by May Peterson
I stood at the threshold, and she stirred faintly. “Tibario. It’s daylight. You should be asleep.”
Her tired voice evoked sympathy in me. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her. “He is asleep. He’s fine.”
She pivoted in shock, drink sloshing from her glass. Her face was haggard with fatigue. “What the fuck are you doing here? Did something happen? Who’s hurt?”
I expected some anger for my intrusion into her home, but her first thought was of others now. This wasn’t the devil I knew. I fought the place inside me that was already softening toward her.
Opening my hands, I leaned against the door jamb and yawned. “What happened is that Father came to me at my flat, and I...couldn’t be there anymore. So I’m hiding here. I know one should bring a gift when visiting another witch’s house, so I’m sorry for my decidedly empty hands.”
Her eyes narrowed and she relaxed somewhat. “You’ve given me gifts aplenty, more than I can stand. Damn Casilio. I should have expected him to move thus. You’re of course welcome to stay here as long as you like. Tibario thought well to suggest it. I hope you will understand, however, that I am not well eased at the sight of your, shall we say, portentous shadow.”
“I grow more portentous every day.” Strange, how much simpler it was to face her now. Once she’d frightened me more than Father. I stepped into the room, and she gestured for me to take a seat across from her. I accepted. “Father knows about my prophecy now. I’ve told him there’s no way to stop it. Not even killing me. My magic connects me to the future, and that is where my dragon-soul is being born. Time flows backwards. There’s no way to alter the future now, because in a way, it’s already happened. My dragon-soul has already been affecting things through me, creating the past necessary for it to exist.”
Serafina’s brow gnarled with thunderheads. “And you believe this? That all is hopeless?”
“I’m not sure I’d call anything I do ‘belief’ anymore.” I cupped my head in my hands, sighing. “What if I’m wrong about my death not stopping my dragon? That would be a way out, but there’s no way to test it. I can’t come back and try again if it doesn’t help.”
“Worse.” Serafina sloshed her drink, opened a decanter and poured herself some more, then filled a glass for me. I took it and drank. Mm. Smoky. “A dragon-soul will ensure its existence comes to pass. A near death state can fuel its growth into fruition. You are right to consider that magic such as yours could be blurring past and future together. This is why I must consider your fear that your prophecies force themselves to come true: dragon-souls expand their powers well beyond their limits, in both strength and operation. Your dragon-soul could have the ability to alter the past through its memory of you—of being you, right now.”
So I wasn’t jumping to conclusions. A gelid weight condensed in my stomach. “But there is something that could be tested. You are the only person my mother went to for magical advice. What if there’s a way to prevent my dragon-soul from coming into being—or at least from influencing fate through me?”
She sat back, the lines of her face severe in thought. “The elixir of tears. Lachrysinthe.” Rising, she opened a cabinet at the back of the study, one with a peculiar lock that appeared to open at her touch. A few minutes of rustling produced a large chest that she hefted on the table. Metal gleamed on the chest’s exterior, and its lock also sprang open with a few motions of her fingers.
Fat cylindrical vials sat within, the size of prestige liquor bottles. Next to it was a case she slid out, lying on the table. It snapped opened to reveal an array of syringes, all of them bright with an amber solution. The same color shone from the vials, more than I could estimate at a glance.
The elixir of tears.
I swallowed, uncomfortable. “You...have an awful lot of this elixir. Why on earth would you need so much?”
Her barbed grin brought something of her old self back into view. “It pays to have a way to disable enemy witches, my dear. Magic can’t solve everything. Lachrysinthe is a pain relief agent, but it’s also a soporific. Magic is of the body, not the mind. It has more to do with sensation and instinct than with thought. If the nerves of the body are sufficiently numbed, it can halt the magical functions. Put the magic to sleep, so to speak. It does a damn good job of putting a person to sleep, as well.”
She gestured at the vials and took her seat again. I took a steadying breath. “It makes me sick to say this, but my thought is that we load me up with lachrysinthe so I can’t see the future anymore. And if my power is inhibited, maybe the link between the present and the dragon-soul can be broken.”
A few grim instants crawled by, in which her reaction was a chilling mystery. She chewed on one fingernail, tossing back her drink. “It’s clever, but I mislike it. There are places where mages are kept sedated with lachrysinthe, but in infinitesimal doses. Even then, there are long-term costs. Nervous damage, catatonia, loss of function, even death. Lachrysinthe is for precise use. A heavy dose all at once can knock someone out, but not harm them. Many doses, every few hours? I fear it would kill you.”
My belly turned. “How small a dose would I have to take to deaden my powers?”
Serafina gazed at me seriously, brow furrowed, her lone red eye oddly sad without its usual crimson glow. She gave the impression she was truly thinking what I was made of for perhaps the first time in her life. “Violetta. Your prescience is still good for something. Of course you want rid of it, but you’ve had it your whole life. One can’t simply extricate that. My advice is this: wait until you begin to change. Until the force of your magic starts growing beyond what it’s ever been before. That is when the dragon-soul is blossoming. It doesn’t happen overnight. The process can even be turned back, if the emergence is stopped at the right moment. We keep the lachrysinthe as a defense, and wait for the time to strike. That, perhaps more than anything else, has a chance of averting your prophecy.”
