Vanish (Firelight #2)(10)

A quick simmer froths to life at my core. “Don’t talk to my mother that way,” I warn.

Severin looks back at me, down at me, as though I were something soiled at his feet. “Have a care, Jacinda. You are pardoned for your offenses. A fact you can thank Cassian for. I’d just as soon see you punished—” He looks at Mom again. “And you banished.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” I snap, unable to strike the proper chord of penitence with Severin.

“Jacinda,” Mom says in a low voice, grasping my arm with cool fingers.

Severin’s features harden. “Heed me well. You’re on thin ice, Jacinda. I expect perfect behavior from you from now on. . . .” His voice trails, the threat deliberate, implicit. I practically hear him say, Or else we’ll clip your wings.

I refuse to show that he affects me—that the threat works, sending a bolt of fear through me that makes my skin tighten and the heat shiver beneath my flesh, a writhing serpent seeking release.

“She won’t be any trouble,” Mom says in a voice I’ve never heard her use. She sounds almost beaten.

Severin’s mouth curls in a smug smile. “Maybe this time you’ll do a better job of keeping her in line.” With a crisp nod, he leaves, his tread a thudding retreat from our home.

A home that no longer feels like home. Just a house that is not ours anymore. Not if Severin can march inside and issue commands and threats as if it were his right to do so.

For the first time I ask myself whether this is what the pride has become—or whether it has always been this way?





Chapter 5

For a moment, we stand in silence, and then Mom settles down on my bed with a weariness that stabs at my heart. It’s been too long since she last manifested—years. She’s starting to feel her age.

She picks up the tattered bear Dad gave me on my seventh birthday from the tangle of sheets and pillows. I’d forgotten it when we left in such haste, and now I’m glad I left it. Glad that something loved and familiar is waiting for me here.

Mom plucks at one matted ear with a muted sigh. There’s such defeat in the sound. In the sudden slump to her shoulders. Is this it then? Has she given up?

At last she speaks, and her voice is as hollow and flat as her eyes. “I want you safe, Jacinda. I don’t want you hurt.”

I nod. “I know.”

“And right now I’m starting to think I might be the one causing you the most suffering.”

I shake my head fiercely, not liking this new, defeated version of my mother. She’s someone I don’t know. Don’t want to know. With everything else changing, I need her to remain constant. “No. That’s not true.”

“I’ve shoved and pushed you every which way whether you liked it or not—all with the goal of protecting you.” She shakes her head. “Maybe I’ve made everything worse. Now we’re back here.” She motions listlessly with her hand. “You’re just as much a slave to the pride. Only this time it’s worse. They’ll no longer treat you like you’re a great gift bestowed upon them. They’ll treat you like you’re some kind of malcontent.”

“Mom?” My voice quavers a bit and I swallow. “What are you saying?”

She looks up from the bear. “Don’t let them treat you like a whipped dog for the rest of your life. Follow their rules. Lay low. Get back on top. Do what you have to.”

“You actually want to stay here? You want Tamra to stay here?”

“Taking you to Chaparral . . . I was chasing a dream. Something that never existed. Not for you or even Tamra. She was destined to be a draki and I didn’t even know it.” She strangles on a laugh, presses her fingers to her lips to catch it. “And you—well, you’ve been trying to tell me all along that you can’t be anything but a draki. That you need to be here. I just didn’t want to hear it. I’m sorry, Jacinda.”

I sit down beside my mother on the bed. She might have infuriated me in the past, but I can’t stand seeing her like this. I want her back. I miss her vibrancy. Miss her. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry for being a mother who loves her daughters so completely she would sacrifice everything for them.”

I hold her hand, squeeze the cold fingers, and suddenly remember that she’s always cold here. Always shivering in the perpetual mists and winds. The same mist and wind that are home to me—that I lift my face to better feel and taste. She didn’t love it. Never had and never will. “We’ll figure out a way to live here. Happily. I’m not going to live with my head bowed and neither will you.”

She gives me a wobbly smile and reminds me gently, “Your sister’s head isn’t bowed here anymore.”

That’s true. Tamra’s on top now. And ironically, I’m not. At least not at the moment.

Mom brushes my cheek with the back of her hand. “I lived here for your father. I can do it for my girls. It’s a small price to pay.” She sucks in a breath. “I loved your dad very much. But that love was nothing like how I felt after we were bonded. Something happens, changes when you’re bonded in that circle. It’s like we became connected. . . .” Her expression grows wistful. “Some days, I couldn’t tell my emotions from his.” Her amber gaze darkens. “Even that last day . . . I felt . . . I knew something was wrong before anyone told me. And I stayed here for so long, telling myself that the nothingness I felt wasn’t him dead. That he could still be alive out there, just out of my range so I couldn’t sense him anymore.”