Silver Dew (35 page)

“Are you satisfied?” the minister asked Sebastian.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Remember that your marriage is only annulled in the eyes of God, any legal commitments you may have made to one another still stand.”

“Yes, I understand. We made no other commitments. Thank you for your time,” Sebastian politely answered. The minister gave a quick nod, looking annoyed still, and then strode away down the aisle.

“What have you done?” Mags demanded, spinning to face me with fury in her eyes. “You bitch! I should never have trusted you! How can you do this to Sebastian? How can you say you ever loved him when you obviously want to destroy any chance of happiness he has?”

“I didn’t want this,” I objected. There was a steady power behind my words that made Mags pause and listen. “I thought he wanted to renew his vows to you so that was what I wanted too. I want whatever he wants; I only want for him to be happy.”

“This was what I wanted,” Sebastian pronounced darkly. He glared at Mags and then turned to glare with only slightly less ferocity at me. “You have both been ‘wanting’ what you think is right for me for too long. You’ve been pushing me into the wrong decisions and confusing my thoughts, my wants and my desires at every minute. You both stole the decisions from me that were mine and mine alone to make - until now. I think Gracelynn must have finally realized that the only course of action is to want for me to be happy above and beyond all else.”

Mags and I both stared at Sebastian in shock. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Had I done it again? Had I unintentionally manipulated him and forced my own wants upon him? I was both horrified and strangely relieved.

“You, I can forgive.” He spoke to me more softly. The anger was still there in his eyes but the outrage was gone. I could see how I’d hurt him, see how I’d confused and betrayed him but I could also see that somehow, impossibly so, he did actually love me still. My heart rejoiced as it came pounding back to life, tearing its way back into my chest and up through the darkness and desolation that had weighed down upon it. My heart ached painfully but it was incomparable to the torment I had been suffering mere moments before. There were still so many mistakes I had made, so many wrongs I had done but I accepted them now and to know that Sebastian saw and accepted my mistakes and flaws too was all I had ever truly wanted but never dared hope for.

“I have wanted the wrong thing for you before too. What we think is best is not always… what we…” he frowned in confusion, still not quite back to his old self. He gave a quick shake of his head, squinting at me slightly as if he had another headache. “There’s so much to say Gracelynn and so much for both of us to understand and remember and confess, and hopefully to forgive… But you,” he turned to Mags who had now dropped down to her knees. Fear filled her eyes as Sebastian turned to her with a powerful fury in his.

“You tried to make me forget, you tried to trick me again as you did three hundred years ago and I will never – ever, forgive you for it. This time I will never forget who you truly are, Madailein Driscoll,” he coldly pronounced.

“No,” Mags gasped, her eyes widening in horror as she looked in panic back and forth between Sebastian and myself. The name was oddly familiar, sparking a reaction deep down within my core that flared and twisted angrily in my gut. What did that name mean?

“I remember everything now –
everything
. All the memories that you tried to steal and take away from me, how you betrayed and manipulated me for hundreds of years all in the name of your twisted Sisterhood and their dying wish.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I was so confused. I struggled to keep up, to understand what was going on.

Sebastian turned to me with an angry fire still burning in his eyes. “Madailein is not and was never the first of the Others to join me. But she was the last of the Sisterhood to come after you.”

Chapter Fourteen – Scars and Fresh Wounds

“What?” I gasped. I could hear Mags breathing quickly – almost panting now, her eyes darting about wildly as if she were looking for a way to escape. She was starting to slowly rise to her knees, her eyes glistening with near madness. “Stop,” I commanded in that firm yet sweet voice that demanded to be obeyed. She froze in her tracks. “Ever since Sebastian first told me about my past life, when I was once Caoilinn, I have been afraid of the past, afraid of the magic I possess, afraid of who I really am and afraid of what the truth about me may be. But I’m not afraid anymore. I want to know the truth – the whole truth. You will sit and explain yourself to me now.”

