Page 30 of The Witch's Spell
Except, it’s not my child.
It’s my sister, Lucy. She looks exactly the same as the last time I saw her: green eyes, pale skin flushed with pink, gaze curious and wondrous.
As the earth splits, it’s like a maw of darkness reaching up to take her from me, to pull her down into its fathomless depths. And as the ground opens up beneath her small feet and sends her plunging into the darkness below, I hear a small splash of water, then silence.
Terrible, gut-wrenching silence.
“Rowan!”
I jerk awake. My heart is racing, and my skin is covered in a clammy sweat despite the chill in the room. It’s dark, with just the low fire in the hearth to see by. And next to me, her hand on my bare arm, is Aurora.
It wasn’t real, I tell myself.Aurora is right here. She’s okay.
But part of that is a lie. Yes, Aurora is here, but Lucy isn’t. The quiet splash echoes in my memory, punctuated by the quiet afterward.
Lucy is gone. And at least part of that responsibility rests firmly on my shoulders. I won’t ever forget that.
Aurora squeezes my arm, bringing me back into my body. “Are you okay?”
Her voice is edged with sleep.
Shit. I know how tired she was.
“I’m sorry,” I say, lifting a hand to my head. “Did I wake you?”
She hums softly. “You were tossing and turning, then thrashing about. Was it a bad dream?”
I think of telling her, remembering Niamh’s words and our brief conversation at the harvest festival, but I don’t wish to burden her with such darkness. It would just fill her head with fearful thoughts, and that’s not what I want for her.
When I imagine Aurora’s dreams, I picture fields of wildflowers stretching as far as the eye can see, rivers twinkling beneath summer sunlight and fairy creatures peeking up from beneath red-topped mushrooms. In her dreams, the earth doesn’t open up to swallow everyone she holds dear.
No, this is not her responsibility. It’s mine, and I’ll handle it on my own.
“Something like that,” I say softly, patting her hand on my arm in an effort to reassure her that all is well.
Typically, Aurora would press me, asking for details, but I think she’s still half asleep. Her hand softens on my arm, and she settles back down onto her pillow with a quiet yawn.
“Okay.” Her voice is already lilting with the return of her slumber. “But if you need me, I’m right... here...”
And then she’s gone, having already drifted back off into dreamland.
But I’m still awake, lying there in the dark, watching my sister fall through the ice, then the earth, over and over again. At some point, her face changes, becomes the face of what I imagine my child might look like.
The ice splits. They fall. Silence.
It plays on repeat in my head.
And it takes a very, very long time for sleep to find me again.
Chapter 17
Alden
IT’S BEEN YEARS SINCE I saw so much snow fall over the course of one evening. Even days after the storm, we’re still buried in it, and our path into Faunwood is a mix of ice and knee-deep drifts. I keep lying awake at night, worrying what might happen if Aurora needs to get into the village for any reason. I don’t want her struggling to traipse down this icy path.
And that’s why I’m out here, shovel in hand, trying to carve a path through the snow. The sun is peeking over the trees, warming my skin. Sweat makes my tunic cling to my back as I lift another heavy shovelful of snow and fling it off the path and into the trees.
Twenty feet down, another two miles to go.
