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“The muffins will be ready soon,” her mother said as Thicket entered the kitchen, as though the aroma wafting from the oven wasn’t a dead giveaway.

Thicket recognized the gesture for what it was.

A bribe.

Thicket took a seat at the kitchen table, knowing better than to ignore her mother’s attempts at a truce. The air around them hummed, as though one wrong move, one wrong word would make the tenuous peace implode.

“The school called,” her mother said, slicing through the tension with the force of a jackhammer.

Thicket’s insides shriveled, shoulders curling in on themselves.

“They want you to come pick up your belongings and assignments today. Why don’t you go get cleaned up so you can eat before you head out?”

Thicket’s fingers fisted in her lap, trying to block out the pain plunging into her heart. Of course her mother wouldn’t confront Thicket’s feelings. She might make her muffins and act as though everything was fine, but she would never apologize. Never acknowledge that she was in the wrong. She would sweep it all under the rug and move on with her life. It was what she did with Thicket’s father, with her dreams. People didn’t change. She didn’t know why she kept expecting them to. Expectations were just a breeding ground for disappointment.

She nodded and rose from her seat.

“Thicket.”

She paused, fingers tightening around the smooth back of the chair.

“I—” her mother broke off. “Can we talk? When I get home from work?”

Her mother hid it well, but Thicket detected a slight warble to her words. She glanced over her shoulder to see her mother’s fingers wrung nervously around one another. Was she… nervous? Her eyes shot up to her mother’s face. For the first time, Thicket noticed her mother’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot. Had she been crying?

Thicket bit down on the hope. No. Of course not. Regret was not an emotion her mother felt. Deluding herself with hope would only make her bleak reality even grimmer.

“Sure,” Thicket said.

Her mother’s shoulders slumped. Thicket’s heart sped up, but she didn’t let the action mean anything, nor did she pay attention to the way the apprehension on her mother’s face had been replaced with a smile. “I will see you tonight.”

Chapter Forty

Lavender stared at Thicket’s lifeless body, chest heaving from the strain of their battle. She stepped back on wobbly feet, a mixture of disbelief and triumph tumbling through her.

She had done it.

She had finally done it.

Lavender had never been the strongest, not when compared to the brute strength of her sister. But she had always been sharp. She made up for the gap in their strength with her determination and cleverness.

Magic was a game of balance and strategy. Expend yourself all at once and you were doomed. Don’t use enough and you could be easily overpowered. One needed knowledge of not only magic, but of their own strength, as well as their opponent’s. She had played her cards well, using Thicket’s lack of confidence and experience against her, yet she had forgotten how brutal her sister’s raw power could be. One single slip and she would have been captured. She almost had been if it hadn’t been for the guard’s arrival.

Now, exhaustion was her only enemy. She teetered on unsteady legs, her ankles nearly rolling on the chunks of debris scattered across the throne room. But Lavender fought it with the fierceness she had fought for everything in her life, refusing to show an inkling of weakness.

A clang echoed across the throne room, followed by a scream that cracked with a mixture of rage and devastation. “Thicket!” Lavender turned to find the guard staring raptly at her sister, her unruly hair sprawled out as she lay peacefully in a bed of blood. He had dropped his sword, teeth grinding together as he fought desperately against Enola’s control, but he couldn’t even move a single inch towards his princess. Not that racing to her side would even do him any good.

Thicket was well and truly gone this time. Lavender clutched her chest. Even now, with her magical energy having been almost entirely depleted, she could feel the ribbon connecting her to Thicket’s subconscious mind—and the cursed world it now inhabited.

Influencing the course of the Dream World was so much easier now that her sister was in her reach. Most curses didn’t require energy from the caster after they had enchanted the object and drew blood with it, but this curse needed constant attention and energy to keep it stable. She could feel her sister slumbering away—showing no signs of resistance.

Lavender savored the way her sister’s breaths came slow and shallow, cherished the color of her crimson blood spilling onto the disheveled ground, and reveled at the fact that this time, Thicket would never wake again.

She finally turned her attention to the guard. “Now that my dreadful little sister is finally out of the way,” she said, bringing the tip of her knife to his throat, “What shall I do with you?”

Lavender watched, amused, as her sister’s guard writhed against Enola’s hold.

“It’s useless,” she said, earning herself a glare sharper than steel. A glare that could have killed. She knew he wanted nothing more than to rip free of her grasp, retrieve his sword, and drive it straight through her heart. Unfortunately for him, Enola was the most powerful wolf in all of Vindrya. Once she had you in her snare, there was no escaping it.