Though the threat of the minotaurs had passed, Oliver stayed where he was, his forearm resting on one propped knee. There was blood sprayed across his throat and chin, and he still held his knife. With the moon rising behind him, the pale light bouncing off ice and water, the moment felt like a dream of a dream.
Feeling my gaze, Oliver twisted slightly. “Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes scanning me.
“I could ask you the same thing. Also, who are you?” I joked.
It didn’t sound like a joke, though, and Oliver knew me too well. “I’m finally figuring that out,” he said.
His tone, along with the way he was looking at me, made my smile fade. I looked back at Oliver, noting the changes in him for the hundredth time since we’d been reunited. The faint bridge of freckles was the same, the blueness of his eyes, too, but there was a hardness to his features that—
Something strange appeared in my peripheral vision, a splash of color that didn’t belong. Expecting to see another terrifying creature trying to kill us, I jerked my head up. In the same breath, I reached into my pocket for the gun. But then I faltered, and I stared at the scene with a puzzled frown.
It was a… door. It stood near the shore, with no walls on either side or anything else to hold it upright. As if the door had come out of the ground, fully formed, a piece of wood that had been painted red.
And my parents were walking toward it.
A memory, I thought with a dim sense of shock, jumping to my feet. I was looking at a memory. But my parents looked so solid. So real. If I were to wrap my arms around them, would I feel it? Would I relive the scents that had once clung to their skin, their clothes?
The younger version of me was there, too. She walked next to Dad, on his left. It must’ve been warm, wherever they were, because the other Fortuna wore a pretty white sundress, the cotton dotted with blue flowers. Her small features were curious and alert. She didn’t matter, though, not compared to the people she walked alongside. I gave my father a wistful, yearning glance before I turned my complete focus on Christine Sworn. I drank her in like a person dying of thirst.
My mother had been tall for a woman—nearly six feet. But she didn’t try to make herself appear smaller, or anything less than what she was. Her chestnut hair, my hair, was secured at the back of her head with a clip. She wore a dress with a buckle cinched around her generous waist, and stylish black boots on her feet. She knocked on the red door firmly, her head held high, eyes clear.
The sound of that knock jarred me from the spell I’d been under. My breathing lurched. Frantic, I searched for a way to stop the ferry. But, as I’d noticed when we first climbed on, there was nothing but the smooth wooden bottom and the bowed walls. Jumping out wasn’t an option—the minotaurs were still following on that side of the river. We could swim to the other side, but then we’d lose the advantage of the ferry. The river was so wide that I probably wouldn’t be able to make out a word they said, anyway. Standing there, I felt my stomach drop as I came to the inevitable conclusion.
We had to stay on board, and I’d only get one chance to watch this memory play out.
Oliver moved to stand next to me. He didn’t make a sound, as if he’d figured it out, too. The ferry drew close enough to the door that I could see the knob now, glinting gold in the moonlight. The red door opened, and a dark-haired woman stepped into view. A man appeared beside her. Dad greeted them, and I stopped breathing, unwilling to let it threaten my ability to hear. My parents’ voices floated across the water, and it felt like my heart was in my throat.
“…has to be a way to stop it,” Matthew Sworn was saying, his voice tinged with a desperation I’d never heard from him before. “Here you are, standing in front of us. Please, Tamar. We need your help.”
The woman had started shaking her head before he finished speaking. “No, the price is too high. You don’t know what you’re asking. I won’t deny that there is a way, but it requires pain. The sort of pain that can never be forgotten. Worse than childbirth, or amputation, or burns. He can attest to it better than anyone.”
“Her power grows by the day,” my mother put in. Hearing her familiar, husky voice after so many years was such a distraction that I almost missed it when she added, “We wouldn’t have come if there were any other way. But… this is life or death, Tamar. No price is too high.”
Silence swelled between the adults. Slowly, the woman’s dark eyes dropped to me. The other me, who stood in front of my father. His hands rested on her skinny shoulders, and our parents must not have explained anything to her, because younger Fortuna’s eyebrows were knitted with confusion. The fact that she didn’t ask any questions was a testament to the tension in the air.
“How old is she?” Tamar asked finally, her voice soft.
Dad’s fingers curled around young Fortuna’s shoulders. It was a reflexive, protective gesture. “Seven.”
The woman stared at me for several more seconds, as if she could learn who I was just by peering into my eyes. The man at her side didn’t say a word through any of this, and I was about to examine him more closely when Tamar spoke again. Her voice was heavy with resignation as she said, “I may know a coven that will help you. I can give you a phone number. They don’t deal in texts or calls—you’ll have to leave a voicemail. Don’t give your name, and don’t ask for theirs. Ever. Speaking a name out loud gives it power, and we don’t need to make it easier for him.”
Easier for him? I echoed silently, frowning. What did she mean? What did any of this mean? Was Tamar a witch? My parents were thanking her, relief shining from their faces. I rushed to the other end of the ferry, never taking my eyes off their distant figures. I was desperate for answers. But we were too far away now, and I couldn’t hear anything beyond the whistling wind.
Even though they hadn’t been real, it felt like I was losing my parents all over again. I stared toward that red door, holding the railing in a painfully tight grip, and Oliver filled the space beside me. I didn’t acknowledge him. An ache started in the center of my chest and spread outward. I’d forgotten, I thought, how beautiful my mother was.
Blinking the pain back, I looked down. My gaze flicked to Oliver’s hand, where I’d seen blood earlier. The water had washed it away, leaving the skin smooth and clean. His wound couldn’t be too deep, then, if it had already stopped bleeding. I took a shuddering breath and peered up at his face, thinking to ask Oliver for his perspective on the memory we’d just witnessed. But his attention was fixed farther downshore, a line deepening between his thick brows. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, the minotaurs had come to a complete stop. The storm was thickening again, and the sight they made through the snow was eerie and unnerving, somehow. Maybe it was their utter stillness, or how their expressions had gone blank, as if the absence of a quarry had switched something off inside them. I frowned at the minotaurs for another moment, now tiny figures in the distance. Then, slowly, my hands fell away from the railing. I let out a long sigh, and some of the tension left my shoulders. God, it had been a long day. A frustrating day.
“This seems like as good a place as any to get some sleep,” Oliver said, probably because he’d heard my sigh. “We’re not going to see anything else until this snow clears and we have a little light.”