“Do you have proof?”
“Do I need it? She sent me back to help Mace do it, but I think he needs Cinnamon’s help too, and she doesn’t really want to do it. He has them all spelled.”
Harry nodded
,
then steepled his fingers as if he was considering something. “Will they succeed in killing him?”
“I hope not. You can make sure they don’t.”
“I cannot interfere. It’s the law.”
“You can help fix things. He doesn’t have to die.”
His lips pressed into a flat line. “There may be nothing to fix.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped short. He’d listen, but he wouldn’t help. I’d already mentioned Junior—he did nothing. “Is Junior’s death so insignificant?”
Harry shrugged. “As I said, I’m not permitted to interfere. They must make their own decisions.”
I jumped off the cot. “Even though your sister is manipulating everyone?”
He stared blankly at me.
“She put a love spell on Junior—pretending to be me! She had him trap the quads, so they would be angry enough to work together and kill him. Does none of this count as interfering?”
“It’s complicated.”
Complicated! The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, by everyone, I also mean
you
—the all-powerful Druid King—and The Boss. She counts on you both to follow your damn rules, while she’s out running amok.” I took a deep breath. Harry had to know the truth. He had to know I might be the one to pull the trigger. “Junior is going to die.”
Don’t tell him. You can’t trust him as you once did
, Jayne warned.
“Fine,” I yelled at Jayne and threw myself back down on the cot. I crossed my arms and faced him. Waiting for him to speak.
Harry’s brow creased, and I realized I’d just spoken to Jayne in front of him. “It’s more complicated than you think,” he said. “She can only be formally charged during an official meeting of the royal powers. I would have to convene a special session just to discuss it with them.”
I threw up my hands. “Oh my god, no wonder you people winded up destroying yourselves. It’s a miracle any of the realms survived.”
Harry’s eyes widened. He used his will to slide the cot to the bars, trapping my legs.
You shouldn’t have said that
, Jayne said.
No shit
.
He leaned down and white-knuckled the bars near my head. “What do you know, Claire?” His voice was calm, but he wasn’t.
I swallowed. “I overheard Mab telling Mace about the fourth realm,” I confessed. “She said the blacksmith was a child of all realms, and I had fourth realm blood.”
He arched a disbelieving eyebrow. “She discussed the fourth realm with Mace?”
“Yes, but she made him forget. She didn’t know I was listening.”
“She would have sensed you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how, but Cinnamon hid me from her.”
His head cocked to one side. He didn’t believe me.
“She also spoke of her twin.”
“She mentioned Jayne?” Harry blurted out
and
stopped.
Jayne! Is he talking about you
?
Jayne was silent.
Talk to me.
I don’t know. No, it can’t be
, she muttered.
Harry cleared his throat again. I looked up. He was studying me.
“She said I reminded her of Jayne. Is it because of my blood? My fourth realm blood, or does she see a resemblance to her sister in my face?”
He frowned.
“You’re not going to let me remember anyway. I’ve heard the omen. I know you think I’m the harbinger. Just tell me the truth.”
His face went pale, and his expression went blank. He jerked from the bars. “It’s forbidden to discuss.”
“By who?”
“Royal decree.”
“But you all are the royals—decree something else.”
“It isn’t that simple,” he yelled, losing some of his composure.
I rolled my eyes, which didn’t make him happy. I was trapped here. He could be pissed all he wanted. I wanted answers.
“Are you my father?” I asked him point blank.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. None of us do.” His voice was quiet.
How is that possible? How can they not know
?
“Did you ever sleep with my mother?”
Harry’s eyes shot open. “Mab certainly didn’t. You heard the omen. She is as likely as I am to be your parent.”
“Right, but as she so eloquently put it—” In a horrible rendition of Mab’s voice I said, “I seriously doubt Melinda was somehow impregnated with one of my ovum.” Then I remembered her next line.
Of course, with magic, I suppose anything is possible
. “Fine. How did I get fourth realm blood? Was I born with it?”
“No, your original blood was replaced.”
“Replaced? When?”
“We don’t know.”
“There’s so much you don’t know. How is that possible to be in charge and not know? You said she couldn’t have taken a child of his. I assume that goes for you too, so wouldn’t my blood have been checked when I was born? My mother was dating the Devil.”
“At the time you were taken, there was no indication you were his child.”
“You ran tests?”
“No.” Harry shrugged. “He wasn’t claiming you.”
“That’s it? You just took his word for it? Unbelievable. When was the fact that my blood was replaced discovered?”
“After you were found.”
“Found?”
He paused and rubbed his forehead again. “After he took you back, before the deal was struck, he hid you and your mother. Your location was unknown for four years.”
Four years
, Jayne said.
We don’t remember
.
“I was with my mother for four years?”
We should have remembered
.
“Yeah, I know. I mean, I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing lately, and we—I don’t have any recollection of that time.”
He’d started pacing.
“Please,” I begged.
He stopped. “It was one of Mab’s conditions.”
Furious, I attempted to push away from the bars. I wanted to stand and throw the cot against the wall. “You let her take the memories of my mother,” I screamed at him. “I have a million crappy memories of every other goddamn thing that has ever happened to me in my entire miserable life, but the one thing that might have made me happy was taken away. You intervened so there wouldn’t be a war. You made the deal. You let her take them.”
Without hesitation, he nodded.
“I hate you.” I had total fucking recall of everything but my mother.
“Claire,” he said. His voice was soft, the way he’d spoken to me as a child.
I blinked back tears. He wouldn’t make me cry. “How exactly was my blood switched?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it eventually go back to what I originally had? My body is making blood like everyone else’s, right? And what about DNA—can’t you do a paternity test?”
“Switched may have been the wrong word. It was more complete than that. Total replacement—everything was changed. Magically changed.”
