Chapter 16

Chapter

Sixteen

SORSCHA

" I wish Aggie were here."

Three of the four Sisters sat huddled on Asa's bed in Araignée. Seleste reached out and squeezed Sorscha's arm while Winnie smoothed her hair where her head lay against Winnie's shoulder.

"So do I," Seleste murmured.

Winnie had summoned Seleste the moment she'd awoken from her bizarre run-in with Chresedia, and they'd translated to meet Sorscha in Araignée.

The Druid troupe—along with Sorscha and Asa—was due to meet at the fair in a fortnight to perform and await Aggie's arrival, but Winnie hadn't been able to wait that long to see her Sisters. Not after what she'd seen of their mother, or what Laurent had learned.

"I feel like an arse."

"Hush," Winnie censured Sorscha gently. "There is no way you could have known all that our mother did, or endured. All four of us had our misgivings and mistrust concerning our mother."

Until now, Sorscha thought .

"Everyone tried to tell me. Convince me of her love." Sorscha sniffled, running a wrist under her nose. "Gods, I've spent three hundred years hating her."

It made her feel like a coward, but she was eternally grateful Winnie had only told them of the memory Chresedia gave her, rather than showing it to them. Now, it was Winnie's to carry all on her own. She squeezed Sister Winter into an awkward tangle of a hug, still snuggled on her shoulder.

"Sorscha." Seleste peeked over Winnie from her other side. "Mother knew what she was doing. She knew we might hate her, and she made her choices, anyway."

"If she hadn't done what she did," Winnie said, her voice far off, wistful and reflective, "we may never have kept Chresedia back this long, even if it was by sheer ignorance."

"Still," Sorscha sniffed, "Aggie should know."

Winnie looked down at Sorscha, her eyes full of so many things. Loss, sadness, hope. "I have a feeling Aggie already knows, deep down. And what she is facing right now in Achlys…"

Her words trailed off, but they all knew what she meant. Aggie and Grimm were facing unimaginable horrors and loss. Lifetime after lifetime of it.

"You know what makes me horribly angry?" Sorscha said after a few moments of silence.

"Hm?" Seleste hummed into the quiet.

"I have a few good memories with her."

"Who?" Winnie looked down at her, confused .

"Chresedia." Sorcha sat up, reclining against the headboard. "Sybil, as it were."

Winnie sagged, and Seleste looked away.

"I do as well," Winnie finally said quietly as Seleste nodded her agreement.

In those years before Aggie replaced Sybil as Sister Autumn, the three of them had enacted their Orders alongside her. Alongside the monster bent on destroying everything. In those years, she had been strict, crass, and sometimes even cruel, but Sybil had also held Sorscha's hand one Solstice when she missed Aggie. She'd once brought her a rare flower seed from the location of one of her Orders. She'd even given her a necklace because it reminded her of Sorscha.

Knowing all that she did now, Sorscha recognised those moments as the last vestiges of Athania, the Goddess of War, who had lived alongside Aggie and Grimm.

It made it all so much worse.

"She was atrocious to Aggie." Sorscha twisted a lock of her hair around her finger. "I hated her for it."

"I used to dream of gutting her," Winnie admitted darkly. "Of slitting her open from crown to arse and getting Aggie out of there."

Seleste began to cry softly. They'd all at least considered it at one point in time or another.

"But if I had—" Sister Winter went on, "Well, I suppose I couldn't have, even if I'd tried." The last three hundred years were evident in the set of Winnie's shoulders, and she shook her head. "What Chresedia said to Mother in that memory… What she said to Laurent. I haven't made sense of it all yet, but?—"

"I have," Seleste broke in .

Sorscha snorted. "Of course you have, Sister."

AGATHA

"You need to eat."

Agatha nearly snarled at Nyxia. "Food is the last thing on my mind." Her attention drifted to Grimm where he sat staring into the dark depths of his porcelain coffee cup. "We need to get to the Meadow. Look at him."

Nyxia nodded, letting out a rattling breath. "Yes. Right. Let us go, then." She rose elegantly, moving toward the door of her breakfast room.

