Alex picks up my mom’s arm, presses two fingers to her wrist, and then relief washes over his face. “She’s alive.” He sets her arm down over her stomach. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, though.” He rests his arms on his knees, leaning back on his heels as he glances at the open French doors, the sunlight filtering in.#p#分页标题#e#
“Are we even in present time?” he wonders, assessing the room. “Everything looks the same as when we left.”
I point over my shoulder at the empty bed. “Except the Ira is gone.” I straighten my knees and stand up. “There’s one way to find out for sure, though… Aislin! Laylen! Can you come in here?”
A few moments later, Aislin and Laylen come running into the bedroom. They screech to a halt when they spot my mom on the floor with Alex and I beside her.
“What happened?” Aislin asks, working to catch her breath as she presses her hand to her heart.
“You can see us?” I ask them and they both nod, looking baffled.
“Good.” I sink down to the floor and breathe in relief. “That means I did it.”
“We’re in the present?” Alex asks hopefully as he straightens his legs and stands to his feet.
I nod, letting a small smile seep through. “Yeah, we made it.”
***
It’s the first time I’m thankful for my unique Foreseer ability. Without it, we’d probably still be imprisoned, if not crazy or dead. Alex and Laylen move my unconscious mother to the bed where I cover her up with a blanket and shut the French doors. The four of us quietly sneak out of the room, letting her sleep, hoping she’ll wake up and tell us something that will make all this trouble worth it.
In the warped, concealed part of me, I don’t want her to wake up. The woman I saw in the visions and memories, the kind and enduring person, doesn’t seem to exist in her anymore. It saddens me to the point that I feel like sobbing my heart out. But these thoughts I keep to myself, because I know how wrong they are.
We go into the small kitchen and Aislin makes us coffee while Alex and I fill the two of them in on what happened. All the curtains are shut, blocking out the beach right outside, although I can still hear the ocean crashing against the shore as it carries pieces of sand away.
“So all the Water Faeries just passed out?” Aislin asks, lowering into a chair next to Laylen. “And the Queen?”
I take a gulp of my coffee, the heat of it simmering the inside of my throat, but in a good way. "Yeah, one minute she was trying to torture my soul with that diamond we took down there, and the next moment her and all her Fey were on the ground.”
“Was it because they were trying to do something to your…soul?” Aislin asks and then hurries and takes a gulp of her coffee, then leaves the mug in front of her mouth to conceal her expression.
“I don’t know what happened exactly.” I add some milk to my coffee and stir it with a spoon. “It could have been my locket or maybe it was my soul.”
“I don’t think it was either, honestly,” Alex interrupts, pulling a chair out and sitting down beside me. “Now that I think about it, I’m guessing that it was from the overload of fear you shot at them.”
“What overload of fear?” I wonder, but I can clearly remember how I felt about everything I saw and how it scared the shit out of me; more than even the Death Walkers.
He chooses his next words carefully as he picks up his coffee pot and pours some coffee into a mug. “I think because your emotions are so new, they sometimes come off a little…. strong. Maybe a little too strong for the Fey.”
“Strong,” I say, scowling at him, insulted. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, yet it’s what saved us back in the cell…” I clear my throat and quickly fill my mouth with coffee before I can bring up any more uncomfortable subjects.
He smashes his lips together, his gaze boring into me. “Yeah… it did.” He gives a long pause, like he’s expecting me to say something. But what? That I love him. Is that what he wants? Because I can’t give it to him at the moment. Not when I haven’t felt it yet. They’d just be empty words associated with the fractured part of my soul.
“I’m going to go check on my mom,” I mutter, scooting the chair away from the table. I get up and put my mug in the sink then leave them in the kitchen, fully aware that Alex’s eyes are following me the entire way.
I hurry back to the room, scared and relieved to find that my mom’s still passed out in the bed. She looks dead, a corpse in a coffin waiting to be buried. Maybe she kind of is. Maybe The Underworld has practically killed her. Possibly that’s why she was so cold toward me.