Chapter 52: The Rules of Magic

Maeve

Una waved the young girl who had set the tray on the end of my bed away with a smile and followed her to the door. Una closed it, turning the lock. I felt a wave of adrenaline prickle across my skin at the sight, fight or flight awakening as the lock clicked into place.

I felt as though I had been ripped apart. My skin ached, if that was even possible. Whatever had happened in the circle, whatever I had seen, it had disappeared in an instant, and I had woken up in one of the towers, surrounded by strangers.

The explanation sounded simple. I had invoked the power of the Moon Goddess, something only White Queens were supposed to be able to do. It had almost killed me. And the ring sitting on my bedside table was, at least according to Una and Tasia, the only reason I was still alive

“Why?” I whispered, reaching for the ring and turning it over in my hand as I sat back against the white pillows. Una sighed as she walked to the edge of the bed and began pouring tea into two cups, her eyes downcast on the task.

*These rocks, all around us. The color of them is significant to our religion. Red, like blood. Like the blood moon that visits us every hundred years or so. But it’s more than that. It’s scientific. It’s called Eudialyte. It’s radioactive. It’s messing with whatever…whatever makes us what we are. It makes it impossible to be wolves inside the valley of Dianny. The eudialyte in the ring protected you somehow.”

“You’re saying this is

biological?”

Una shook her head, not disagreeing, but not agreeing with me either. “I used to think that, before I became Alpha after my mother. I was always looking for the reasoning for… all of this.” She waved her hand in a tight circle towards the ceiling. “But I wasn’t gifted with the curses of Lycaon. I couldn’t move the earth or water in my dreams. I didn’t have the sight, or ability to speak to creatures—” She glanced down at Duck, who was curled in a ball on a large pillow underneath the window. “But then I became a mother, and I had Tasia. Suddenly, I had to believe the lore that seemed nothing more than fiction, passed down and manipulated generation after generation.”

“Tasia went somewhere when she closed her eyes—” ..

“Tasia was able to move the air, so to speak, when she was only a child. It had been generations since a Dream Dancer had been born into this pack. We didn’t know what to do with her at first. The texts written from the times when Dream Dancers were aplenty, well, the pages crumble in your hands when you touch them. She had visions; she could see things no one else could even imagine. But it wasn’t until she turned twenty-one and came into her powers as a wolf that she was able to hone her powers and start to use them with intent.”

“I just don’t understand what this has to do with me—” “What we saw in the circle when you…” She paused, handing me a cup of tea before sitting on the edge of the bed, “You asked something of the Moon Goddess. I don’t know how. And I know you don’t know why but she answered. She showed you,”

“Myla wanted to go back. I was thinking of… I was thinking of home. I wanted to go home. I wondered if I would ever go back after everything that happened.”

“And she showed you,”

“She showed me what would happen if I went back.” My throat tightened around a sob as I spoke, the image I had suppressed creeping back into my memory, A flash of light. My mother’s body on the ground while I knelt by her side, my hand clutching hers as she gasped and took one last breath. Then I was in my wolf form, white fur gleaming in the light of the moon, And I was alone. But chaos was everywhere; fire, destruction. Another war.

*That’s not how I saw it. I saw it as a warning.” Una set her teacup down, her eyes meeting mine.

“What do you mean?”

Una smoothed out the comforter in a motherly fashion, tucking it around my ankles. “You weren’t supposed to be able to do that, you know. To call on her. Only White Queens have that power, those who have already ascended to the throne. You used that power to show you your own path.copy right hot novel pub