Chapter 42

ChapterForty-Two

Thea tried her best to cheer Alistair up, but she knew it was a losing battle. He always worried for her safety, and now they were threatening more than just Thea.

So when she entered their now shared bedroom, she knew she had to come up with a plan. Something that would encourage him to see that there was a future for all of them, even if it hadn’t felt like it.

The only problem was that she was very much out of her element. Thea knew nothing about the people in Wildecliff other than those who lived in this house. And running to the market for more vegetables didn’t count as meeting people. She’d always been the shy one in her family. It didn’t matter to her if she saw a few people. She was perfectly happy with Nora, Alistair, and Browning.

Sighing, she looked over at their bed to see Alistair already laying on top of the covers. He stared up at the ceiling, as he tended to do when he was thinking, with her green ribbon tied around his thumb. He kept tying it, untying it and then rotating the threads around his fingers as he thought. No wonder it was so tattered.

Perhaps she’d let him think. Two minds, that’s what she had told him. Two minds were better than one.

But, when she walked into the bathroom, she found Browning standing in the middle of the floor with an expectant look on his face. He threw his head back and opened his mouth with a dramatic flourish.

Thea cleared her throat and blinked her confusion away. “Right. I would imagine that means you have something for me?”

He tried to nod, but that was rather difficult with his mouth open so wide.

Sighing, she reached into his mouth and pulled out a letter on green parchment paper. And a small box that didn’t look all that familiar. This must all be from her family, but she couldn’t imagine what they were sending her, considering she hadn’t written a letter in a while.

Unwrinkling the letter, she scanned her eyes over the words.

Dearest daughter,

We haven’t heard from you in a long time. I can only imagine that things have worked out for the better. If I remember Alistair correctly, even though I only met him once, that boy was more than his father ever gave him credit for.

Don’t give up on him, sweetheart. Especially not in a time when he needs you most. Your father never gave up on me, and that was the greatest gift he ever gave me.

I sent along something that might give you both a little hope. It’s a small gift, like yours, but I think you’ll enjoy it.

Marigold and Belladonna helped, of course.

Keep your chin up,

Máthair

Why did that bring tears to her eyes?

Thea sniffed back the emotion with a shake of her head. She couldn’t walk out of the bathroom all teary-eyed, or Alistair would lose his head.

Still. The fact that her family supported her even now was a wonderful touch.

As she brushed her teeth, she tilted the box back and forth. What had her mother sent? Thea had taken everything with her when she’d left. There was a lot to pack, obviously. And if Marigold and Belladonna had helped, then she could only imagine it was some kind of plant.

But what plant would they send to Wildecliff?

Her curiosity would get the better of her if she didn’t hurry. She brushed her teeth only about half the time she needed, threw her pale nightgown over her head, and padded back into the bedroom.

“My mother sent a gift,” she said, still turning the box over in her hands. “She said it was something to cheer us up.”

Maybe not quite that, but Alistair didn’t need to know her mother was pitying them and sending them a gift for hope. He still needed some of his pride, after all.

He sat up in the bed and frowned. “Your mother?”

“Mhmm.” Thea perched on the edge of the mattress and held the box out to him. “I have no idea what it is. Maybe you should open it.”

Though he frowned at the box, Alistair took it from her and lifted the top. “I don’t know why your mother would send us a gift. She should be angry at me. I stole you away from your family and moved you to Wildecliff.”

“Well, we both were unaware that it was you who hired me. You could have been anyone.” Thea waved her hand in the air. “My mother didn’t mind, anyway. There’s plenty for her to do with the grand babies and my sisters’ husbands. She’s busy all the time.”

Alistair paused in unwrapping and blinked at her. “You have nieces and nephews now?”

“I do.” She should have talked to him about her family by now, but there hadn’t been a lot of time. “Both Marigold and Belladonna are married with children. Their husbands are quite kind. Mother is still on her own, of course, but she helps out with the children while my sisters have taken over most of the food production for Waterdown.”

“Ah. And I suppose that became quite important once the food crop had been destroyed by my father.”

She bit her lip. This wasn’t the conversation she’d wanted to have over a gift. “That still isn’t your fault, Alistair.”

He reached for her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I am working on accepting that, but it’s rather hard when you know your family caused destruction and death for so many. Your family has always helped others, Thea. It will take time for me to not feel some manner of guilt. Perhaps I always will.”

And maybe that was how he had to deal with his family’s history. Feeling sorry wasn’t a bad thing, she mused. Then she nudged the gift in his hands. “Open it.”

He reached into the box and pulled out a small plant and pot wrapped up with fabric. It looked like a tiny ivy, although there were already buds on it, so Thea imagined it must bloom. A small square of paper had been tied to the tallest part of the ivy.

She reached for the note and read it out loud. “Plant me in the corner of a room and I will guard your dreams.”

What? What in the world had her sisters thought up?

“Plants don’t guard dreams,” Alistair murmured.

“Sometimes they do.” She set the paper down and reached for the plant. “Marigold can make new species, remember? This must be something she thought up and then enchanted into life. And if it looks after dreams, then obviously it should be in a bedroom.”

“Plant in the corner of a room, though?”

She’d admit that was a strange requirement. Marigold had made stranger plants, though. And if this one didn’t need natural sunlight or... dirt, then she supposed that was the way it had been designed.

Holding the tiny plant up higher, she frowned at it as she walked over to the corner of their bedroom. “I don’t know. Marigold has quite the imagination.”

Her sister could and would do anything with plants that she wanted. Thea put the ivy in the corner of the room and took a couple of steps back. She wasn’t sure how to “plant” it, considering there was no earth to move or any way for her to set it into the ground. She hoped that putting it near the wall would suffice.

