Page 118 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
Astrid smacked her hands against the folds of her cape.“What’s done is done. He’s got some part of her. Now we have to get her back. Before it’s too late.”
“I don’t understand! What’s happening?”
“Her father is a Velamen,” said Cordelia.
“But—” She looked at the headstone that read,Taurus Diaz. “I thought they were gone. Didn’t you say that?”
“They’re gone from here, from this island. There are more out there. He was a fourth cousin to the last Skerry Cove Velamen, a connection so distant, I never felt it. That’s exactly the way they’d planned it. He’d played the long game, thinking he’d have time to talk Minna into joining the side of his people when she got old enough. When he fell off that fucking ladder—” Cordelia put her hand over her mouth.
Beatrice held her breath as she waited.
“When they said he might not make it, I did exactly what Mom told me not to do. He was unconscious in the hospital bed, and I’d put the sleeping Minna on his chest, to try to comfort him, to bring him back to us. I was so desperate to save him… I gave him the Knock while he was lying in that bed, pushed it into him with barely a thought. I would have done anything in that minute. When all that power flowed into him, he couldn’t hide his own, the power he’d managed to hide from me for two years. His strength shone out at me, coming through his skin with this terrible sick glow, bile green and blinding. I snatched Minna off him, and his eyes flew open—I swear to goddess that if his heart hadn’t given out at that exact moment, he would have tried to rip our baby out of my hands.” Her voice trembled, but she kept going. “I would have had to kill him with my own bare hands. But his heart stopped, probably because of the increased power. His heart monitor screamed almost as loud as I did, and nurses ran in, pushing me and the baby out of the way. They were too late.”
Beatrice tried to pull breath into her lungs. “Cordelia…”
“I didn’t stop screaming until I was sure he was all the way gone. He’s been trying to get back to her ever since. If he gets her, he’ll take all her power, killing her and destroying her soul in the process. And now, the twin energy on the island has drawn Velamens back toward us with a vengeance. They’ve been reminded of everything they lost and have double the drive to get through.”
So Beatrice had given Minna the last piece of the puzzle she needed to reach Taurus. “Does Minna know?”
“Of course not.” Ice cracked in her sister’s voice. “She still has too much to learn. We had aplan. And you—you ruined everything coming here.”
A chilled slice of wind whipped Beatrice’s hair against her cheek. “I didn’t mean to. I thought I knew what I was doing—”
“You knew fuck all.”
“But that’s not my fault.” Oh, how stupid the words sounded coming out of her mouth. “I’ve been trying to learn, trying to absorb everything you teach me, but with your secrets—I swear to you, I didn’t mean to hurt her.” Beatrice took a shaky step toward Cordelia, but her sister stumbled backward, holding up her hands.
“Don’t come anywhere near me. You—what? You simply believed I was a bad mother to Minna when she came out? YoulikedMinna looking up to you. I saw that. I wasfinewith that. She’d gotten an aunt who would love her, and my kid deserves every scrap of love she can get in the world. But you should have told me about her contacting Taurus. You did the one thing that might not only kill her, but destroy her eternal soul in the process,do you understand me?”
That was the problem. All of this was so huge, and Beatrice didn’t understand the slightest fraction of it. “What can I do?” There had to be something she could do.
“You?” Her sister glowered. “You think you can study whatwe do, that you can learn it by heart, line it up on a grid and make it nice and neat, but you could spend the rest of your life trying to understand, and you’d fail. A normal person without a magical bone in their body would have known whatnotto do.”
Cordelia straightened. She seemed to get bigger, wider, taller. Now she was the one to step forward this time, and Beatrice was the one to fall back. “If I lose her because of you, you will rue the day you came to this island.”
Sharply, Astrid said, “Cordelia. She was stupid, but not malicious. She didn’t know what she was doing. We’ll be so much stronger with her. We need her.”
Wheeling to face her, Cordelia said, “I don’t give one single goddamn fuck. We can’t trust her. I don’t want to see her again. Ever.”
The coldness of her voice chilled Beatrice to the core. “Astrid’s right. I hadnoidea what I was doing.”
Reno’s voice, though quiet, would have carried through a hurricane. “Then you never should have done anything. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Everything, apparently.
This was all her fault.
Beatrice’s heart fell to the clods of ripped-up grass at her feet, and as they turned to leave, she remained where she was. Stuck again, this time by her own stupidity.
One last try. “Please let me help find her.”
Without turning around, Cordelia said, “Goddess forbid you try.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Sometimes Spirit asks that we try again, that we try harder. Other times, we’ve fucked up so royally that we should just go to bed for a while and stay there. Ask me how I know.
—Evie Oxby, in conversation with Barbara Walters
