Page 116 of Revenant

“Our magic?”

“Not just our magic. The mirror.”

My grip tightens on instinct.

“It was forged by our bloodline before the world had language for such things. What lives inside the glass knows only our blood and wakes only for us. The magic that belongs to our mothers, their mothers, and their grandmothers before them is bound within it. Every witch of our line who has passed gives their magic to it—the kind the world has spent a very long time trying to erase, because they’ve always been afraid of what it could do.”

“Dark magic.” The words from Veil’s grimoire surface like something buoyant through cold water—death, talk, spirit. My gaze slips from the grimoire back to her. “Is this dark magic?”

“No. It is old magic.” My mother was always careful with her words growing up, the way a surgeon is careful with a blade. If she’s suggesting our magic is something other, there’s a reason. “Older than the names the living have for it. Dark is what other witches call it because it frightens them, and frightened people have a habit of vilifying what they cannot wield. What it is, Ali, is power.”

I run my thumb along the golden crest of the mirror. “If it’s power, where is everyone? Why are we the last of the Calder bloodline, Mom?”

“We’ve been in hiding for centuries. It began with a feud between sisters in the 1200s—the one thing that saved us. One stayed, helped her father build a school for witches. The other was cast aside. As years passed, it became clear what kind of beings wanted to use Calder witches for their own ends. Our coven descended from the sister who was exiled. We stayed hidden for a very long time—until one of our allies turned against us. Your father gave the order for my capture the night they finally found our location. Unfortunately, the rest of our small coven didn’t survive. The fates didn’t grant me that mercy.”

I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and blink up at the ceiling. “You’re saying death would’ve been kinder? He did something worse?”

“The wolves—” Her voice snags on the edge of her explanation, and for one terrible half second, I see the gentle version of my mother who used to braid my hair in the garden, and the idea of someone keeping her locked in a cell undoes me. “They did to me what people do to a woman when they decide she is a tool and not a person. Until I was willing. That is how the old magic works, Ali. It only answers to a willing hand. They understood that. I still don’t know who turned on us. Only that they’d been close enough to steal what we’d spent centuries hiding and knew exactly how it worked.”

“What did they want?”

“Suppression Rings. I forged a tool to let wolves remain human beyond a full moon. One ring alone defies natural law, Ali, and requires more magic than most witches give in a lifetime. That alone doesn’t come without sacrifice, and I created more than I could count.”

“And Dad—he…forced you to do it?”

“I’m not telling you this so you’ll hate him. I’m telling you because you need to know, and I should have done it when I had the chance.” She pulls in a breath that shouldn’t belong to someone dead, and when my gaze returns to her, my tears have blurred her into what resembles watercolors. “During the five years of my captivity, he changed. I’ve gone over it a thousand times, and I still can’t explain how it began. One day he started coming to my cell. At first, he hardly spoke to me. But something in him kept returning. And every so often, there would be a moment—a tenderness, a gesture of care—that went against everything he was. And somewhere in that slow erosion of boundaries, we fell in love.”

I press the back of my hand to my cheeks, willing the tears to stop falling.

“And then he sensed you, and it changed everything.” She continues, but her image flickers in and out like a candle struggling to stay lit. My stomach drops. There might not be enough time. “Before I even realized I was pregnant, he knew. He came to my cell one night, unlocked it, and told me to run. When I wouldn’t leave without him, he carried me out of that place, took the mirror, and never once looked back.”

“He abandoned his pack? For us?”

“He betrayed them in the worst way. For me. For you. Your father knew the price before he paid it. He knew we couldn’t outrun them forever and tried to anyway, Ali, and there is not a day I did not love him for it—there was not a single day we were given with you that I did not feel lucky.”

“Then how did we have as long as we did? If his pack was hunting you?”

“That is why we moved as often as we did. I cloaked us—every hour of every day—but his bond to his pack was something no witch can fully unmake, and my blood was not something I could change. They knew how to track me, and they were patient, and patient hunters always win eventually.”

“The car accident—”

“We felt them closing in. Your father and I had a plan, if it ever came to that. We left you with Tessa because we trusted her. She agreed to keep you on the move, and it helped that she had no connection to our world. I dropped my cloak, and the two of us meant to draw them out…but, they didn’t come alone. Someone helped them, and we were caught by surprise. I’m grateful in every moment of this afterlife that whoever it was, did not manage to find you too.”

“I need you to promise me something, Alicent. Do not let the wolves take this mirror. Not even a shard of it. Not for any bargain, and not for any love.” Her eyes sharpen. “I know it in my bones that the rings were only the beginning of what they planned to do. Your father told me the pack elders are ruthless, and they won’t stop until they get what it is they’re after.”

“Mom, I still have so many questions.” Does she know about Veilcrest? The Hollowed? Veil Calder? How does this connect to the guys? Did my dad tell her what the wolf elders want?

“There isn’t time, Ali. Promise me.”

“I promise, but—”

Her image thins. The gold in her eyes growing unfocused, the sharpness leaching out of them.

“Ali, I love you. I love you. I love—”

The glass goes dark.

I stay where I am on the cold tile, a bleeding hand, a mirror, and the sound of my mother’s voice still hanging in the air.