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Feeling those things as I stare at the charred remains of her kin feels both wrong and so incredibly right at the same time.
“I did this,” she whispers. “I caused this. I trusted him. I had no idea. I never thought—” She lets out a small whimper that turns into a groan, and buries her head in her hands.
“Yes,” Maura’s voice drifts over from the shadows. When she emerges, her eyes are shining like sharp, deadly diamonds. On her frail, thin legs, she stalks over to us. Her wings flutter. She shakes her head, her silver hair long and loose over her shoulders.
Everything about her says elder. The Sunborne used to have them. My grandmother was one of them. But that was before we realised it was better to have one ruler instead of a group of well-meaning but often useless ones.
“You did cause this.” She stands in front of Alana.
They are so incredibly different. The polar opposite of one another.
Alana is strength, and power, and curves, and youth, and beauty.
Maura is frail, and willowy. She looks as if she would be knocked over in the slightest of breeze, and there is nothing beautiful about her. She is hard, and sharp, and the lines of her face are not filled with kindness but with the bitterness that comes with knowing exactly what people are capable of in this world.
I hope I never see Alana’s face become that knowing.
“You brought that fae into our midst. You trusted him. You bought his lies. You. The mighty empath who was supposed to save us all!” Maura scoffs, still towering above Alana.
Curling in on herself, Alana hangs her head and scrapes her fingers through her hair. I loosen my grip on her shoulder and stand, wings twitching with rage.
Maura holds up a dismissive palm and doesn’t even bother to look in my direction. “This doesn’t concern you,” she says.
I step between her and Alana, physically nudging her back out of my way. “Oh, it does concern me, old woman. It definitely does.”
“You think I’m afraid of you?” Maura spits. “You have nothing left.” She nods at me in disgust. “The jester took your powers. You are a shell.”
The weight of her words hits my chest like a block of concrete and I almost physically recoil from her.
He did.
Finn took my power.
“Look at you.” She nods at my wings. I curl one towards me and my breath turns to burning ice in my lungs. The tip. It is fading. “Soon, you’ll be no more use than Kayan was when she took his powers from him.” Maura sidesteps me, grabs Alana, and hauls her to her feet.
I am still staring at my wings. I fold them slowly forward. Both tips are the same. Paler. Thinner.
I am fading.
Hands on Alana’s shoulders, Maura stares at her as she says, “I know what you are. I’ve always known. The great Lady of Luminael created you because she thought you were going to save us. She gave you the power to save us and what did you do? You frittered it away. The empath who couldn’t tell she was being used by a demon.”
When I look up, Alana is no longer crying. Her tears are drying on her cheeks. Her eyes have changed. Their corners twitch, and her forehead creases.
Her jaw stiffens.
“How dare you accuse me of frittering away my power. All my life, I was made to believe my power was a curse!”
“And so it was,” Maura spits.
Alana swallows forcefully, then moves her hand and places it on top of Maura’s. She squeezes. Then grips harder, her knuckles whitening with the pressure as she forcefully prises Maura’s fingers away from her shoulder.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” Alana says. She draws herself up taller. Her wings crackle. Purple electricity flickers on their tips, and a deep purple smoke begins to gather around her feet. “He might have lost his powers, but I have not.”
Maura stands firm, but her gaze shifts to the floor and she watches the purple smoke curling towards her.
Alana reaches out with both hands and physically pushes the old woman away from her. Maura stumbles and falls to the ground. Now, she really does look afraid.
That feeling is back. The pride, the arousal, the desire to fight for her and protect her.
