Page 18 of House of Embers
“Let’s not talk sexy strategy. Leave that to our king and queen,” Clover teased. “It’s been a long day. To bed with you lot.”
Hadrian pulled them both toward the large bed at the center of their new chambers. It was a serious upgrade from the space they’d been holed up with the RFA—Rights For All—organization back in Kinkadia. They’d been working on replicating her father’s amulet, hoping to find out how it produced magic. Even though Clover told them over and over again that her father hadn’t gotten it to work.
It was why he was dead after all.
The Red Masks had discovered what he was doing and killed both her parents for it. They would have killed Clover too, but her mother had stashed her away with the Laments church. She’d hidden in the catacombs among the bones as the church had been burned to the ground. She’d crawled out after and run straight to Dozan Rook. He had the loch and the new identity that she needed to survive. He’d given her a place at his Dragons Up card tables, where she had earned her keep and found herself all over again.
“I need a cigarette first,” Clover said. “Get in bed, and I’ll just be a minute.”
Darby and Hadrian slid under the covers on either side of the bed, leaving the middle for her. The space that she was always meant to occupy.
She lit her loch cigarette with shaking hands. Her stash had dwindled significantly, and looking at it made her heart ache. She didn’tknow what she would do if they didn’t find an alternative. Amond had said there was nothing more that he could do for her illness. He’d tried to cure her over the years, but what she had didn’t have a cure. Not even from a fancy healer. There was only managing the symptoms, and she couldn’t be under his blue healing light day and night.
The loch gradually settled her nerves as she inhaled the white smoke.
“Sing for us,” Darby pleaded somewhere between being awake and asleep.
Clover sighed. She didn’t sing much anymore. That had been stolen with her parents’ deaths as well. But for her loves…
She took another long pull on her cigarette before stubbing it out against their tiny balcony that they’d been afforded because of her smoking habit. She ran her finger over her father’s amulet as she began the lullaby that her mother had always used to sing her to sleep.
Sleep, my little darling.
May dreams soothe and obey.
Turn the charm one, two, three times.
Don’t leave. I want you to stay.
Clover followed the words of the song, turning the amulet when the song said.
Sleep, my little angel.
Open the heart, and I’ll appear.
Speak my name one, two, three times.
No fear. I’ll always be near.
She tilted her head. Speak the name three times.
“Clover. Clover. Clover,” she whispered into the stillness.
Her amulet lit up in her hands. Her eyes widened in shock as the thing split in half, a little heart opening at the middle.
“Oh my gods,” she gasped.
Hadrian and Darby sat up in bed. They exclaimed at the amulet, which had sat dormant for weeks, despite trying everything, but her parents had left her the clues for it all along.
“How?” Hadrian asked as he scrambled to her side.
“Clover, you did it,” Darby said.
The amulet was hers now, but what could it do?
She thought about how Kerrigan always said magic felt like a well within her and she needed to draw it out and shape it. Well, the magic wasn’t in Clover. It was in the ancient Fae tendrille amulet that had been crafted for her. She reached and for the first time felt the threads of magic at her fingertips.
Fire appeared in her hand.
