Page 21 of Facet

“Get answers for you. Is there a meadow or clearing close by?” Mom asked. The trepidation in her gaze didn’t sit right with me.

I nodded and motioned for her to follow me. She grabbed her big, embroidered bag and trudged after me. At the back of the property, I opened a gate, and she followed me through.

A sturdy buckskin trotted up, nickering. I smoothed a hand up the center of his face to scratch the center of his forehead. His eyelids immediately grew heavy. My mother sucked in a sharp breath behind me.

“Is that a…?” her whispered questioned faded off incomplete.

“A Tulpar?” I smirked. My mother had an uncanny affinity for animals, and I wasn’t surprised she instinctively recognized the descendant of a Pegasus for what he was—despite his current form. “This is Tarek. He belongs to Sabre.”

My mother’s shocked gaze hit me. “We have much to discuss. But first, we have a mission. Lead the way.”

Yeah right. I sure as hell wasn’t discussing Sabre’s abilities or story with my mother. It was none of her damn business.

With the tan horse on our heels, we crossed through Tarek’s pasture and through another gate on the other side. He snuffled in displeasure when we left him behind. Large oaks with their thick branches provided a dark green canopy above us, leaving it several degrees cooler than the pasture. The warm sun didn’t reach the mossy ground beneath our feet as we picked our way through the wooded area.

The trees began to thin, and we reached the small clearing. The babbling of the small creek nearby created peaceful background music when paired with wind blowing through the leaves, the croaking of frogs, and the faint buzzing of the occasional insect.

In the center of the meadow, my mother sat her bag on the ground and began pulling items out. “I need several small branches and as many smooth stones as you can find. It’s a bonus if there are some in that water source.”

As I gathered what she needed, she used a small knife and cut a two-foot square section of the grass down. Using a silver cord, she banded the long green strands with a few wildflowers and set it to the side.

I brought back what she had asked for and she nodded. “Are you going to tell me why you told me my father was dead?”

“I never said he was dead,” she mumbled as she made a circle with sections of the sticks she broke off into even pieces, alternating with the rocks I had collected. When she was done, she had a perfect pentagram.

“You also never said he was alive,” I grumbled.

She shrugged, and a nervous expression flashed across her face but was quickly gone. “That’s debatable.”

My gaze narrowed suspiciously.

When she had everything laid out, she placed the bundle of grass in the center. Then she carefully laid several crystals and stones in various places within it. To me, they had no rhyme or reason, but from experience, I knew they did to her. She sprinkled various herbs over all of it.

“Who is he?”

“Give me your hands,” she briskly demanded, not answering my question.

From the opposite side of the circle, I held them out and she gripped them firmly. The guttural words she murmured were so ancient, they weren’t found in any textbook. Supposedly, unless one had learned it from another witch, it was a lost language. Some of it, I understood, but much of it escaped me.

The wind picked up, ruffling my hair and whipping my mother’s dark strands around her head.

She released one of my hands and curled her slender fingers around the hilt of her small dagger. Then, to my surprise, she brought it across my palm.

Instinct made me try to jerk away, but my mother’s grip remained firm and unyielding. The dark crimson pooled before she tilted her hold and the blood dripped heavily on the bundle of foliage.

Then she lit it on fire and traced the shape she’d made with sticks, stones, and crystals. My eyes went wide in shock.

Blood magic. It was the strongest magic one could invoke, but it was also dangerous. The fact that she used it—myblood—without my consent, pissed me off. Then she started murmuring. With each repetition, her voice grew stronger, as did the gusts of wind.

The language she used wasn’t one that was known to me, and I knew almost all of the ancient languages. I frowned because I would’ve sworn one of the phrases she used said something about demons.

I still couldn’t believe she didn’t tell me about my father. If he was alive, how could she keep us apart and let me believe he was dead? Was he that bad, or did he even know about me?

Suddenly, despite the veritable cyclone circling us, what appeared to be the blackest smoke swirled and twisted in the space between us. Tendrils teased my cheekbones, then wrapped around my body. When I inhaled, I breathed it in. Though it exited on my exhale, the scent of spice, vanilla, and musk remained.

The whorls of smoke thickened and spread upward. As they began to dissipate, I scrambled to get up and pull my mother to safety. Stronger than she looked, my mom pulled free and slowly got to her feet as she looked up at the column of thinning black.

“Séamus,” my mom whispered and reached out a tentative hand. In the center of it all stood a man with wind-tossed, jet-black hair and gray eyes. He had a good couple of inches on me, but the cut of his jaw and his chiseled cheekbones were like looking in a mirror.

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