Thankfully, she knew her sister well enough. The ivy shivered as though it had woken up after a very long nap. Stretching its little leaves higher, it suddenly grew at a pace that shouldn’t have been possible. It stretched up to the ceiling, over the bed, and then let some tendrils hang over their bed as little buds opened up to reveal lovely white flowers.

Tiny petals rained down on the bed, and Thea knew what that meant. Marigold had designed this flower to bloom in such a way that there was a meaning for Thea.

She picked up a single petal from the bed and popped it into her mouth.

“Thea,” Alistair said in shock. “You have no idea what that’ll do to you.”

“That’s part of the fun.”

As the petal melted on her tongue, a sense of hope and calm filled her. An inner strength surged forward within her, and she knew without a doubt that they could handle this situation. She didn’t fear. Didn’t worry. None of those emotions could stand when this calm confidence reigned throughout her body.

She gave Alistair a little smile and a nod. “It’s a good feeling.”

He heaved out a long, dramatic sigh. “I wish you wouldn’t do that so often. What if that was poisonous?”

“Plants can’t poison me.”

“You don’t know that. You haven’t eaten every kind of poison.”

Walking toward him, Thea ticked off all the poisonous plants she’d eaten on her fingers. “Poison ivy, poison oak, belladonna, oleander—“

He grabbed onto her hips and jerked her into his arms. With a little squeal, she fell on top of him on the bed as more petals rained down on top of them. “Stop talking about all the poisons you’ve willfully ingested, you mad woman. Why would you eat all of that?”

“Because I wanted to know what would happen if I did.”

“You wanted to kill yourself? Is that it?”

She burst into laughter as she stared down into his beloved face. “No, darling. I don’t ever want to die. Not while you’re still here.”

Did he think she’d leave him that easily? The man would have to pry her cold dead hands off him at this point. She’d waited far too long for him.

Alistair wrapped his arms around her waist and tucked her a little more firmly into him. “Good. I don’t think I could lose you after getting you back.”

It felt so right to lie draped over him with her head on his chest. She listened to his heartbeat as she had all those years ago in a meadow with nothing but the birds and the fae to see them. “Tell me about this gathering. Then I might have a better idea how to beat them.”

“It’s different every year. This one we’ll be going to a ceremony to see a titan arum bloom for the first time in fifty years.” He traced circles on her back. “Apparently, everyone in the Academy is quite excited about it. The flower has magical qualities, although I don’t think they approved anyone to gather components from the plant this year.”

“A corpse flower?” She’d always wanted to see one of those bloom.

“Indeed. The problem is that they still expect me to show up with some object or spell so that everyone can see the fae and the gods when they wish.”

She could see how that was the key problem. Unfortunately, so many of those people from the Academy wanted power they had not been given. Such greed would lead them down a path of destruction and ruin if they weren’t careful. “They seem to lump the fae and gods into the same group. I know you can see both, but are they really the same?”

The question felt blasphemous to even ask. Of course, the fae differed from the gods. Otherwise, shouldn’t they all worship the fae as well?

Alistair shifted uncomfortably beneath her. “In a way, they are the same. Some of the fae are less powerful, and thus they aren’t considered to be worthy of worship by many. But we worship them in our own ways. Leaving out cream or sugar for them, thanking the household spirits for their assistance. We haven’t forgotten how to worship the fae, we just do it in different ways than we do the gods.”

Thea planted her hands on his chest and sat up so she could stare down at him. “Are the gods just... faeries?”

He swallowed hard, and she already knew the answer before he said it. “You can’t go around claiming that gods are faeries. Someone will walk into this room and take your head off for that.”

No, she would not flinch at the threat. “So they are faeries, then?”

“They’re Tuatha de Danaan, and that is very diff—“ he hesitated before sighing. “It’s technically just a different faerie, but they’re more powerful than a brownie or a pooka. You can’t go around expecting gods to be treated like the fae and be accepting of that.”

“But if the gods are faeries, then they should be able to be reasoned with. Just like the fae.”

Her mind whirled with the possibilities, even though Alistair was already shaking his head.

“Oh, no,” he muttered, reaching up to frame her face with his hands. “You will not plan on asking the fae for help. We cannot get them involved.”

“Why not? This affects them too.”

“Because they tasked me to take care of them. It’s my job to prevent them from getting involved with this, not make them further invested.” He squeezed her face in his hands one more time before leaning up and kissing her. “We have to keep them safe, Thea. The people in the Academy would wring them dry of their magic. All their abilities to help us would be gone. We have to protect them at all costs.”

“I know that,” she whispered against his lips. “I know that there is nothing more important than the gods and the creatures who normal people cannot see. But I also don’t want to see you hurt because we protected them.”

“This is not an us against them situation,” he replied. “We are the ones who have to save them. And I know that frightens you. It scares me too.”

She’d been so certain that her mother’s gift would be the answer to all their problems. Sure, she didn’t feel the anxiety right now. But that didn’t mean they had figured out the situation.

All she wanted was for them to go about their normal lives. She wanted to wake up every morning without fear of threats or what some idiot would do to them. Their lives should be private and with no one else interfering with how they wanted to live.

“One day soon,” she whispered, pressing their foreheads together. “I dream we will have a regular morning routine. I’ll get up a little later than you, and you’ll have a cup of tea ready for me at the dining table. Brewed correctly and without burnt leaves.”

“And I like to imagine walking into the kitchen and listening to you reading silly stories from the newspaper.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “We’ll figure this out, Thea. I promise.”

But as she rested her head against his chest, her stomach turned with the sick feeling that they might not figure it out in time.