Phony Potions

Chapter 38

"I gave up my magic to protect Winsor. Do you think it would be as easy as sneaking him out of town and killing him?" she snarled, her finely painted lips spitting the words. She shook me again, and I only resisted enough to keep the back of my head from hitting the wood hard. I went wide-eyed and innocent. "Do you understand me? He is a child; even if he treated you badly there is nothing—" She slammed her other palm on the wood paneling of the wall furiously. "-Nothing that justifies the risks you put him in tonight."

"It was his idea. I only followed his lead," I bleated. She had been an Avalon and her voice quaked with authority. But now she was something else. Something animal and instinct driven. A parent. I had never gotten this mad for Mallow safety, even when it was called for.

"If he had... If we lost him again." Her eyes went dark. She grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the final door in the hallway. I tried to resist, but the carpet burned my already weary feet. Confusion flooded me.

"Where are you taking me?" She had stopped shouting. She wasn't saying anything at all, setting one tall heeled foot in front of the other as we reached the door at the end of the hall. This worried me. "I must insist. I'm running an errand, and I need to—"

Her fingers curled into my arm, and I yelped. I pulled but her strength won out. She hadn't been entirely unathletic since she ceased being an Avalon. She opened a door and threw me in. I tripped across a wooden chest and went tumbling into a desk chair. She slammed the door behind her.

"I don't know who you are. I don't know why you had my son out there, but I do know that you are not going to put him at risk ever again," she said. The chair I'd been tossed into stopped rocking as I steadied my feet against the plush carpet. Only a sliver of fading flame illuminated the dark room from the fireplace. A... bedroom? Yes, in the corner, a tall four poster canopy bed, stacked high with pillows so neatly arranged I knew a servant had done it, not the actual person who slept there. On the walls there were paintings.

A fair haired young man with a thin mustache posed standing over a slain bear, grinning. A dark haired child asleep on a book, a full figured woman leaned over him to pick him up. A man and two sons preparing a potion together, ingredients tumbling from baskets in front of them. A family of four, the same man, the same woman, and the same two sons on a beach. Although the colors were flat and the shapes simplified, I knew it was the Reglars, the current family. Bernard, Winsor, Divinis Wenrick, and his wife.

"I didn't try to hurt Winsor; I brought him back to get healed," I said.

Light silhouetted the woman from behind. The door to the room opened, and soft steps followed.

"Naobe?"

Naobe had her attention drawn back to the door frame. I kicked the chair backward. The back crashed against the footboard of the bed. I launched off, landing atop the neatly folded comforter. I saw two figures standing in the light straining through the doorway. Over my nervous breaths, I heard a deep voice chanting. The woman lunged for me again. I reached behind me blindly to the night table topped with a row of uneven shapes. My fingers wrapped around something cool and metallic. I swung it forward, a candle stick. The harmless, cold wax candle went flying off, but the sharp circle that caught the melting wax clipped her wrist. Naobe yanked her hand back, holding the tender spot with her other fingers, her face unreadable in the shadow. I heard chanting, louder now. How many words had he gotten out? Three? Five? Winsor usually wrapped up his simple spells in eight. I had only a second. I could attack, but if I missed...

Desperate, I grabbed at the blanket and tossed it in front of me, hiding the two shadowy figures in the doorway from me, and thus, them from me. Breaking the line of sight worked, the voice broke off.