Agatha pushed back her chair, trying to rouse Grimm from his stupor. It took three attempts to gain his attention, but he finally stood with leaden legs and shuffled after her out into the corridor.

Nyxia flicked her wrist, a glittering black portal appearing in the wall. She nodded resolutely and led them through to the Netherrealm. Just as the ghouls flowed like plumes of smoke to greet Agatha and Grimm, Lady Death's birds rushed her, pulling playfully at her hair. The sight sent a pang through Agatha, recalling how they had pulled at Winnie the night of her wedding to Grimm when she'd come to visit her through the Netherrealm—a dangerous spell for a mortal witch to cast.

Gods, she missed her Sisters dearly. What had they endured since she'd been gone?

"There are many ways for us to get to the Meadow," Lady Death explained over her shoulder as they walked through the smog, her birds tittering. "However, there is someone Jasper has requested we bring with us."

Grimm ambled along, a layer of fear coating him as the ghouls gathered around.

"Jasper?" Agatha asked, just as the answer flooded her memory. "Lord Mischief."

"That is correct." Nyxia smiled reassuringly. "And do you have any recollection of Smithwick?"

Agatha chewed on her bottom lip. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, the name was familiar, but she couldn't grasp it.

"Smithwick?" Grimm perked up, finally tuning into their conversation. "Where is that little fiend?" He looked around them, brows dipping into confusion again when only night and glowing soul lights surrounded him.

Nyxia rested a gentle hand on his arm. "We will be making a short stop to retrieve our little friend."

With a wink at Agatha, she raised her hand to another portal set in the wall of shadow. It was much like the one into Achlys, yet it was a shade of blue she'd never seen before—one which there were no words in her language to describe.

"Tell me if you recall this place, Asteria."

Embracing her life— lives , she supposed—as Asteria, she followed Nyxia where she'd disappeared through the gleaming portal, pulling Grimm along. Half a breath before they made it through, Agatha would have sworn they'd been under the sea, a magnificent frozen moment in time where marine life she'd never born witness to had swam about them in clusters of shimmering colour.

She was just registering the magic of it all when her boots hit sand. A glittering, emerald sea stretched out before them, surrounded on three sides by colourful buildings bustling with people.

Oh, Seleste needed to see this…

"And now we wait."

Agatha tore her eyes from the sea, transfixed by the juxtaposition of Lady Death standing on a beach. The sight cracked something in her, something that had barely been tethered together, and she doubled over, laughing. Is this what she looked like standing on Seleste's isle?

"What, pray tell," a voice came from nowhere, "are we laughing at?"

Agatha's laughter stopped abruptly as she found the source of the voice. A little creature sat atop Nyxia's shoulder. He stood less than a hand tall and bore the resemblance of a tiny man mixed with the likeness of a hedgehog. His nose and mouth came to a jaunty point, twitching as he sniffed the air. His eyes were black and beady, very much like an animal, and his hair was a wild mess of brown and white quills sticking up all over his head. He was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only ripped trousers and the smallest of leather suspenders.

"Smithwick!" Grimm darted forward almost like a child, and the little creature's head cocked to one side in surprise and alarm.

"Do I know you?" But then he gasped. "Maker be! Thanasim ? Is that you?"

"It is, indeed," Nyxia answered.

"Has he gone quite mad?" Smithwick sniffed, nimbly climbing down from Nyxia's shoulder, across her bodice, and up onto the far shoulder to avoid Grimm's grabby hands.

"That is one way to put it. Precisely why we need to hurry to the Meadow. However, our dear Jasper has requested your presence."

"Intrigue," Smithwick said, but his beady eyes were narrowed on Agatha. "You look just like Belfry. You must be Asteria," he whispered, his voice wistful. "Our Dark Star."

Agatha's lips parted. "What did you just say?"

But before anyone could answer her, Grimm started stomping off through the sand. "Is there a ship for us? I'll need to speak with King Darius immediately. Athania is at it again. I know she's made it back here, I just don't know how ."