This was sincere counsel, from someone I’d never dared expect it from. She was making a genuine peace offering. But she seemed to still doubt my fear of the future’s inevitability.
Could she be right?
I lifted the case, counted the syringes. “All right. You’re the expert. Can I keep these?”
She inclined her head. “By all means. Best to acknowledge a good idea when it arrives.” Then she strode to the door and closed it. “But you are to promise me you will not use it to end your life.”
What? I was stunned at the leap, enough that I couldn’t respond for a moment. “You don’t understand, Serafina. Mollyqueens and tomkings think about suicide often. It’s always on our heels, either the shadow of our own or those of people we love. I’ve already faced this demon.”
“Your words speak of a desire for a slow death instead of a quick one. When said this drug could kill you, I saw the moment of hope on your face. Didn’t you think, ‘if it kills me while it aborts my dragon-soul, it will be worth it’?”
I could feel a scowl coming on. Softening toward her or no, I did not want to discuss my grip on life and hope with fucking Serafina Gianbellicci. “Are you saying it wouldn’t be?”
Serafina’s smile glowed with a peculiar mix of melancholy and victory, as if having revealed some profound mystery. “You live like a woman defeated, Violetta. But consider: if we are strategizing how to avert a prophecy, you must entertain the notion that it could work. That this will all pass over us, and the desperation will be gone. You don’t really want that, do you?”
The churning in my guts stopped. This felt eerily like when my prescience chimed from my hair being touched, a calm place within me preparing for battle. I stood, hands at my sides, holding the case close.
As if taking my silence for invitation, Serafina went on, an undercurrent of venom in her voice. “Because if you are not desperate anymore, you will have no more justification to continue this dalliance with my son.”
&nbs
p; Of course she knew. She’d known before I did, in some ways. “This is decidedly none of your business, Serafina. How long did you hold over my head my feelings for Tibario? Wasn’t that the secret that gave you entry to my mind? You have no place chiding me for it now, as if I were an infatuated schoolgirl.”
“But it is an infatuation. I know precisely because I did see into your mind. You pined for him because he was a loving friend who could never be with you. Even now, are you not reenacting the same dance?”
Now the energy in my body was blooming into outright anger. Anger that I could at last permit myself to experience. “How dare you speak to me about this, when you have a house and a husband and two adoring children that you drove away? Did you not understand my prophecy? Being controlling toward those that trust you. As if you know anything about real loneliness, not having a choice but to let your heart starve. I spent my entire life denying myself the possibility of happiness. Tibario hasn’t been persuaded or bullied into being with me. He came to me. He offered something new, something we both want, and this time I let myself say yes.”
My vigor seemed to shrink her back to the worn-out warrior I’d seen moments ago. These wouldn’t be mere jabs to her, because they weren’t the words of an enemy. They were the words of someone she was actually trying to make amends with. Worse still, they were the words of the Honored Child. But the light in her eyes was waxing toward bitterness. “I understand better than you think. There’s another difference this time, isn’t there? You pronounce the world is about to end in a matter of weeks, and only then do you find your courage to risk a broken heart? Think, Violetta. You are all but admitting the truth. This affair with Tibario is a creature of despair. You are only doing it because neither of you believe you will live much longer. Tibario does want it, but not for a lifetime. He wants it for his final hours, the way a child wants to hold on to a blanket in the dark.”
Vitriol wafted off her like a perfume. This was not only judgment; it was resentment. Regret. “Spare me your admonition. I fully understand that if Tibario chooses me to be his mate, there won’t be a prince or princess in Vermagna that will take him seriously. You don’t want a mere career as a mafioso for him—you want him to have a hand in the country’s ruling when Father is gone. And if there’s any chance of that, I have to be out of the picture. But you keep missing the simple truth: that should be his choice, and mine. Not yours.”
Serafina threw her hands up with a groan. “Of course it isn’t his choice! It isn’t my choice! Nothing is individual choice, when it could affect a whole nation. You believe I envision a great role in history for him out of mother’s pride? Fool! Our country will need him. Everything I’ve done is to create a future, because it is on all of us to deliver a new world into being. We all play a part. You ought to understand this better than anyone. There is no such thing as one person’s choice in a void. I made my choice, and as a result, you were born. You played your part by saving the country. I was right, Violetta.”
Comprehension flamed into view.
Oh.
I all but fell back into the chair, the case dangling from my hand. The meaning under her words pulsed out with sudden naked force, giving everything she was saying a curious sense. “You’re talking about my mother. You mean you made a choice to leave her so you could be with Gino. Then she chose my father, because you refused to go on with the relationship. You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
She became still, attaining the unflinching calm that said a weak point was being struck. But a rueful softness came over her, and she melted back against the wall. “Still am, if you must know. Some wounds never cease to ache. Gino knew. We both understood that the best path through our lives, through the kinds of lives we’d have to live if we wanted anything like a future, was the path where we didn’t risk too much. The heart is delicate, and the world cares little for it. I miss your mother. She was and always will be my first love. But if we had chosen each other, the world would have torn us apart. I did the right thing.”
