Page 75 of The Witch's Spell
Because my mother and father are drifting through Faunwood, looking both lost and incredibly out of place with their fine winter cloaks and polished boots. With Mother’s bright red hair, it’s impossible to miss her.
Mother is saying something to Father, but when she looks in my direction and meets my eyes, she freezes. She jolts to a stop so quickly that my father passes her and has to double back. But then he follows her line of sight, and he, too, spots me.
What are they doing here?
My gaze slides to Aurora. She’s hunched over a bit on the bench, looking from me to them.
“Did you...?” I shake my head, slowly coming out of my stony stupor. “Did you invite them here?”
She nods slowly. “I invited them forYule. And I had every intention of telling you. I wanted it to be a bit of a surprise, but notthismuch of a surprise.”
Even Alden looks taken aback. So, I guess the others didn’t know about this either.
Except for Harrison. I’m certain he knew. He knows everything.
I gently tug my arm free of Aurora’s grasp, and as I turn to face my parents, who are now walking toward me, I hear Aurora stand behind me.
I’ve faced countless challenges in my life, have had to learn to act even in the face of almost paralyzing fear. But standing before my parents after having not seen them for almost nineteen years, I’m rendered speechless.
They stop before me, faces familiar and yet different, lined with age in a way they weren’t when I was just a young child of seven, being sent away from home to become a page and begin my journey into knighthood.
Mother’s red hair is sprinkled with glittering strands of silver, and Father has a short beard now, though I always knew him to stay clean-shaven, like I prefer.
“Rowan?” Mother says.
Immediately, her voice takes me back. I’m in the tub again, a tiny thing, with Lucy across from me. We’re splashing about, laughing at the bubbles, smiling as Mother sings us her little songs.
She used to sing every day. Her voice is woven through my childhood like thread through a tapestry; it’s integrated into everything I remember, every memory I still keep locked away in my mind.
“Mother?” I say.
And as soon as they hear my voice, they both burst into tears.
Mother throws herself against my chest, her arms wrapping about my waist. Father crushes the both of us in his hold, stealing my breath away.
I still haven’t even wrapped my mind around this. When I left home, I still had to tip my head back to look up at my parents, still didn’t understand so much of who they were and what they were going through. But now I tower over my mother, and even my father has to cast his gaze slightly up in order to meet my eyes.
It feels like a lifetime has passed, and yet I can almost be convinced no time has passed at all.
“I’m sorry, son,” Father says. “I’m so sorry.” His voice is thick with emotion, but it’s stillhisvoice, the one that lulled me into comfortable naps before the roaring hearth in his office, the one that laughed easily and often.
But I still don’t know what to say.
Part of me is still angry and hurt, and for good reason; how could they send me away at such a young age, then treat me as if I weren’t even their child? How could they abandon me like that when I needed them most?
But another part of me, the part Aurora has been nurturing, wants to forgive. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a child—Ineverwant to know what that’s like—and maybe they were as lost as I was after Lucy died. Maybe they made a bad choice and didn’t know how to fix it. And as the years turned into a decade, then almost two, the chasm that grew between us may have felt impossible to cross, like it has for me.
Leave it to Aurora Silvermoon to dance right across that chasm, to reach out a hand for me and for them and to bring us together in the middle.
Mother and Father pull away. I can tell by the way Mother’s hands fuss with her cloak that she wants to reach for me again, to hold me, but she seems uncertain. So I opt to reach for her instead, offering my hand.
And she takes it without hesitation. I remember her hands feeling so strong before, strong enough to raise me up and teach me right, but gentle enough to soothe me in times of sickness, to comfort me when I was sad.
“I... don’t know what to say,” I tell them.
“You don’t have to say anything.” Father’s voice is still scratchy, and he clears his throat. “I’ve got plenty to say for the both of us. That is, if you’d like to listen. And your mother and I would understand if you don’t.”
Mother grips my hand harder.
