86. Scythe

Chapter 86

Scythe

Two Years Ago

O n the first full moon of the new year, Savage and I find my mother, sitting in human form on a rock, staring out to sea. The night is humid, the air tumbling through her waist-length silvery tresses like a mermaid from an old story. My blood lights up in recognition as I make my way across the sand, happy that the blanket I bring along every year will finally get some use.

Xander stands guard by the car, ensuring our privacy.

"Mum!" Savage cries, waving his hand over his head in greeting.

My mother turns, and what I see nearly stops my heart. Tears stream down her cheeks, her eyes dark, her cheeks sallow.

She smiles at the sight of us, a thin hand reaching out. Savage bounds up to her, dropping to his knees and nuzzling her hand like a pup.

"Darkness," she whispers, extending her other hand to me. "Such darkness approaches."

I too drop to my knees and press my face into her hand. "Mother," I sigh, throwing the blanket over her lap. Her cold touch warms me to the bone. Her words, in the rare years she does broach the sand to see us, are always unsettling. Rarely do I know what she means. They are riddles I've never been able to decipher.

"The Wild Mother has come to take me, my sons." She looks out across the dark sea. "I see her, upon the horizon, beckoning for me to join her."

Savage stills then turns his face up to look at her. My hand reaches to grip her tiny wrist. She looks at us then, one at a time.

"But there is word on the moonbeams. A whisper of an eagle with blood on his hands." She squeezes my face to urge me. "Chains that bind you are the key. A great longing you will know. Suffer the torment of the dark. Then forever freedom you shall sow."

"What do you mean?" Savage whispers

She shakes her head as if in warning.

But I know exactly what she means. Sometimes you have to go straight into danger to get what you want.

My mother disentangles herself from us and rises, treading featherlight feet across the sand. She casts a look back at us, smiling with sharp teeth. And that final image of her, truly a creature of the water, beautiful, silver, and dark-eyed will forever be burned into my eyes.

"It must be dark before the dawn. Such is the rule of the wild."

"You can't be serious," Xander scoffs, after we return to him and I relay what we must do.

"It sounds like fun," Savage says, wiggling his toes in the sand. "I've never played prisoner before. I hope Beak will tie us up!"

"But we don't even know what's in there," Xander points out. "Halfeather will charge triple for my dragon kidney, that's the only thing I know for sure."

"We won't let that happen," I say evenly. "Halfeather also has enemies. His brother, Dirk, for one, has had his eye on the estate for years. Perhaps we will make an agreement with him."

"Scythe's inklings are never wrong," Savage says firmly. "If he says we need to lock ourselves up in an enemy dungeon and stay there for an unknown period of time without food and water and face unknown peril, then we will."

Xander throws his hands up in the air, but I know he trusts me implicitly. "Fine, you nutters. Fine."

Seven weeks later, we sit in Halfeather's dungeon, injured and starved, watching an ethereal creature walk into the darkness of our lives.

The ether told my mother that the solution to all my problems lay in Halfeather's dungeon. It was the first time it was wrong. Because Aurelia Boneweaver had only made everything worse.