My anger was losing power, dissipating into pale sorrow. How often had Mother thought about this, about the life she could have lived, while facing down Father’s negligence and cruelty?
But did that pain disprove Serafina? In one matter her words bit with insight—Tibario and I had only found the gumption to be together because the world was ending. As if my curious seer’s intelligence had wanted exactly that, knowing it was the only way my heart could achieve its desire.
The air in the room abruptly changed, dropping into a chill. The shadows shifted, and before I could assemble what this meant, darkness congealed at my side. Out of it materialized Tibario, one arm draped across my shoulders. He stood in wrinkled trousers and an open shirt dangling over his exposed chest. His silver eyes were so bright they burned.
“You know.” He cleared his throat. “As much energy has been put into testing my powers as a moon-soul, it seems very easily forgotten that I have supernatural hearing.”
Serafina’s eyes were wide, but she quickly regained herself, a veneer of hauteur closing over her like armor. “Then you won’t need me to repeat myself. You heard what I said, and I stand by it. I don’t mean to deny you the fulfillment of your last cherished dreams when life is fading. But we aren’t dead yet, and I need you both to hope. Hope means letting go of the dream. If you wouldn’t do this when you have ten thousand days left, don’t do it when you have merely ten. Because that tells me you have accepted defeat. Every choice we make must be for a future—”
“Enough.” Tibario cut his hand through the air, placing himself bodily in front of me like a shield. “I’ll tell you about a choice, Mamma. The choice I made to keep giving you chances. I only did it because I thought there was some trust left. You said you never used the occhiorosso on Violetta.”
I’d lived in fear of Serafina for years because of the terror of sorcery. Like my rape, I hadn’t wanted anyone to know. It was impossible to face her reaction now to having it laid bare. I hid my face in Tibario’s back, and he stroked my hair reassuringly.
Serafina locked arms across her chest. “I used it on you, and Mio, and your father. You knew this, Tibario. You know what it is I do.”
“And I stood there and let you do it, made excuses for you doing it, for twenty-five fucking years. I pleaded with you, Mamma. I pleaded with you while I was dying, and you still had to be in control.”
That struck Serafina with visible impact. Only a flinch, a moment of broken calm, but it was as dramatic as a thud.
“I was trying to meet you where you were, Mamma. But the entire basis of that was that I believed you hadn’t attacked and controlled Violetta. Like Casilio does.”
Serafina opened her mouth, closed it again. Maybe an older version of her would have insisted that she and Father were nothing alike. That their motivations made them different. Maybe it spoke to some change in her now that she held this back.
“I shouldn’t have had to tell you why this matters, Mamma. I shouldn’t have to set rules for you, and Violetta shouldn’t have to hide this from me to keep some perverse peace with you.” He encircled me in his arms, the intimacy of it frightening in front of Serafina’s ambivalent hostility. “I am taking her someplace that is actually safe.”
“And then you’re coming back.” It was a statement, but with the lilt of a question. Serafina’s frown expressed an anxiety I’d never seen in her before.
“Why?” Tibario swiped at his face, tears thickening in his voice. “So you can make more promises you don’t mean? Mio is on his own and Papa is fates know where, doing fates know what. I dreamed that if I endured enough, we’d all be together again. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being alone, Mamma. But I am starting to believe that being alone is the only thing you want.”
I studied Serafina. That had to be the deepest wound, because I’d also seen this in her. It had truth to it. She didn’t act like som
eone who valued keeping her loved ones in her life.
She closed like an iron trap, scarlet beginning to pulse rhythmically from her eye. “Enough, Tibario. You are not leaving this house. You can question my decisions and my character later.”
Tibario drew a deep, shaking breath, tears gleaming on his face. He stood so I was entirely behind him, as if he expected her to attack. But his voice shone with confidence. “Mamma, you’ll have to force me to stay. Use the occhiorosso on me. You always do when nothing else works. When no other answer is available, you have me to control. So make me stay. I won’t even fight you.”
I had made such a similar dare to her, a lifetime ago. To prove she wouldn’t use force when it counted. Prove there was trust left to be nurtured.
She watched Tibario for what felt like a long time. There, at last, was the wound. Serafina in pain looked invincible. She possessed strength in spades, more strength than most individuals would ever experience. But because of that strength, the vulnerability was too great to ever be shown. Vulnerability may as well be death.
The red glow of her eye flamed to the intensity of an infant sun.
Tibario stepped forward. “You take control, or I leave, and I do not come back. This is the end for us. You decide what kind of end it is.”
The blaze of the occhiorosso was her only answer. She must do it. She’d done everything to keep some shred of her life intact. To keep her vision of a better world from fading into the distance.
Then, like a knife through paper, something broke her calm. A teardrop. At the corner of an eye, catching the crimson light, a ruby shattering into nothing on the way down.
The light abated, her power let go.
Her voice trembled. “Then go, my boy. Make your own decision. Go.”
Tibario dropped his arms, perhaps pausing to register what she’d said. But she became stone again, offering nothing more.
