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“What did the white witch say?”

“She’s the one who told me everything… about my actual mother. She said I was born of magic, harvested for youth and hunted till death.”

“That sucks.”

“Yea. I thought I could live peacefully on my own, but she has already come after me twice. She won’t stop. Every second I’m alive, she grows weaker.”

“So she harvests her children to keep herself young?”

“Yea.”

“She sounds worse than my mom…”

“Who is, again?” Snow playfully pushed.

I cocked my head to look at her. “Not saying. We are here to help you out- to teach you the ways of the mage.”

Fortunately, she didn’t push it much further. My mother was not a good person. She embodied evil in its darkest form, something perhaps Snow could relate to. With the help of several witches, I was able to trap her. Perhaps we could do the same with Snow’s mother. “So do you know how to defeat the dark Queen?”

“I haven’t come up with anything yet. She has twelve other children that are under eighteen. She had thirteen, but one of the times she tried to kill me, someone had apparently killed a child because she felt it. She yelled out as if it hurt her. If I kill her, then a child would die and if I kill her children, it would make her weaker… but that’s not me. I can’t do that. I can’t kill her twelve times if I wanted to and I can’t be responsible for killing those children or even helping to kill them. I have to find another way.”

I wanted to tell her about my mother, but talking about her was still too much for me. No one here knows who I really am, or who my mother is. I left that all behind me and hope every day that it stays behind me. The only way we could capture my mother was by her shifting. We knew she would shift to defend herself, because she thinks she is most powerful in that form, but we were prepared and used it against her. That half second between the transition is when she is at her weakest.

I shook my head to clear it. I needed to stop thinking about her. I needed to focus on Snow right now.

“Ok. So let’s teach you some magic.”

She smiled and popped up and down in her seat.

Chapter thirty-five

Garrison - Rabbit Duty

Icouldsmellhimwalking up before he got to the door.

The door swung open and Gage walked in.

I turned to him when he entered the house. “Hey man. Where did you go yesterday? I tried finding you, but I lost you in the woods.”

He casually glanced over at me but didn’t speak, closing the door behind him.

I popped up from the couch and followed him upstairs to his bedroom. “What’s going on?”

“I thought I made it pretty clear the first time you asked a question, and I didn’t answer, that I didn’t want to talk about it. Following me up to my room and harassing me when I’m trying to obviously get away from you is a good way to find your head smashed through a wall.”

“Ok brother.” I said, holding up my hands.

“Fucking hell!” He spun around. “Stop with the brother bullshit. We aren’t brothers. Maybe by blood, but the men in this house are more my brothers than you will ever be.”

“That’s not fair. I thought we were moving past that.”

“What the hell Garrison? Just because you want something to be true doesn’t mean that it is. Just because I’m talking to you and allowed you to stay here for a short amount of time while you figure out how to get yourself out of the situation you put yourself in, don’t mistake that for brotherly bonding.” He walked into his room and slammed the door.

I nodded in the air and walked downstairs.

I thought we had made some progress in our relationship, but I guess not. His words stung a little, but I tried not to let them get to me. It was obvious he was working through something, so I just needed to let him vent.

“Hey.” Dresden said, stirring something in a pot.