“Get away from him.” Sylvana’s scream cut the air like a knife, her voice edging toward hysterical. “You vicious old witch. Leave him alone.”
White fire lanced from her fingertips, arrowed toward her mother’s body. Clara batted the sizzling flame away with as much attention as she would have paid a fly buzzing around her ear.
While her daughter raged, Clara’s attention remained focused on the man who was at the crux of this fight. Or, technically, the minor deity: Cupid. The one and only god of love who carried a bow and heart-tipped arrows, but was as far from a winged cherub as a donkey is from a goose.
Chiseled perfection from head to toe, there was nothing baby soft about him. It was no wonder Sylvana had fallen for his…charms. Had that been all there was to it, the three of them might never have come to this moment. Or rather, the four of us.
I’m Lexi Balefire, daughter of Sylvana, granddaughter of Clara, and Cupid? Well, he’s my dad. I know, it shocked me, too, when I found out.
While the fight raged, I was the squealing infant tucked into a carry basket and left forgotten on the grass. Paradoxically, I was also the time traveling interloper watching the biggest mystery of my past play out before stunned eyes. Not your typical Wednesday, I’ll grant you.
This was the pivotal moment that would leave me virtually orphaned, send my mother to hell and my father to who-knows-where. In a few minutes, nothing would be left but a black scar on the ground, my grandmother’s body turned to stone, and me; a crying infant who would grow up with the stigma of having hailed from wicked witches.
Or a murdering witch, if you want to get technical. When my faerie godmother found me, she assumed my grandmother had killed my mother—a supposition I recently learned was a total mistake. Now I would find out exactly what happened that fateful day.
I wasn’t sure I could watch, but I knew I couldn’t look away.
“She doesn’t know what you did, does she?” Clara Balefire’s wrath curled around Cupid like a living thing that might strangle him if she gave full reign to her temper. “Just how many lies did you have to tell to get my daughter to let you put a baby in her belly?”
More white fire arced from Sylvana’s direction, to be deflected with a twitch of Clara’s finger while my father’s burning gaze rested on my grandmother.
“Of course he told me.” Looking at my mother at this age gave me a shiver. Peaches and cream complexion, wide green eyes under thick black lashes, and ruby lips. Except for the teased-to-the-max ‘80’s hairdo, we could have been twins. Okay, maybe the hair and the clothes.
She wore artfully torn leggings under a ruffled mini—both in black—and a hot pink cropped top. Half a dozen bangles clanked together every time she lobbed another ball of witchfire at her mother. Madonna would have been proud, or maybe dismayed at her effect on my mother’s sense of style.
“Didn’t you, baby?” Sylvana purred at Cupid, then spat at her mother, “We don’t keep secrets.”
Cupid declined to comment, and even from a distance, I could see the secrets in his eyes. Blinded by her infatuation with him, my mother would never admit my father’s intentions might have been dishonorable even if she’d known truth. Not that I would have expected anything different—he’s a god, for freak’s sake. They don’t play by human rules.
“The child has promise. At the right time, I will teach her how to make the most of her gifts.” His voice reminded me of a French horn; tenor with a deeper resonance underneath. His glance strayed toward the baby, and I had trouble wrapping my head around the fact that she was me.
“This one carries the potential to be the strongest of her kind. I would not allow her to take on that burden without guidance.”
“How very noble of you.” Clara’s sneer turned the words to knives. “Do you even know her name? Or is she just a thing to you? Something to mold and shape.”
Cupid’s lack of interest deflected the cuts as surely as if he’d worn forged armor.
“You presume too much, Clara Balefire. I protect what is mine and Alexis,” he placed emphasis on my name to prove a point, “is mine.”
“Like you protected Beatrice and Reginald? Like you would have protected my sister if she’d been stupid enough to let you have your way with her? Alexis would be safer if she never realized that potential. You’re willing to put a target on her back out of a sense of inflated ego.”
Unwilling to allow my attention to slip from what I was watching, even for a second, I didn’t have time to ponder who Beatrice and Reginald were, or that I had a great aunt I’d never met.
“He loves us.” Sylvana leaped aside to avoid a spell that boomeranged back on her when Clara, without even looking in her direction, deflected the curse with a single finger. “We’re going to make a family together, and we don’t need you to be part of it. Just leave him alone and let us go.”
“Did he tell you that in so many words? Did he tell you how he’s been trying to bed a Balefire woman for centuries? First my mother, then my sister, and now my daughter, and who knows how many before that? And all to make a new and more powerful Fate Weaver.”
Sylvana thought about it for half a second.
“Shut up, you old cow. You’re wrong about him—he loves us, you’ll see.” My eyebrows rose toward my hairline at Sylvana’s harsh criticism; an old cow isn’t at all how I’d have described my grandmother, nor would I have dared to blithely show such disrespect to a family member.