Agatha's heart plummeted. How long did he have before he was completely gone to madness? A sharp pain began at the base of her skull, shooting up and over her head, landing behind her eyes just as a memory unfolded there. A king and queen and their children—twins—playing on the beach with Talan and Hissa.

"Darling," Nyxia called after Grimm, pulling Agatha back to the present. "I am not chasing you in sand . Come back. Athania is not here. She has not been in a very long time."

"Are you going to tell him, or am I?" Smithwick asked Nyxia, half under his breath.

"Someone better explain what the fuck is going on, or I am going to scream," Agatha snapped.

Smithwick baulked. "Maker, but you have a filthy mouth." He tisked. "Always did, I'm afraid. Very frowned upon around here."

"Pardon me, eh… What are you?"

He rolled his little animal eyes. "Precisely what your friend said to me when she first arrived in Aureland, too. No wonder the two of you got on so well." He shook his head in a disapproving fashion that reminded her of Tindle. "Either way, it is a very rude thing to ask someone."

Agatha crossed her arms. "That doesn't answer my question." She looked to Nyxia. "This is Aureland? Why are we here? And who in Hades is King Darius?"

Nyxia risked a sympathetic glance at Grimm, who was listening intently but dazed. "King Darius ruled Aureland after the death of his mother. He also happened to marry Luvenia of Orford—your friend Smithwick was referring to—some time after Athania was taken from the very same place. Athania lived in the Castle of Alban in Orford when her husband, Igor, was alive."

"Orford," Agatha clarified, "where Athania left the goddess quill the first time?" Wasn't that how she remembered it? She massaged her temples.

"From what the two of you have gathered in your memories, I believe that is correct. I do not know anything else that happened here, but"—she looked at Smithwick on her shoulder as best she could from that angle—"I take it you do, and that is why our Lord Mischief has requested your presence in the Meadow."

"I would wager that is true." He addressed Agatha, "You don't have your memories of Aureland? Is that what I'm gathering?"

"No, not really." Agatha looked to Grimm then back to Smithwick. "I have snippets, but nothing about Athania here."

Smithwick frowned. At least, that was the only description she had for the way his animal-like face moved. "It's truly terrible, how your dearest friend could turn on you in such a way. "

Agatha closed her eyes as memories flitted past, nothing strong enough to grasp onto.

Playing tricks on Thanasim, then the two goddesses laughing until they cried. Giggling madly over a love letter a mortal man wrote to Athania. Athania holding Asteria as she wept, rocking her back and forth when she miscarried a babe between Hissa and Monarch. Crying tears of joy together when Monarch kicked for the first time. Eating a meal together, Athania laughing with the young witchlings…

And then it came like a torrent.

Athania blaming Asteria for her pain. For the death of her mortal husband.

Agatha hit her knees in the sand. "It's too much," she gasped through building sobs. "It hurts too much." Clutching at her broken heart, Nyxia and Grimm dropped to either side of her.

"You're sullying your dress," Agatha whispered to Nyxia through her tears.

"Oh, pish posh," Lady Death said, wrapping her arms around Agatha. "I do not care."

A minuscule hand came forward, touching Agatha's cheek as Grimm brushed her hair back from her face, still confused. "I'm sorry it ever happened, Asteria," Smithwick said. "Remember who you are. Remember how you have come this far."

Breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth, Agatha let the little creature's words ground her. She nodded once, then let Lady Death help her up. Muttering something about sand getting in the girls' beds , Grimm swiped at her skirts, trying to dust her off. She and Nyxia exchanged worried glances .

"He will not last much longer," Nyxia said. "We must hurry."

The next moment, Agatha opened her eyes to the Meadow. A sprawling land of grass and wildflowers, bathhouses and temples, all columns and open arches. The place within The Void where the gods and goddesses convened. A place only for them.

One particular pavilion rose in the centre, right in front of them. It was surrounded by lush grass and a meadow of flowers. The place that gave the land its name.

It was just as she remembered it when Grimm took her there to remind her of who she was. Who they were.

Except, this time, the remaining others of the Thirteen were not going about their business in the pavilion. They were seated around a long table together, regarding their missing two.

Lord and Lady Magie de la Nuit.