside Malachi. He frowned and shook his head. “I told you to be careful. It will affect you more the deeper you move in Holy Ground.”
My mother gasped up ahead. “MALACHI?”
I jumped and looked up just in time to see my mother sprinting across the grand salon right at my soulmate. She stopped in front of him and wrapped her arms around him. He went into her embrace like it was no big deal. She held him a moment before dropping her arms and stepping back.
Malachi smiled and then bowed. “Your Majesty, it has been a long time.”
Mum grinned and peered up at him with glistening blue eyes. “And yet you haven’t aged a day.”
He smirked. “Considering your age, I would say you’re doing equally as well.”
“Right. Sorry, rewind a bloody second.” I frowned and shook my head. “You two know each other? I mean, you said you knew my father but like—wait did you call her Your Majesty?”
They exchanged nervous glances. Behind my mother, Granny sat on the pale colored sofa sipping tea.
I pushed my sleeves up and put my hands on my hips. “What am I missing?”
“Chloe, dear, why don’t you – what are these lines on your arm– oh my Goddess.” She grabbed my arm and pushed my sleeve even farther up, then she surprised the hell out of me by yanking down the collar of my shirt. Then she turned to Malachi. “She has a soulmate?”
His face went adorably pink.
But the way mine burned I was positive I was blushing just as much.
“What?” Mum glanced back and forth between us. Then she gasped. “Wait…you?”
If possible, his cheeks turned even more pink. He pushed his sleeve up so she could see.
Mum fanned herself. “Oh…well…if only Henry had seen that coming.”
“Come on and have a seat, dears,” Granny called from the sofa, lifting a biscuit in the air.
Mum collected herself, then turned and gestured for us to follow as she went and sat on the sofa across from Granny, just like she had twenty-four hours ago when I’d first arrived here terrified out of my mind. Twenty-four hours. SO much had happened in such a short amount of time. It was unbelievable.
I tried to walk but each time I took a step my leg was pushed up into the air. But then Malachi took my hand in his and that vanished. I still couldn’t touch the ground, but I could walk fairly easy beside him. Mum looked up and then did a double take, her gaze locking on our entangled hands. Something passed behind her eyes and I didn’t like it. There was more going on here.
I tried to join Granny on the sofa, but I couldn’t even get within a few inches of the furniture. I cursed and turned to my soulmate. He grimaced and waved his hand. A chair made of black smoke and shadow formed right beside him, between the sofas.
He winked and then lowered me down onto it. It felt as real as a regular wooden chair. Without dropping my hand, he took the seat beside my mother.
“Mum, what am I missing here?”
She took a deep breath and tucked her blonde hair behind her ears. “I was Queen of England once, for a short while.”
I choked on a gasp. “What???”
Malachi squeezed my hand but he turned to my mother. “It’s time, Your Majesty.”
“Time? Time for what? Why do you keep calling her Your Majesty? What do you mean you were the Queen of England?”
Mum smoothed her pencil skirt and licked her lips. “We have not been entirely honest with you about your…our…history.”
“What does that mean?” I grumbled through clenched teeth. “Tell me now, Mother.”
“I married your father when I was seventeen, that was plenty old enough back then…when I married him, he was the King of England.”
“What? Mum, are you mad? Our current queen has been queen for like a bloody century. Dad only died eighteen years ago.”
She gave me a small, sad smile that made my stomach tighten into knots.
“Your father died five hundred and forty-seven years ago, in the year 1471.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered. “Though, you and I have not seen him since 1453.”
My mind spun. “Mum, what you playing at?”
“I am serious.” She looked to me then and her blue eyes sparkled. “I was just a regular civilian witch when I met your father, but we fell madly in love, and then he made me queen. You, my darling dear, were born Princess Chloe Lancaster…in the year 1448.”
My eyes widened. A cold chill slid down my spine. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
She stood and walked over to sit on the coffee table directly in front of me, something so entirely
out of character for her, then reached out and took my hands. “You and I are not from this time.”
“What do you mean?” My pulse skipped and my palms grew sweaty.
“You are twenty-two years old, in a way, but technically you are five-hundred-seventy years old. You were born December 6th, 1448, on your father’s birthday. You were his most favorite present ever.”
