“If who find out, Mother?”
She didn’t answer me.
I narrowed my eyes and grabbed her arm. “Who!”
Her eyes widened, like she did not recognize me.
I squeezed. “Tell me! Please. If you want me to save my sisters, you need to tell me everything. I cannot save them from a ghost. I cannot prepare myself if I don’t understand what it is, we’re to face.”
For a long moment, I thought she wouldn’t tell me. I thought she would die with her secret still hers. But she blinked once, then twice. I didn’t think she would open her eyes after the second time.
But she did.
They locked on mine. Her mouth curved down, eyes narrowed. She was angry at me for pushing her. I did not care. I needed to know.
“The Council... they arranged his marriage.” Her voice sounded raw. Each breath was a wheeze. “They...”
She was disappearing, like an ethereal ghost before me. The ground beneath our feet began to shake like an earthquake was ripping through the land.
My sisters shrieked and clung to the bed. I tightened every muscle in my body.
Oh, god. We were going to die
This is so unfair.
I ripped my concentration away from my mother and focused on fixing this. I sucked in another deep breath and closed my eyes. I needed to concentrate. It was difficult to do so, what with the ground shaking and Mother dying, secrets floating between us like ghosts.
I gathered my magic and released a breath. I opened my eyes, murmuring a protective spell I’d learnt many years ago from my mother. It was simple. I’d mastered it quite quickly, though not quickly enough for my mother’s taste.
I pushed my hands out, throwing my magic out and around the bed, protecting my sisters and myself as well as my mother from the crumbling house, as they cried out in terror.
“Mother!” I glared down at her. I would grab her arm again if I could, but I needed to hold my magic up. I needed her to listen. I needed her to get out of her head and give me what little of herself she had left. “If you want me to protect Bella and Courtney, you need to tell me! Who do we need to avoid and why?”
She met my gaze as her eyes glossed over, losing all color and becoming a milky white void. “The council... the assassins. They’ll kill you if they find out who you are...”
She was speaking nonsense. I wanted to shake her, but the earthquake was doing enough shaking, more than I ever could.
My heart cracked wide open as my mother continued to disappear. It was difficult maintaining my anger when she could not even speak sense.
This was not the woman I knew. This was not my mother.
“Take the locket. Quickly.” Her voice was a whisper, but I didn’t think she meant it to be. She gestured toward the locket that still lay on her chest. She wasn’t able to move it off herself. Her strength was diminishing more quickly than I thought it could.
My mother’s essence was fading and yet I could see the locket changing. The middle of the gold, where a picture should be, glowed purple. Violet, like the flecks in my mother’s eyes.
I should have been fearful, perhaps sad, but I could not help but be awed with what I was seeing. How was she able to do magic and yet could not remove a locket from her chest?
I snapped myself out of the trance I seemed to be in. I reached out and grabbed the locket, throwing the chain back around my neck so I didn’t lose it in the maelstrom that was heading our way.
“Mother!” Bella screamed, her face raining tears. “Don’t leave us.”
Nothing was going to save her now, though.
And in a second, she was gone. Before my very eyes, before my sisters, my mother faded into non-existence.
It was strange. In the blink of an eye, she ceased to exist. It wasn’t just that she died, but her physical body was ash and dust, trailing off into the vibrating wind, leaving the three of us on our own.
A sob racked through my body and I reached for her, where she should have been. I was met with air. I did not know what else I expected.