Page 65

Chapter 65

Saelyn

I WOULD BE SEVENTEEN IN SEVEN DAYS, AND I GLARED AT THE CHECKLIST I’D WRITTEN

Back in my room, the Blightress flicked her hand from mine, crossing to the other side of my bed. Her spectral form stood behind my past self sitting at my desk, trying to fill the checklist of tasks to be completed before the party. I’d been stuck on the invitations, hesitating sending them because I still had not told my mother what I had planned.

“ Your mother told you of the night of your birth? ” she asked, tracing a ghostly hand down my hair at the desk.

I stepped further into my room. “ And of some…events that led up to it. ”

“ Events ? ” she cackled. “ Such as what? That your parents came to that cave to kill me? That I murdered my sister to regain the power I’d given her? That I had grown the heart I’d ripped out of my chest years before into something that fueled me? ” Anger flashed through her eyes. “ You speak of the life I have given you, and yet, you do not know the life we could have had together. ”

I heard my mother’s knock, and I moved out of the way as she came inside, passing through me slightly.

“ You are not my mother, ” I replied softly, watching the woman who was as she told my past self that she already knew about the party. I had rushed to her from the desk, so grateful she wasn’t angry.

“ I could have been, ” the Blightress replied just as softly.

“ Do you know just how much you are loved?” my mother had asked me.

“ I could have been her mother. I should have had her to hold like this. ” She gazed longingly as my mother and I embraced. I remembered the moment as a happy one.

The Blightress reached out her hand for me to take, but I watched in the mirror, gazing upon my past self who rushed to the desk, excited to show off her colored banners. She looked up to see me in the mirror’s reflection.

She looked into my sorrowful face in the mirror.

I did not think this was working.

I did not see a change of heart from the Blightress .

Suddenly , the Blightress came into focus in the mirror, taking my hand, and my past self startled before the Blightress called my name. “ Saelyn . ”