“No…no, no, no, no.” I shook my head and nausea rolled up my throat. “This can’t be real. This can’t — how can I be nearly six centuries old without knowing it? Mum, this makes no sense. I remember my fifth birthday. You took me to the London Eye. I have pictures.”
She was already nodding. “That is true. But you see…the world was at war then—”
I gasped as the dates suddenly clicked in my mind. “The Hundred Years’ War, 1448 was near the end of the war….1453 was when it ended. MUM. This is what I studied. I have a bachelor’s in history for bloody sake. The Middle Ages were my concentration!”
She chuckled and cupped my cheek. “Darling, you’ve spent your entire academic career focused on that section of history because it’s where you came from.”
A strangled kind of cry left my lips. I looked to Malachi.
“It’s true. Every word she’s saying.”
I gasped and then slammed my hand over my mouth.
“In January of 1453, The Coven ended the war with Lilith. The human war wouldn’t end until the autumn, but ours finished. It’s a long story, but your father needed to hide us so he sent the two of us off to a secret safe house…” she closed her eyes and shook her head. “But we ended up in the Old Lands. When we came out, it was the year 2000. You and I were the same age, so you were still four years old…which is why you remember your fifth birthday so vividly.”
“The Old Lands…” I frowned as memories came flashing back. “I remember stories Granny told me about the Old Lands. They’re…not of our realm, right?”
Mum and Granny both turned to Malachi.
He grimaced. “The Old Lands is this realm’s connection to Heaven. That’s where the Garden of Eden is. It is here on this plane, yet it is not at the same time. The laws of Earth do not apply there, specifically not time. It is mostly composed of Holy Land, so it protected you from both demons and Lilith while you were there.”
I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees, then buried my face in my hands. “I was born in 1448. My father was the King of England—” I gasped and sat up straight as it hit me.
“Your father was King Henry VI, house of Lancaster,” my mother said softly but rich with pride. “And he adored you more than anything. I remember you telling me once that you thought your memories had been warped by the trauma his death caused you—”
“Because I remembered him in crowns and swords,” I finished for her. I shook my head. “All my memories of him…they’re from back then. Almost six centuries ago.”
They all nodded.
“My father was Henry VI,” I repeated. “But then what about his wife? Margaret? The ones the history books teach us?”
Her face paled and her eyes grew dark. “Your father was the Hierophant in The Coven, but he was also Coven Leader at the time. He was a selfless man, unlike anyone else. In 1445, before you were born of course, the war had drenched the world in darkness and chaos. He wanted to protect me from the humans. He knew that The Coven would be stepping aside from their lives once the war ended, so he wanted to get me out before I got hurt. Margaret was one of my best friends. Her parents were witches but she was born without magic. So we all agreed for her to become official queen…I let him marry her. There was a whole plan that obviously never came to pass because you and I got lost in the Old Lands.”
My eyes watered. I felt my mother’s pain and it was too much. “What about Grandmother and Grandfather? Were they with us?”
Granny cleared her throat. “I am not actually your grandmother, my dear. In fact, I am your niece many times removed.”
I choked on a gasp. “But…Mom was named after you?”
She smiled brightly. “No, my love, I was named after your mother.”
“When we left, I was Queen of England, but when we came back out nearly six hundred years later, I discovered your father and The Coven had erased our entire existence from history books. Only The Coven and select members of the Lancaster family knew the truth.”
“Heads of the family knew, because we knew one day you two would return,” Granny said softly. Her eyes were sharp. “You see, we even had the portraits of you two from the palace, so when I was born my parents thought I looked like a young Millie Anne…so they named me after her. Decades later she arrived on my doorstep here, still wearing her crown.”
I shivered and my fingers started to tremble. “I am freaking out right now.”
Granny slid close enough to reach out and take my hand. “It was too much to unload on you. So I became your grandmother, and I have been ever since.”
I held her hand and my eyes watered. “You’ll always be.”
“Chloe, princess,” Mum squeezed my hand. When I looked to her, she pointed to the far wall with the paintings on it. “You know that third painting over there?”
I nodded. “The one you hate.”
