I followed them deep into the earth. Oliver was a silent presence beside me, emanating warmth.
Then we rounded a corner, and a jolt went through me when I saw someone else standing in the path. Witch, I thought.
The power coming off her was no joke, and she wasn’t even working a spell. Instead, she held a lantern that was covered in rust and contained a real flame. Witches might have been short-lived, but their aversion to technology was as strong as an immortal’s.
The firelight flickered over one side of her face. She was young, I noted with faint surprise. She couldn’t be older than twenty. Her hair hovered just above her shoulders, and it was dyed black, which almost made it look like a cap.
I was trying to remember her name when the witch’s gaze immediately went to me, and she frowned. After a moment, her eyes widened with outrage.
“What have you done?” she hissed. The words were thick with an accent I’d never heard before.
My father looked back with a calm expression. “One of your sisters performed a binding spell on her. She’s useless to you now, Åsa.”
“She’s promised to him!” The witch—Åsa—trembled with rage now. Her hands were fists at her sides and the wind strengthened outside, howling like some sort of snow beast.
“We made no such promise,” Dad said, his voice tight. From the corner of my eye, I saw Mom move. My gaze flicked to her, noting that she’d tightened her grip on me. My younger self was wide awake and moving her legs, as if she were trying to run and hide. She could probably sense our parents’ wariness toward this person.
“Fortuna, stay still,” Mom murmured. Her fear was so potent that I could taste it on my tongue, a flavor akin to oranges. But I fought her, squirming, and eventually she lost her hold. I ran to my father and he gave me a swift embrace, then firmly moved me back toward Mom.
The witch began to chant. She pulled a knife from her coat pocket and, with a violent jerk, opened a deep gouge in her arm. Dad’s mouth was a dark, grim slash. He handed me—the other me—to my mother and walked forward.
With no warning or hesitation, he pulled a gun from his own coat pocket and shot Åsa in the face.
A gasp stuck in my throat.
The witch’s body toppled to the ground with a dull sound. It was so degrading that I spun back to my father, expecting to see that he’d rushed forward, his face twisted with horror and remorse.
But he was walking away.
Mom and the other Fortuna were leaving, too. Terror hovered in their wake like a cloud of perfume. Just as they reached the mouth of the cave, all three figures vanished. It’s the end of the memory, I thought numbly.
The numbness didn’t last. Though Mom and Dad were long dead, I still felt a pang of grief, and it felt as if I’d been left behind all over again.
The silence returned. Oliver and I hadn’t moved from our place halfway down the tunnel. I was breathing hard, as if I’d just run a marathon. I glanced at the witch again, then instantly wished I hadn’t. There was a jagged, bloody hole where her features had been.
“It’s okay, Fortuna. You’re okay. Hey, look at me.”
Warm palms pressed against my cheeks. Then Oliver’s scent arrived, bringing gold-tinged memories with it. Crushed flowers, ocean spray, golden grass bending in a warm breeze. I held onto his wrists as if he was the only thing keeping me from getting ripped away into a storm-tossed sea.
When the drowning sensation passed, I still didn’t speak. Instead, I allowed myself another minute of humanity. It was important, I’d learned, to seize those opportunities. The rare, uninterrupted moments of feeling whatever I needed to feel. Like a storm taking its course or a runaway train grinding to a slow halt. Afterward, the quiet came. And I loved the quiet.
“What was that, Ollie?” I said finally, raising my gaze to his. “Why the hell would my dad murder someone in cold blood? What did that witch mean about me being promised to someone?”
His eyebrows were drawn together, his mouth slightly pursed, and I knew it was because he saw my pain. He saw it and felt the ache as though it were his own. “I know as much as you do. But we’ll keep looking for more memories, Fortuna,” he said firmly.
I started to look at the witch’s body again, but Oliver’s hand was still on my neck. He wouldn’t let me turn my head. I didn’t fight him. I barely noticed, really. I fixed my gaze on the opposite wall and mulled over the memory. “‘She’s useless to you now.’ That’s what he said. He wanted the witch to see with her own eyes—that’s why they brought me. Killing her made the display pointless, though, didn’t it? Maybe he panicked when she started that spell. Unless…”
My mind worked. I tried to view the scene with the perspective of the Unseelie Queen. Detached. Clinical. Peering down from every angle.
“Maybe he wanted someone else to see,” I muttered, more to myself than Oliver. As soon as I heard the words out loud, I knew I was right. It was one of those truths I felt in my gut, impossible to ignore or dismiss. “Someone who was watching through her eyes.”
Oliver didn’t respond, probably because he knew me so well. I was still thinking quickly, applying this new information to the events of these past few weeks. No wonder the bond with the Unseelie Court had taken so long to settle after my coronation—I’d been protected by the spell. The binding. Once it was gone, my abilities had begun changing, as well. Along with Oliver and the dreamscape. The timing of everything made sense.
Thinking to tell Oliver, I refocused on him. I saw instantly that his attention had shifted, and I watched a frown tug at the corner of his mouth. Following his gaze, I turned around.
When I saw the witch standing there, alive and unharmed, it felt like my heart stopped.
“What have you done?” she demanded, exactly as she had before.
Dad’s voice sounded from behind, and I spun to face him, letting out a small scream. “One of your sisters performed a binding spell on her,” he said. Again, exactly as before.
That’s when I put it together—the scene was on an endless loop, replaying from start to finish. In a few seconds, Dad would lift his gun and put a bullet in the witch’s face.
“I can’t camp in here,” I blurted. Without waiting for Oliver’s response, I hurried back to the place we’d left all our belongings and started taking down the tent.
He didn’t try to coax me back inside or change my mind. Instead, Oliver kicked dirt over the fire we’d abandoned when the memory had started. “Do you want to go down the tunnel? Maybe it’ll lead us to the other side of the pass, and we can avoid the giants altogether,” he suggested.
Going down the tunnel would mean seeing that horrible scene again. But the other way would get us killed. Even though Oliver had posed it as a question, there really wasn’t much choice. “Let’s go,” I said.
He nodded, and we finished breaking camp down. Wearing my backpack once again, I swallowed a weary sigh, turning toward that yawning darkness. There was a click, and suddenly the tunnel brightened—Oliver had turned on a flashlight. But the small glow did nothing to alleviate my panicked heart.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friend,” I muttered. I took a breath and followed him into the depths of my messed up mind. The passage from the poem resounded through me like a benediction.