Page 134 of Fae Reckoning

“Daughter,” she rasped.

Awkwardly, nervously, I patted her hand. “It’s so good to see you…” What? Awake? Alive? Lucid? What should I say?

“It’s better to see you … the one I thought I’d never get to see.”

“Ye might wanna hurry, Odelia,” Edsel said, glancing from her to me. He scratched his wide nose. “She ain’t got much time, not based on how things have been.”

“You mean…” The breath left me for a moment. “You mean she’s … dying?” I licked my lips, suddenly parched.

“I’d like to,” my mother said.

I stared at her so long that the sight of her blurred and a tear tracked down my cheek. I swiped at it.

“Girly,” Edsel said gently. “She ain’t herself anymore. Not but for a rare moment here and there.”

“But she’ll get better,” I insisted.

“Not likely,” Edsel said, as my mother admitted, “Perhaps.”

She tugged me closer; her grip was so weak. “Elowyn … my darling, beautiful daughter … there is wondrous peace beyond death.”

I wanted to ask her how she could be sure.

“I long for it.”

I tasted the salt of my tears as they rolled along the seams of my lips.

“Allow me to leave.”

“No,” I whispered.

“Yes.” Her smile was resigned, accepting. “Your father awaits … in the Etherlands.” Her chest heaved with the apparent effort of conversing. “I believe us to be mates.”

She inhaled, exhaled, gathered what strength she could. “If I am right and we are, we’ll find each other again … and again … and again.”

She pulled me nearer as her strength flailed. She rasped, “I am ready to be free of the suffering … of this body.”

I already knew what my answer must be—how could I not?—but I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud.

“I’ll go without your blessing,” she said, showing a resolve I hadn’t realized she possessed, and for the first time since I’d laid eyes on her face, I saw a hint of what she might have once been like in the severe slash of her brows and lips—both now too thin. “But I’d like … I’d prefer to have it.”

Unable to speak, I found myself nodding. Edsel’s callused hand patted me on the back in slightly jarring thumps. “Ye’ll be alright, girly. I know ye will be. Ye’re real strong, just like yer mother here is.”

“I…” my mother said, trailing off.

Her eyes were rolling back, her breathing becoming even more shallow.

“Mother,” I barked and shook her hand. “Mom!”

Her eyes drifted toward mine. “Hmmm?”

I licked my lips again. “Mom,” I breathed.

Recognition flickered in her eyes like the flame of a dying candle, about to go out.

“I love you, Elowyn. I love you … so much.”

Then her eyes and face went slack, frighteningly blank.

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