I glanced over at it again, and it moved within the frame even from this distance. The people were thick in battle and I hadn’t wanted to see it. Dust and dirt kicked up in the air. Blood splashed in arches. Swords and silver body armor glistened in a hazy sunlight.
“What about it?”
“Do you see anything you recognize?” her voice was soft.
I groaned and returned my focus to the painting that I’d seen a million times over the last eighteen years. It was just a bunch of men in armor fighting in a war. In the upper left corner there was a blonde woman in a glorious gown and magnificent crown. Beside her was a little blonde girl in pigtail braids and big blue eyes. She wore a tiara and held a single red rose in her hand. I’d always liked that part of the —
“OH MY GOD.” My eyes watered. “That’s US. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
Mum nodded. “That’s why I don’t like the painting, dear. Every time I look at it it’s like I’ve lost my life all over again. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a good life since we got here…but all I see in that painting is your father, front and center where we should have been.”
Tears spilled over my eyelashes and onto my cheeks.
“What else do you see?”
I shook my head and threw my hands up. “I don’t know. I see Dad. God, how’d I miss that all this time?”
“Because there was no reason for you to think it was him. It’s amazing what the mind will do. But that’s not what I’m asking. There’s another person you should recognize now…”
I scanned the painting again. It was a tad difficult since they kept moving and fighting. I searched each of the faces, but none of them meant a thing. But then the one right beside my father turned and I knew his face in an instant. His hair fell down to his elbows and his eyes were more yellow, but I knew him all the same.
Malachi.
I turned to my soulmate, who’d been very, very quiet, and found him staring at the carpet.
He peeked up at me, his eyes dark. “That was right before I died. That painting is like a snapshot in time. That moment really happened. The man beside me is my brother Riah. And the one beside him is Edward Proctor. Right after this moment, I stole Lilith’s pendant.”
“And then you died,” I whispered.
“I had just enough time to give your father the pendant – the locket – before the Seelie King captured me,” his voice was raw and low. “By the time I was reborn as an angel, the two of you were already lost in the Old Lands. And I have waited for your reappearance since then.”
“And now you’re soulmates!” My mum cheered and clapped. She giggled. “Oh, if I could tell your father.”
Granny giggled. “You know, you’re not that far apart in age if I remember correctly
.”
“A century and a half,” mum said with a wink in Malachi’s direction. “Did you know this was coming?”
He scoffed and shook his head. “Most certainly not.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples and squeezed. “Okay, so…bloody hell…what happened after that? My brain hurts. You can’t just drop a bomb like this. I need more information.”
“Well, after Malachi sacrificed himself to get the locket, your father, Coven Emperor Edward Proctor, and Archangel Michael had a plan for it — for what to do with it so she could never get it back.” Mum frowned and looked to my soulmate. “They didn’t know Malachi was coming back as an angel, though I suspect Michael did. In hindsight, his plan made much more sense knowing that.”
Malachi chuckled and nodded.
“What was the plan?”
Mum shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He said you and I were safer if we didn’t know.”
I sighed. “Mum, explain this to me…how did we end up in the Old Lands? How did we get out?”
“I…don’t know. Trust me, I’ve gone over that day a trillion times over the last eighteen years, yet I still have no answer.” She sat up straight and tucked her hair behind her ears. “But see, to us, Chloe, we were only in there for a few hours at most. We didn’t even need to stop to sleep. That’s how quick it went for us. For you, this was no big deal. You were a toddler. For me, it was overwhelming. That’s why we lived here, because I had to adjust to modern society. We had to pretend that our lives had just begun. You couldn’t understand the truth about your father—"
“My father. King of England. Henry the VI. Do you know what human history books say about him, mother? Him and Margaret had a son the very year we disappeared—"
“When you two did not reach your destination, and Michael told him that you’d gone into the Old Lands, your father…” Malachi shook his head, and I felt his pain like it was my own. He was there and he remembered it clearly. “Well, he broke down. He was a broken man after that. He didn’t speak for nearly eighteen months. His son Edward was not his biological son, but The Coven wanted the Lancaster name to smooth its way out of the human world…it got very complicated.”
The Rose Witch (The Coven: Old Magic Stand-Alone Novel Book 1) Page 14
