This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(3)

“They were instructions. Like a scavenger hunt.” I realized Mrs. Redmond really had no clue as to what I could or couldn’t do. She assumed I’d inherited my gifts from my birth mom, but she didn’t know that for sure. Walking into the Poison Garden could have killed me if I wasn’t immune, and she had treated it like it was a game. The thought made me hate her even more than I already did. I gripped my hands together in front of me until my knuckles ached. “You—I mean Mrs. Redmond—said there was a place on the grounds where I’d find the answers I was looking for. I followed her instructions and found the garden and everything hidden inside it.”

Circe sat back and ran her hand over her mouth, then crossed and uncrossed her legs. She angled her head toward the apothecary. “And did you find the answers you were looking for?”

I hesitated. What I found was a place that made me feel like I wasn’t alone—a place to stretch, a purpose for these extraordinary gifts, and a little bit of stability for my moms. But I’d also discovered a secret so profound that even the threat of its revelation had caused a living, breathing goddess to intervene.

“I found the Heart.” I took out the vial of Living Elixir and held it up to the light. The viscous red liquid stuck to the inside of the glass like honey. Both Circe’s and Persephone’s expressions twisted into masks of complete and utter shock. Marie closed her eyes and shook her head.

Circe got up and came over to the couch, where she crouched in front of me. As she eyed the glass vial, I took in all the little details about her. She looked like she was only a little older than Mo, even though the date of birth on her gravestone would make her a full decade her senior. A set of matching smile lines framed her mouth, and a few of the coils of hair escaping her head wrap were a mix of black and gray. She had the look of someone who knew what it meant to be exhausted. I gently set the elixir in her outstretched hand.

“Mrs. Redmond, Katrina Valek, whatever her name was, forced me at knife point to get the Heart.” Saying her name was like speaking a curse, like it might conjure her from the dead to hurt me and my family even more than she already had. “She cut open my hand and I bled on it. It started to beat.” I held up my bandaged hand. Blood had begun to ooze through the dressing. The physical sensation of what the Heart had done to me as Mrs. Redmond forced me to touch it with my bare hands lingered in my bones. It ached. “I brought it back here, transfigured it, and then she—she killed my mom.” The words sounded like somebody else said them. They didn’t feel real. I didn’t want them to be.

Circe looked to Mo and then back to me. “I—I am so sorry.” She wept, wrapping her arms around her waist, rocking back and forth like she was trying to soothe herself. “It leaves nothing untouched—the Heart. It affects everything and everyone it comes in contact with. It brings death but not always as a result of the poison pumping through it.” She wiped away her tears. “I can’t count the number of deaths in this twisted family tree that were a result of other people trying to get their hands on the Heart. They are relentless in their pursuit of it.”

We sat for a moment as I tried to claw my way up from a descending spiral of pain and grief. I struggled to put into words what had happened after that, but I couldn’t think straight. “Hecate was here,” was all I managed to say. I hoped it made sense to her because it still didn’t make sense to me.

Circe met my gaze, and I knew right away that while she might have been shocked, she believed me. Her wide brown eyes glinted in the dim light. She gently put her hand on my knee. “She revealed herself to you? You saw her?”

Persephone leaned against the wall like she might fall over without its support.

I nodded. “She had a giant black dog with her. She told me she was Medea’s mother, that we come from her. And she took my mom.”

Circe’s fingertips pressed into my knee. “What do you mean, she took her?”

“I asked Hecate if we could use the Living Elixir to bring my mom back, but she said that wouldn’t work. She said she would keep my mom, and if we could find a way to do the thing that has never been done—”

Circe’s lips parted just enough for her to whisper in a tone that was like the rustling of dead leaves in the wind. “She wants you to bring all the pieces of Absyrtus back together.”

She already had a deeper understanding of all the things I was just learning about, and she still said it in a way that made me feel like it was going to be impossible to do.

I leaned closer to her. “Can we do that?” A knot made its way to my throat. I didn’t know if I could handle any more disappointments. It took me a second to understand that her hesitation wasn’t because she thought it was impossible, but maybe because she was thinking of how we could do it. “It’s possible, isn’t it? Please tell me there’s something we can do.”

Circe and Persephone exchanged glances, and Circe proceeded carefully. “Absyrtus, whole, would be the master of death. It can be done, but it’s not as simple as that.”

“And it’s not without sacrifice,” Persephone interjected bluntly. “We’ve lost so much already. The Heart takes and takes, but what does it give?”

“This isn’t the time, Seph,” Circe said.

Persephone twisted one of her braids around her finger and sighed, nodding.