Atone: A Fairytale (Fairytale Trilogy) (23 page)

Alex’s eyes clouded over. “I was afraid of something like that when the mirror frame changed.”

Becca groaned. “I’ve gone and ruined the only chance of breaking this spell, haven’t I?”

Lilia laid a comforting hand on Becca’s back. “We do not know that for sure. Maybe there is another way.”

“But how are we going to find another way?” she could feel desperation seeping into her voice.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Alex. “I don’t know why we didn’t try it before, like before we tried messing with the mirror. I wonder if we could ask the sisters.”

“Like summon them?” Becca looked up in surprise at the mention of Lilia’s three fae aunts. They’d appeared to the girls twice before. Once during their battle with Briar Rose up in the hills behind Luke’s house. They’d called out to the sisters in desperation, right before Alex had saved them by transporting them back to the museum. And there the sisters had reappeared to them and answered many of the questions they’d had, confirming that Alex and Becca were indeed petite-fae, descended from Lilia’s younger sisters.

Alex nodded. “They don’t seem to need a portal to come into our world like these other fae did.” She shrugged. “Neither did Briar Rose, for that matter.”

“It is worth a try,” Lilia agreed. “They might at least be able to tell us if more of these fera will be trying to come through the portal.”

Becca grimaced. Just what she needed—a line of angry, animalistic fae coming through the mirror to try to take out Nicholas. She didn’t know what the response from the fera would be once they found out the stone no longer closed the portal spell. With her luck they’d be gunning for her for altering the spell and not Nicholas for existing. She swallowed against the lump in her throat. Maybe nowhere would be safe for them. Forget breaking the spell, they might not make it through alive.

Alex was scrutinizing Becca’s face as if she could see past her expression and to the racing thoughts below. “Let’s not freak out yet.”

Becca nodded. “Okay, let’s try.”

“We should go to the mirror room?” Lilia suggested. “The sisters might need to see how it looks now.”

The three girls trudged over to the large, sunny room. Becca glared at the mirror as her stomach flipped over. The presence of her emblem flower worked into the gold mocked her.

“Here,” Alex reached out and took Lilia’s hand with one of hers and Becca’s with the other.

Lilia smiled as she linked her free hand through Becca’s. “Just like the tapestry of the sisters.”

Becca returned the smile in spite of her anxiety, which was being made worse by the return of her nausea. “Except none of them were brunette.”

Alex glanced at Becca’s long, dark hair. “None of them were as awesome as you.”

Becca actually laughed at that. And then she felt Alex’s power flowing throwing her. Lilia’s joined it, and Becca let go of the tight grip she’d been keeping on the magic inside her chest and let it flow out through her finger tips to join her friends’. The strands of power hovered above and around their hands, twisting together in a slender braid. They did look like the image of tapestry they’d found in an old art book that depicted the three sisters blessing their older sister Liliana, Lilia’s mother. They’d stood in a circle with their magic braiding out of their hands.

Except there was no sister in the middle of the ring. They weren’t blessing someone, but calling to those very same sisters who had woven the original braid.

Joining her power with Alex and Lilia seemed to both strengthen and calm Becca. The sick feeling began to dissipate.

“Bryony, Violet, Saffron,” Alex called in a low voice. “We need your help. We have questions we can’t answer. Please come to us.”

For a moment Becca thought nothing would happen. Maybe they had only been able to call the sisters before because they were in such dire need. The situation seemed pretty dire to Becca, but then maybe it didn’t rate magically transporting to the human world unless their nieces were in immediate, mortal danger.

Or maybe they just weren’t using enough magic. Becca let a little more of her power flow out of her hands. She tried not to notice that it shimmered mostly gold with only a hint of lavender left in its depths.

Alex felt the influx of energy and looked over at Becca. “It’ll be okay. Bryony, Violet, Saffron,” she called again.

“We have come.” The voice was soft and sweet, but also full of power. The three girls dropped their braid of magic as they turned toward the voice, and it fell to the floor in a shimmering rush and dissipated.

The sisters’ forms were flickering and insubstantial. Becca remembered they had looked like that before, like an image projected onto a screen as if they weren’t quite all the way there. They were just as she remembered them from the cramped storage room at the museum. They wore long woolen cloaks, colored brightly to match their powers—light green, violet, and a rich deep yellow.

Bryony was the one who had spoken, she seemed to function as their leader. She was beautiful, with long silvery blond hair that hung almost to the waist of her light green cloak and crystal blue eyes that should have looked cold but didn’t.

“Thank you,” Alex said. “We weren’t quite sure what to do. We have tried to close this portal, but the stone that should close it no longer seems to fit.”

The three sisters all looked at the mirror. Their faces remained impassive, but Becca thought she heard a resigned sigh from Bryony as she took in the results of Becca’s tampering with the mirror spell.

“The portal remaining open presents a problem,” Bryony acknowledged. Her too light eyes flicked to Lilia. “I fear that the fera have only been so lenient thus far out of respect for the memory of your mother.”

“What does my mother have to do with this mirror?” asked Lilia.

“This portal was originally created for her,” Bryony answered. “As a wedding gift when she married your father and gave up her magic. This allowed her to be able to still come and go into the our Realm with ease.”

Lilia glanced between her aunts and the mirror, a frown marring her forehead. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“You have seen how strong the magic of the protection spell is. It is no wonder your mother would want to shield you from it. Even your father never saw it, though he knew of its existence. When Liliana became ill while carrying the twins, she had it hidden away in case anything should happen to her.”

“Why didn’t she just close the portal?” Becca asked with a trace of bitterness. Lilia shot her a look. Becca knew she probably shouldn’t say anything bad about Queen Liliana, but the fact was, if the portal had been closed, none of this ever would have happened.

