Page 114 of Untraced Magic
I wouldn’t let her see my fear and stood tall, straightening my shoulders, chin raised.
“What do you want from me?” I demanded.
She surveyed her nails, flicking between each one. “That’s not the way to address your mother, dear.”
My what?No fucking way.
Only then did her resemblance to the image I looked at in the mirror become clear.
It couldn’t be.Helena.
“You will never be my mother. Arealmother wouldn’t do this to her own child,” I seethed, wrestling against Wesley again.
She let out a frivolous laugh. “Wesley mentioned you were a feisty one.”
I ignored the comment.
“Morgan, my darling, you were taken from me so many years ago, and I believe you and I are one in the same.”
“Like hell we are!” I exclaimed.
To think after all these years, I’d longed to know who my mother was, had imagined one day we would be reunited in a story I would one day tell my children.
What a joke. I’d wasted pockets of my time, not to mention sleep on something that was clearly never going to happen. Until I moved to Cutters Cove, love had abandoned me, my birth parents having been nonexistent and my adoptive ones now dead.
I thought of Tyler and the connection we shared. How much I loved him. In that moment, I swore nothing would tear us apart.Nothing.
Helena continued, her head tilting to the side, “Morgan, you possess magic that can do great things.Wecould do great things… if you would let me guide you.”
Rage consumed every part of me. Scarred my heart. Buried itself in my bones.
I remembered what the stranger in the cells had told me. His words of warning.
‘You must have something she wants.’
Her eyes pierced mine. Like calls to like. Was that how the saying went? Well, I would prove whoever made up the stupid saying wrong.
If she was darkness, then I was the light. I was everything she was not.
I steadied my voice. “I would never hurt anyone or use my magic for anything other than good.”
Helena’s hands white-knuckled the throne-like thing she sat on.
“With all due respect, Morgan, you haven’t truly become one with your magic.”
I wrestled against Wesley’s hold again, spitting my words at her. “I have the rest of my life to learn, and it won’t be with your help.”
“Very well then.” She nodded to Wesley over my shoulder. “You know what to do.”
Horror tore through my veins, filling my insides with dread. I glanced back at Wesley, where his lips pressed grimly into a thin line.
I forced myself to look back to Helena as she rose to her feet, each footstep toward me its own countdown to whatever came next. Her demeanor changed. Eyes disgusted and uninterested, she looked at me as if Iwas nothing but an inconvenience in whatever her sick and twisted plan was.
She glared at me menacingly, folding her hands in front of herself. “If you won’t use your magic the way it’s meant to be used, then it is to be mine.”
I lowered my voice, spite filling my tone. “I would rather die than let you have my magic, you sick bitch.”
Helena dismissed the comment, her wrist flicking through the air again.