There was no doubt in my mind about what I wanted anymore. I wasn’t even remotely surprised when Mags sat back down on the step before the altar and sullenly folded her arms across her chest, glaring at me with her tear-filled eyes.

I stood up and moved to the very front pew, sitting just a few feet in front of her. I was both surprised and pleased when Sebastian came and sat beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushed against mine.

“Who are you?”

I watched as Mags fought my will and tried to deny my wants. My magic was far too strong. Her mouth twisted angrily, tears spilled from her eyes but her lips began to move and the truth was slowly dragged from her.

“My name is Madailein Driscoll. I was the last Priestess anointed to the Sisterhood and I was to be the next to receive the Lost Magic from you. You never deigned me worthy enough for your notice though – not until the day we came for you and then the knife in my hand was impossible for you to ignore,” she coldly sneered.

My whole body went numb as a vision flashed before my eyes - Mags’ face leaning over mine, a cruel smile twisting her pretty features as she wiped away a drop of blood that had splattered against her cheek. The stars and moon were so bright, the world shimmered hazily under their eerie light. The scent of lavender perfumed the air and a drop of silver dew slid slowly down a blade of grass beside my face, a tearful goodbye as my breath shuddered from my lips. The cold world faded away and darkened…

“She was one of the Sisters who murdered Caoilinn,” Sebastian growled beside me. His whole body had become so tense that I placed a cautioning hand on his thigh without thinking. He relaxed slightly at my touch but Mags flinched at the sight, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“You deserved to die,” Mags spat at me. “You manipulated Seamus, you abused your power, you betrayed your Sisters – your crimes were limitless!”

“Is that the truth, Mags, or is that just what you want to believe?” I asked her quietly and calmly. She didn’t answer, instead she glared silently at the floor. “If Caoilinn did not grant you your powers, and Sebastian didn’t start creating the Others for several hundred years after Caoilinn’s death… how is it that you are here now?” I questioned.

She answered without hesitation. “When we discovered that Seamus had escaped and your body and spell book were missing, we guessed at what you had done. We realized we had been too late and that you had already given the Lost Magic to him. The Sisters did not know how to grant me the same abilities as theirs but they did find a way to give up and combine their abilities. They sacrificed their magic to make me strong enough to hunt Seamus and to hunt your reincarnated soul, to keep you apart and to stop the secrets of the Lost Magic from falling into the wrong hands. The only spell I was strong enough to use, the only one the Sisterhood had understood was the memory-altering spell and even then, I could only make small alterations to the minds of others. I tried so hard to be strong, to be the perfect Sister and to bring honor to the temple and the Gods but… I was weak,” Mags whispered to the floor. She briefly glanced up at me, her eyes filled with hate at how I was forcing her to admit her weaknesses and reveal all her secrets.

“I hunted Seamus for hundreds of years but he always escaped me. He didn’t want to be caught and I’m sure that you, wherever your soul was in that time between death and rebirth, didn’t want for him to be caught either. There were a few times I came close, close enough to watch him, to get to know him from his movements, his actions… and I started to fall in love.”

She looked up at Sebastian, tears shining brightly in her eyes. It was a moving sight, her shining green eyes, her pale, freckled skin, her trembling full lips all framed by waves of golden-red hair as she shifted to kneel before him.

“I loved you too much to ever be able to hurt you, Sebastian. I saw how kind you were, how lonely. I realized how you were just an innocent pawn in all of this, how Caoilinn had used and betrayed you as much as she had the Sisterhood. It took me another hundred years to decide but eventually I knew what I wanted and what I must do.”

“You lied to me. You deceived me. You manipulated and brainwashed me,” Sebastian accused in a soft and deadly voice.

Mags flinched away from him, shaking her head in denial.

“I wanted to be your friend, your companion – and I was. I didn’t want to hurt you by letting you discover the truth, so I let you think that I was normal when we first met. I let you believe what you wanted, that you loved me enough you had made me like you. And then once we were close enough, once I had gotten to know you as intimately as I do now, it was easy for me to make you see the truth.”