“It is very hard for a fae to close a final link with the country of their birth. Even though her heart had chosen King Edmund, she still wished to be able to visit the Fae Realm, not just to have her sisters visit her in this land.”

“That’s another question,” said Alex. “Queen Liliana needed a portal back into the Fae Realm because she had relinquished her power, and it seems like the fera who came here to attack Nicholas needed the portal to get through to our world, but you don’t. You can come and go…and for that matter, I got into the Fae Realm without a portal.

“It is true that you did not enter our Realm through a typical portal, but you entered, and exited, through a spell that existed both in the human and Fae Realms.”

“The bed spell.” Alex nodded. “That makes sense. Even when I entered through Luke’s dreams, it was because he was in the clutches of the spell. But then what about you?”

“Our ties to the human world have never been fully cut the way many faes’ have. We still exert magic here. Our power is not just through spells that we set in place centuries ago and then left behind. We have never fully retreated into the Fae Realm. That is also why our sister could appear here; she still worked magic in your world.”

Becca swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “Appear” was one word for Briar Rose dropping like a vengeful angel out of swirling storm clouds and trying to kill them with her army of rose vines. “And you’ve never cut yourselves off from the human world because of Lilia.”

“Yes, and because of you and Alexandra. There are certain fae who do not…” Bryony seemed to be choosing her words carefully, “appreciate that the three of you are as powerful as you are. They would prefer for a chasm to forever separate our worlds. Magic on our side and none here.”

Oh great, so not only is Nicholas in danger, the three of us are, too. Today just keeps getting better.
Becca sighed in frustration and ran her hands through her hair.

“So is there any way to close this portal thing? Or have I totally screwed that up?” Her voice came out more harshly than she intended.

“I do not think there is a way to undo what you have done with the spells.” Bryony let her eyes run over the golden violets entwined with the frame’s claws, as well as the shimmering magic that wrapped around them both. “You have put a great deal of yourself into the spell and it has altered it,” she turned her pale eyes back to Becca. “And it has altered you.”

Becca nodded. There was no use denying it. Whatever she’d done to the mirror—maybe it had sucked some of her power right out of her chest and replaced it with its own—the end result was that both her magic and the mirror’s had come out of it changed. “Does that mean that Nicholas can’t be changed back? He can’t become human again?”

Violet finally spoke. Her voice was as Becca remembered it, soft and shimmering like the sound of wind chimes floating through the air. “You are more concerned for this beast than you are about your magic?”

“He’s not a beast,” Becca retorted. “He’s, well, I mean he is outwardly at the moment, but that’s not what he is on the inside.”

Violet continued to stare at her with the wide, light blue eyes that reminded Becca so much of Lilia. Her dark-honey-colored hair spilled across her lilac cloak. The same lilac that Becca’s dress in the Fae Realm had been. She shared an emblem flower with Violet, and yet they seemed nothing alike. Violet looked more like the magical goddess Nicholas had seen in the mirror than Becca ever would.

“I, too, loved a beast once.”

Becca blinked. That had been the farthest from what she’d expected Violet to say.

“I don’t—” Becca’s tongue tripped over the words, and she bit down on her lip in frustration. She could feel her friends’ eyes on her, but she didn’t take hers off of Violet’s. She saw compassion there and a shared pain. “A fera?”

“Yes.” Violet didn’t move, but Becca felt her magic wrap around her, supporting her with that familiar, sparkling lavender tinged power. She blinked away the tears that threatened to spill over.

“Is there no way?”

Bryony answered for her sister. “There is no longer that way,” she nodded toward the mirror. “The spell has been transformed into something far beyond a simple fera protection spell. That does not mean there can never be another way.”

“How?”

Saffron finally spoke. “We do not know, child. Either a way will present itself or it will not.” She must have seen the devastation in Becca’s face, because she leaned forward, her strawberry blond hair flowing down over her goldenrod-colored cloak like a flame. “You have become the co-author of this spell. If there is a way to be found, it will be you that find it. But you must be careful. The spell has become a part of you.”

“Is there anything we can do to help her?” Alex asked, and Becca wanted to hug her for it.

Bryony smiled softly. “Support her and do not allow your bond to be broken. You are stronger together.”

“What about the mirror portal? Do you think that the fera will send more people through to threaten our friend?” Lilia’s voice was sharp and defensive. It took Becca a moment to realize that she was referring to Nicholas. A tear did spill over then.

“It is possible. He represents a threat to them, as does an unprotected portal. They would not want more humans discovering either it or him.”

“So until I find a way to break the spell, we’re under constant threat.” Becca was starting to feel numb inside. So far there hadn’t been a single piece of good news from the three sisters. Well, the fact that there might possibly be a way to return Nicholas to human form that she might someday figure out. Or not. She wasn’t sure which frightened her more—latching onto that small strand of hope, knowing that it could be as insubstantial as thin air, or letting herself think about accepting defeat.

“We will advocate for you,” Bryony said. Her voice was firm, but her image had started to flicker more. “We always have.”

“Thank you.”

“We must return to our own realm. We will come if you need us.” Bryony turned her silvery blue eyes to Becca. “Be strong.”

As the three sisters’ images began to fade, Becca heard Violet’s voice once again, this time a light musical whisper that seemed to be for her ears only. “Do not be afraid to love.”

Becca felt something soft against her hand. She looked down in surprise. She was clasping a small bouquet of violets; their velvety purple petals felt like the caress of a friend. She tightened her fingers around them at the same moment she felt Alex and Lilia’s arms wrap around her. She leaned her head forward onto Alex’s shoulders and the tears that she’d been holding back finally flowed.