Then again, growing up without my true family had given me a different perspective on its sacred nature.
My mother and I had both inherited our looks from Clara, and I wasn’t complaining. The Balefire women carry good genes, and I’d bet Clara had heard the tired line about how she and Sylvana looked like sisters from more middle-aged men than it would take to fill a country club.
Eyes trained on my father, Clara slammed a barrier to close Sylvana out of the conversation. “Are you even capable of love?”
Cupid faced away from me and even leaning sideways I caught nothing more than a glimpse of the curve of one cheek, half covered by the edge of the Bow of Destiny. All gold and shining, the weapon’s string chimed soft notes against the light breeze.
“Love is my business.” The bow looked like a liquid blur practically leaping into his hands, the strings screaming a tune of willingness. What’s more, the compass around my neck shrieked to life. Okay, shriek may not be the best word, but saying it broke into song turns this story into something straight out of a Disney musical, and let me tell you, this was not one of those.
Dark was the bowsong, with honed edges that cut and sliced. I only got a glimmer of it from the echo of the compass, which seemed to be acting as some sort of speaker system; my father is the one who took the brunt of the onslaught coming directly off the weapon in his hand. My instincts told me the bow was warning Cupid against rashly taking action. My head rang with a dizzying sound that turned me weak. How on earth could Clara just stand there like she saw nothing happening?
“My daughter’s happiness is mine.” Fast as a striking snake, Clara crossed the space and before my father realized her intent, snatched the bow, fitted arrow to string, and took aim. “If your will is what makes this thing work, then my own should remove the blinders and help her see her way clear.”
She dropped the barrier and dodged as my father made a grab for her.
Silence fell like a balm when the arrow flew straight and true on a course for Sylvana’s heart.
Faster than a human can move, my father covered the distance between himself and Sylvana. Clara’s arrow slammed into his flesh with a solid sound that made me blanch. Did I mention I’m supposed to wield that same bow as Miss Fancy-ass Fate Weaver, or whatever title it is the gods want me to carry? Was I supposed to shoot people with that thing? Nope. Not on my list of things to do.
Clara’s triumphant shout ended in a roar of, “Nooo.”
The force of the blow slammed my dad into my mom, and she hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Staggering and struggling to regain his footing, Cupid yanked the arrow out of his flesh.
“Stupid witch. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?” He grabbed the bow from Clara and then tossed it away as if the bright gold had turned to searing flame. Whether it burned or not, the bow did something to Cupid he hadn’t expected. His face altered from robust perfection to a haunted pallor so quickly it reminded me of watching a movie on fast forward.
By the time he turned and walked away without so much as a backward glance at Sylvana, my father had become a shadow of his former self.
My mother, however, seemed to gain all the strength her lover lost.
“Look what you did.” Sylvana practically levitated off the ground, fury oozing from every pore. Almost absently, her hands formed magic like I’d never seen before.
Black fire ate daylight and grew between her palms to a crackling mass so large she could barely hold it. I’m not sure whether a trick of the light made it seem so, or if her eyes actually turned black, but I knew I had to take action.
“Stop. You have to stop this right now. Look what you’re about to do to each other. Look what you’re about to do to me!” I jumped into the middle and shouted until my throat burned, but it made no difference. Neither of them could see me. There was nothing left to do but watch in horror.
The moment drew out long and pregnant with magic while Sylvana railed and cursed Clara with every filthy name she could pull to her lips.
“Think what you like, I only want you to be happy.”
Clara’s statement, quietly made and sincere as far as I could tell anyway, sent Sylvana fully over the edge to the dark side. Everything after that happened at high speed.
Sylvana let the seething magic go with all the force she could muster. Clara spoke a few short words, but I could tell she’d reacted a half-second too late.
The Bow of Destiny went up in a cloud of smoke. Knowing where it ended up, I assumed my grandmother had wasted precious seconds ensuring my father’s legacy wouldn’t be found until I searched it out either twenty-four-odd years in the future or a couple of days ago depending on whether I was counting back from my present or forward from the past I witnessed now.
“Ligabis, Ostium, Carcere.” Clara’s second spell rippled through the air and turned to a set of shadowy ropes. A binding spell.
Halfway between the two women, Sylvana’s crackling, ebony flame crossed with Clara’s spell and I saw something I never thought possible. The two spells—well, mingled isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s the best one I can find.
Sylvana’s witchfire absorbed the binding spell and hit Clara, who tried to throw up a shield but failed. Face fierce, hair floating on the breeze created by the force of Sylvana’s intent, I watched the spell bust through the feeble beginnings of a barrier and turn my grandmother to stone. Inch by painful inch.