I could tell she believed every word that she was speaking, no matter how deranged and distorted the truth. My stomach twisted and bitter acid burned the back of my throat. I tried not to think too much about what she had just said but the words and their meaning echoed through and through my mind, bouncing off my brain and clashing through my head painfully, intimately…

“What about the Others?” I spoke a little too loudly, my voice echoing ominously around the large, empty church.

“We created them together,” Mags announced, smiling almost timidly at Sebastian. He glared back, his eyes black and unyielding. “Seamus was so unhappy searching for you, he was so lonely that I knew it was the right thing to do. It was what I wanted for him.”

“And?” I demanded, sensing that there was more.

Her eyes narrowed at me briefly before she reluctantly continued. “I knew it would be best for him to forget about Caoilinn, he was starting to already but I needed numbers on my side. I needed the Others to help make him forget. It was my idea to create them and mostly my own magic and wants that did so.”

Sebastian let out his breath in a sharp hiss. I could tell this was new information to him. I could hardly imagine how he was feeling in that moment but I pushed onwards, needing to hear the whole truth for once and praying that somehow I would understand it.

“We were so happy for a while. We were surrounded by the Others - our friends, our companions who were like family to us, and we had each other. You were finally forgetting Caoilinn and falling in love with me. The world was our playground and we could have whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. I wanted you to be happy, we all did, so we wanted you to live without fear, without guilt, without being held back by consequences.”

Sebastian began trembling beside me, his whole body vibrating from the emotions rising and building within him. “You were the one who manipulated me, who controlled me. You used me and the Others. The things we did… the unconscionable way we all lived…”

“Yes, I encouraged it. Once we had been intimate, I was able to direct your wants so much more easily. I made sure you wanted the right thing, I helped steer you in the right direction. I was only strong enough to alter a few of your memories of Caoilinn, just enough to place doubts in your mind, to make you forget the images from her spell book that were hidden in your tattoos. It was easy to lead you to the truth – you’d already had your doubts about her. We all wanted a better life for you than the one she had trapped you in because we knew you’d never be selfish enough to want it for yourself. It was what you needed. You were so happy once you forgot her – you wanted to forget her. You even asked us yourself to erase the last of your memories of Caoilinn and we did. You married me and took a new name, forgetting and moving forward from your former, miserable self,” Mags was half-smiling as she spoke, a wistful expression on her face. It sickened me to my core.

“It was you who altered my memories?” Sebastian questioned in a dangerously quiet voice.

“It was the only spell I knew, the only one the Sisters knew to teach me. You needed to forget your “quest”, to let Caoilinn go and move on. And it was too painful for you to remember her the way you did, perfect and innocent and faithful. The memory of her was torturing you on a daily basis. I freed you,” Mags replied with a small shrug.

“You lied to me. You stole my memories, you tampered with my mind!”

“No,” Mags denied adamantly shaking her head.

“But he started to remember Caoilinn. You made a mistake in the design,” I jumped-in, filling in the gaps from her story with the limited knowledge I had. I needed her to keep talking, I needed to hear all of it. Now that I was ready to hear and face the truth, I wanted to understand it all.

“Yes, a small one,” Mags answered bitterly. “It was the only design I knew but I could never get it quite right. The memories should have been completed altered but your dreams kept influencing you, and you were suspicious of the truth. And that Binding spell was stronger than I’d ever realized. When Caoilinn was reborn, if Sebastian were even within a few hundred miles of her, he would start to remember and he’d start to draw strength from her through the Bond. The Others realized she must be close and started to question whether we should keep you two apart, whether perhaps we should find Caoilinn and learn more about our magic from her. I was afraid they were starting to want the wrong thing. You had started to question our ways already, Seamus. You had already decided that creating the Others might have been a mistake so when I suggested we block their memories of us and run away, to start our lives anew together, you easily agreed.”