Page 57 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams
We’re just an afternoon’s travel from Starfall when I sense Etusca watching me again. She’s left me alone since our first meeting at the Miravow’s edge, but now I sense that she’s looking for the right moment to approach. I steel myself, bracing for whatever she’ll say—still not sure how I’ll respond.
“I have a question,” she says, her expression determined as she pulls her horse up beside mine.
“Can’t you ask one of the others?” I blurt out, a little panicked. But I wince internally afterward. I didn’t mean for my tone to sound so harsh. It’s difficult, staying calm and indifferent, when there’s so much hurt between us.
“No,” she says. “And I already tried to answer it for myself. In fact, I’ve been racking my brains, trying to work it out.”
Her words catch me off guard enough that I turn to look at her.
“You’re a reasonable person,” she says. “And I know I raised you to be fair, so I can’t for the life of me understand why the prince gets your forgiveness, but I don’t.”
I gape at her. The begging and meekness she displayed back in Filusia are long gone. There’s a resolve in her face now, her chin lifted in challenge.
“That’s different,” I say, instantly defensive.
“Itisdifferent,” she agrees. “For one, you’ve known me much longer than you have him. Even if you can’t ever forgive me for lying to you, you know I care about you, and you have at least some reason to believe I truly thought what I did was for the best. But he lied to you too.” She nods at Leon, riding a few horses ahead of us. “Hebetrayed your trust too. And yet I’ve seen how you are with him. There’s no ill feeling between you now.”
“His betrayal wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for you,” I point out, even if I know it’s beside the point.
Etusca looks regretful, but she doesn’t back down. “I believed him when he sent me a message saying he wanted to keep you safe, and I thought that with the Temple aware of your celestial powers, Filusia would be the safest place for you. It looks like you eventually came around to that idea too,” she says, and something in me rebels at the knowing look in her eyes.
“I gained a lot from my time in Filusia,” I admit. “But none of that changes that going there should have been my decision. You and Leon both went behind my back and took my choices away. But the difference between the two of you is that while Leon might’ve lied to me, he never pretended to be anything other than what he was. I knew all along that he was dangerous, and that he’d do anything to get what he wanted. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d play dirty to protect the people he loved. Butyou?—”
I swallow, a sudden wave of emotion swelling in my chest.
“You were supposed to be someone I could trust. You nurtured me. Brought me up. You were the closest thing to a mother I ever had.”
Etusca is silent as the words spill out of me, but her eyes shine with tears.
“Your motives might have been purer than his, but you can’t excuse yourself by saying it’s alright that you deceived me and betrayed me because you wanted to keep me safe. Not when we both know how badly you failed at that. If you’d been more present, more awake to what was going on, you would’ve seen how being locked away in that manor was destroying me. You would’ve known how much danger I was in from the guards.”
“And I’ll never forgive myself for not realizing that, Morgana,” Etusca says, a tremor in her voice as she holds back her tears. “I should have been stronger, no matter how many years I’d been away from the Miravow. I should have done more to protect you, to shield you from all that ugliness.”
“Youshouldhave helped me be strong enough to face it. Instead, you locked away my power and let me think I was weak. Sickly. Unable to protect myself. That’s the difference between Leon and you. Leon’s never been afraid to help me find my power. He lied to me, but when you two made the pact to take me to Filusia, you were just focused on keeping me safe and hiding me away. He took me to the Lyceum so I could learn how to use my magic and become stronger.”
I look ahead at the broad frame of the man I love riding through the trees. I think about the way he opened up to me at the Lyceum, slowly sharing his secrets. About how he swore to help me kill my aunt, even before we knew whether I could heal his brother. Even when his grandfather forbade it.
“And since then, he’s never gone back on one of his promises to me, no matter what it might cost him,” I finish.
When I look into Etusca’s eyes, I wonder if she’ll ever be able to see me as anything other than the fragile, lonely child I once was. There was nothing about that girl that seemed suited to be a queen, but when Leon looks at me, all the wildest possibilities feel within reach for me.
Etusca sighs and lightly dabs at her eyes with her sleeve, looking off into the distance of the forest. “I think in the beginning I really did want you to be strong—within certain limitations, of course. I didn’t see why you couldn’t grow up to be a happy, healthy woman, if we just kept an eye on your magic. I suppose I didn’t really consider how it would affect you to grow up believing you had no magic at all.”
“Or how it would feel to grow up cut off from the rest of the world?” I add pointedly. “No family, barely any companionship—always isolated and alone? Did that seem like a recipe for a happy, healthy life, with or without sadistic guards?”
Etusca’s lips tremble. “No,” she admits. “It doesn’t. I hated to see your unhappiness. But whenever I heard from your parents, they always remained firm in their belief that it was the only way. I thought that maybe, with time, I could change their minds, or that they planned to find a way to let you be free eventually, but as the years went by, my body started to fail me.” She stops abruptly, her expression distant with the memory.
“What’s it like?” I ask, wanting to understand. “How does it feel, being a dryad and being separated from this place?”
She thinks. “It’s hard to say. Honestly, that feeling is so far away now I’m here again. But I know my brain was in a constant fog, like I was looking at everything underwater. And the pain…my very bones ached. Every day, it felt as if a fresh splinter had worked its way into my heart.”
She shudders, her green complexion a little paler as she recalls it. “It was certainly bad enough to make me blind to the danger you were in. Even though you were the person I cared about most in the world, my dear, I found it impossible to focus on anything except keeping your existence and your magic a secret—that was all I could manage.”
When I think back to those days and the faded, ghostly person Etusca was by the end, the contrast with her now is startling. I’d found it painful too, knowing she couldn’t leave the manor because of me. Can I really blame her for not having the strength to fight for my sake? Even when Leon kidnapped me from the palace, she didn’t go home. Her worry for me was so strong that she waited in Trova until we were reunited. Even though every day she stayed away from Agathyre must’ve cost her.
I’ll never agree with what she did to me—but at the same time, I’ve never doubted that she loves me. During all those years spent lying to me, Etusca was in a cage too. Now we’re both free, hasn’t she been punished enough?
“I’m glad you came back to Agathyre when I told you to,” I say. Etusca’s face is anxious, clearly wondering where I’m going with this. “It means you could find yourself again. I can’t forgive the woman who let me down at Gallawing, because she’s not here anymore. The girl who was her charge doesn’t really exist anymore either. Maybe both of us can start fresh.”
