Her voice broke, and she subsided with a shaky sigh, turning away from me and closing her eyes. I hugged myself hard, wondering how many more people I loved were going to cry in the near future because of me. I’d been so caught up in my own pain, in the reasons for my flight from Thistle Grove, that I’d given shamefully little thought to the scars my departure must have carved into the ones I’d left behind.
My horoscope app had not seen fit to warn me of this incoming emotional reckoning—one star.
“It wasn’t your fault, Mom,” I said, low, my own voice wavering. I reached out blindly, without looking at her, fumbling for her hand. “None of it was. I’m the one who pushed you away whenever you tried to come close. And you’re right, Gareth did damage me. Maybe . . . maybe more, and worse, than I ever even gave him credit for.”
“Will you tell me now, love?” she said, so plaintively my heart quaked for her. “What happened to you back then? Why you thought you couldn’t stay?”
My insides felt like they were constricting, like a snake had snuck down my throat and coiled around my rib cage, a slow and awful suffocation. This kind of vulnerability between us felt uniquely terrifying, completely uncharted terrain. I loved both my parents, but we had never been the kind of family that delved into one another’s feelings deep enough to really hash things out. When it came right down to it, I just didn’t know how to talk to her this way.
But I did know that I wanted to try.
“Of course I will. I should have told you back then, too,” I said, stumbling my way forward like I had the first fucking idea how to do this. “Or anytime since. Not knowing how to say it to you . . . that’s a shitty reason not to give it a shot.”
“It doesn’t matter, my love,” she said. Her hand tightened on mine, and just like that, the buckling pressure in my chest began to taper, until I thought I could remember how to breathe again. “As long as you’re letting me in now.”
20
Now That’s What You Call an Apple Corps
As was traditional, the next challenge took place by twilight.
The skies above the Honeycake Orchards had gone the colors of bruised fruit; tiers of peach and apricot and indigo seamed with lines of molten gold, streaks from the slipping sun as it ducked behind Hallows Hill. I stood in the broad concourse in front of the Welcome Center barn, before it forked off into dirt roads that led toward the orchard’s attractions. The central spot where tourists would’ve flocked for doughnuts, cider, and ride tickets on a normal day.
Except that this was anything but a normal day. Talia, Rowan, and Gareth stood at attention before me in their ceremonial garb—Gareth with a suspicious glower and darting eyes, comically out of place on his cookie-cutter Abercrombie face. At my back swarmed an expectant mass of founding family members, gathered to watch. The pervasive hum of tension felt almost electric, like tangible potential hovering in the air, some creation magic with a sparking power of its own to manifest.
It felt, like I’d said to my mother just yesterday, like anything could happen.
The Grimoire pulsed once from its pedestal before me, giving me a gentle nudge. Then it cracked itself open, pages whipping back and forth before they settled, glowing words inscribing themselves on the blank parchment as if drawn by an invisible, fiery quill:
Though the blood of magic may course through your ancestral tree,
True power is not given but won—and never won for free.
When monsters made of magic threaten to take their toll,
You must shew the strength you bear, by striking swift and bold!
I thought, not for the first time, that whichever of the founders was responsible for the poetry bits of the spell hadn’t exactly been a lyrical gangster. That “shew” especially smacked of trying just a wee bit too hard; my money was therefore on Gramps Elias.
Just as my tolling words trailed off, three sinuous streaks of light ribboned from the Grimoire and wrapped themselves around the combatants like radiant ropes. In an instant, all three flickered out of sight, reappearing in the very next breath—Rowan at the entrance to the sunflower field, Talia out by the pumpkin patch, and Gareth just in front of the first row of apple trees.
As soon as they appeared, the luminous ropes unwound from them and coiled into gilded flowers, each whizzing off to the far side of its respective arena to hover in wait.
Even from half a mile away, I could see Talia grit her teeth, mouthing fuck to herself as she realized that the Grimoire had indeed thrown the dreaded wrench in our plans—they’d been assigned to parallel tracks. It would be next to impossible for Talia to duck out of her challenge, race all the way to the apple trees on the other end of the orchard, and derail Gareth in time to help Rowan secure a win.