“Everything has DNA? It’s in my hair, my skin, not just my blood. It was all changed?”
Harry sighed, the wrinkles around his eyes showing his age. “There is no DNA. Not with us.”
“So without my original blood, we’re just SOL.”
“You could say that.”
“You think I’m the harbinger because of the blood.”
“Yes.” He raised his hand, ready to cast the spell
“You’re going to make me forget about all of this?”
“I must.”
“How exactly am I going to fix time if I don’t know I should be trying? The prophecy said I'd fix it, but how can I do that if I don’t know about it?”
“If you’re the girl, you will find a way.”
OMG
, was he kidding?
“Wait,” I said, before he had a chance to wipe my memory. “Cinnamon doesn’t want to go forward with the plan, but she believes Junior is the one who trapped them. She can be convinced not to participate. Please tell her the truth. She’ll believe you.”
He lowered his hand. “Have you seen Junior dead?”
“Yes.”
“Cinnamon has already made her choice. I will not interfere with what is a certainty.”
“But Mab is using them. She wants their power for her realm.”
Harry’s expression didn’t change as he lifted his hand again. “I can’t get involved.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Silence.
“Mab knows the blacksmith has my blood. Wylan James is going to figure out the blood is mine. I hope that’s something you would prefer to keep quiet.”
Harry slid the cot back against the wall.
“You’re a bastard. No better than they are.”
He waved his hand and said, “Forget.”
Twenty Three
I lifted my head to see Harry studying me. How did I get back here, in the basement prison of his safe house?
I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to my forehead. A sharp pain was followed by images flooding back into my mind. Images of the conversation Mab and Mace had in Purgatory. Followed by the conversation Harry and I’d just had. My memories of figuring out how to reverse spells were all intertwined with the ones of my mother and Jayne. I held back a sob when I remembered what Mab had done to my mother—four years of missing memories.
In the blink of an eye, it was all returned to me by the spell I’d cast so Mace couldn’t trap me in a nightmare and make me forget. In my mind’s eye that spell’s geode glowed a bright red, as it fixed the missing memories Harry had tried to remove.
His brows were lowered, his expression serious.
“What were we talking about?” I asked, as if I were trying to remember. I squinted and peered down just as Mace had done when Mab cast her forget spell on him.
When I lifted my gaze, Harry’s face was now relaxed. A slow smile curved his lips, but there was no joy. His eyes were dark with sadness. “Nothing important,” he said. “I’ll leave you to rest.”
He left as if we’d never discussed the fourth realm or my blood or my mother or the fact that none of them knew who my father was.
Nothing important. Do you agree, Jayne
?
She was quiet.
Are you there
?
Nothing.
I released a heavy breath.
Don’t do this to me, not again
.
Jayne was silent—too silent. I closed my eyes and stepped outside my body.
“Where are you? Show yourself,” I demanded, but she said nothing. “Please.”
Nothing.
I opened my eyes and returned to my body. Jayne was gone. I looked inward at the other spells still within. Nothing was different. How could she be gone? Where could she have gone?
“You have permission to speak,” I said, but nothing happened.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the bars. The forgotten conversation with Harry swirled in my head. He hadn’t cared about Junior’s death. He’d refused to tell Cinnamon the truth.
What has happened must happen
. Quaid’s words.
Was that why Harry wouldn’t help? He’d said Cinnamon already made her choice. Was there no way to save Junior? Were all my attempts destined to fail?
I put my hand to my stomach. “Do I kill Junior to save you, little one?”
I curled into a ball on the cot. I wanted to sleep, but my mind was too focused to rest. I was trying to reconcile the gaps in my memory. The four years I’d spent with my mother were gone. My first memories were from a hospital. I’d overlooked them before, as I assumed I’d been a baby, newly born.
Now I went deeper. I remembered the pretty smile of a young nurse named Sarah. She’d wanted custody, but because she was unmarried, they denied her. Single women weren’t eligible to foster. This was the first in a long line of disappointments.
I didn’t speak until I was six, when I had to call 9-1-1 because my foster mother OD’d on sleeping pills.
The more I recalled, the more the girl in my head was like someone else. I knew her hopes and dreams and disappointments. I knew the name and face of the first guy she ever slept with, but couldn’t really remember the touch of his skin.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. Mace. The dull tingle of his mark was somehow dampened now by Mab’s mark. I searched within and found the geode, a pale violet like his eyes. I picked up the two halves and slammed them together. I felt his mark on my back disappear.
“Get up,” he commanded.
We weren’t in Purgatory, but I obeyed. I had no choice. Not while he had the power to destroy the baby.
He steadied his gaze on me. “Come,” he said, motioning me forward.
I walked over to the bars but didn’t look into his eyes. I flinched when he reached through the bars to touch me. He held me in place with his will.
“Mace, please don’t hurt the baby.”
He placed his hand against my belly. I cried out as a sharp pain ran through me, but it wasn’t focused, as before. It was different. The energy just bounced around, hitting nothing.
Stilling, he drew his hand back, fisting it at his side. “What did you do?”
I clutched my stomach. “Nothing.”
He wrenched open the door, pushing his way into the cell. I backed against the wall.
“I thought I was clear,” he said, pressing my body into the wall. “You belong to me now.” He placed his hands on either side of me, caging me in. He leaned in close to my face. “I get to decide what you can and can’t have.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You can’t change the rules, Claire. Not in the middle of the game.”
My heart raced. He was standing too close. I couldn’t breathe. He pinned my wrists when I attempted to push him away. He wrapped his free hand around the nape of my neck. I struggled, but stopped fighting when he tightened his grip and crushed my body against the wall.
Power surged in me
before
I heard the tiny wisps of energy sparking off my left hand.