Sylvana’s moment of glee quickly turned sour when the evil she’d sent out bounced off the feet of the stone effigy and returned to her before she had time to duck. A flash, a sizzle, the scent of ozone, and a scorch mark on the earth—I’d heard the story so many times that seeing the aftermath in person felt surreal.
Well, except for the cries coming from the basket. Those were so real that her—my—terror at being left utterly alone punched me in the gut.
How could my mother have been so naive? Then again, she hadn’t seen that same look on Cupid’s face when he walked away from my half-brother Jett and his mother, and I had. My father’s wanton ways had resulted in a number of demigod children; I didn’t even want to know how many half-siblings I had floating around out there—the one I’d already met was enough to sour me on making a family connection.
Whatever Clara had done to Cupid, he’d had coming, and Sylvana certainly hadn’t pulled any punches with her ball of evil fire.
I walked over near the basket and stared at my scrunched up face, red from crying.
“Shh, it’s going to be all right. Tru…” I bit the end of the word off. Never again would I utter the phrase trust me. “Terra’s coming, and she’ll take care of you….us.”
This conversation took the concept of talking to yourself to an entirely new level.
The baby ignored me since, to her, I only existed in some amorphous form, and another few minutes passed in an eternity of helplessness before my faerie godmother and two of her sisters came to the rescue.
“Hello. Can you see me?” I waved my hand in Terra’s face, but she didn’t so much as bat an eyelash, so I settled in to watch what happened next.
Terra cast a shrewd eye over the scene, recording it for the future when she would describe it for me in great detail. A graceful hand, tipped with ruby red, speared through her hair.
This Fae woman would go on to become the next best thing to a mother I could ask for, and after a lifetime of living with her, I could have sworn I knew her every expression. Happy, angry, sad, or vengeful—she can be one scary faerie—all her faces are heartbreakingly lovely.
In that moment, with chocolate-streaked cascading locks spilling over cheeks the hue of a mountain sunset I watched Terra as though seeing her for the first time. The leaves in her hair, the soil on her cheek spoke of wild adventures and a carefree spirit that might have remained untamed if not for me. One crystalline tear pooled before love spilled over her and sent it to trace a path down her face.
“Poor baby,” she cooed into the basket, wiping my tears away and cupping my tiny cheek with her gentle fingertips. She gazed into the faces of her sisters, Soleil and Evian, and I could tell she’d made up her mind after that one simple touch.
Time Traveler me gasped; I’d just witnessed the moment when Terra evolved from a faerie with an affinity for the earth element into the true Earth Mother I’d come to know and love.
“What are you thinking, Terra?” Soleil demanded, the edge of suspicion in her tone so recognizable to my trained ears I would have smiled if I wasn’t mesmerized by the scene unfolding before me. Her short mane of unkempt hair streaked all the reds and oranges of a brilliant flame contrasted starkly with pale, freckled skin and lips the black of a cooling ember.
Evian, the third of the trio I knew would take me home and raise me as their own, mimicked her sister’s swipe down my chubby baby cheek with mirror-tipped fingers that had always reminded me of the surface of still water. “You want to keep her, don’t you?” Eyes the color of a tropical sea flicked up to meet Terra’s, and I saw no resistance in them at all.
I’d always assumed an argument of some kind had preceded Terra’s insistence on taking me in—after all, most witches don’t ever get to meet their faerie godmothers. It takes a lot for one to step in, and even then there are limits to how much interference they’re allowed to run.
That my cries called Terra to me made up a miracle in and of itself. That she, Soleil, and Evian had snubbed convention even further and taken me under their care spoke of kindnesses I could never repay and costs I might never have counted before.
“I don’t know what, but something tells me this is what we’re supposed to do,” Terra responded, her eyes pleading with her sisters for support.
“Sounds like fun. I mean, how hard can it be? It’s one baby, right? We can take her home with us; she won’t take up too much space.” Soleil and Evian were already staring at my innocent face, speaking in baby talk, their minds made up, while I gazed up at their impossibly beautiful smiles with a look of pure wonder.
Apparently, it had been love, at first sight, all the way around.
“You can’t be serious,” Evian scoffed at Soleil’s suggestion. “If we’re doing this, we’re going to have to stay in her world.” The look on her face said she thought it would be worth it. “I’m in. What’s the plan?”
“The Balefire house is right there; I remember it from my orientation visit.”
And with that, my fate was sealed. They—we—all walked away, leaving adult me alone with the evidence of how my family’s greatest shame hadn’t exactly happened the way I thought it had. What was I supposed to do now? Click my heels three times? Or wish upon a star? It would be just my luck to end up spending the rest of my life as a ghost in my own past—in my jammies, no less.
The thought of that made me want to pull my hair out. In fact, my hands were already heading in that direction when I caught a flash of light near one of them. Before I had time to wonder what I’d seen, a rush of motion sickness hit me, and I came back to myself huddled on the window seat in my room.
