Page 26 of April's Fool (Northarbor Coven Book 2)
April Fools?
Damon
What the fuck?
“You knew my mother,” I repeated, my voice sounding numb to my own ears. This entire situation was beyond fucked up. The mess with Basil had been feeling off kilter, with only Mori to keep me grounded. He held my hand as we sat opposite Thyme on one of those ridiculous lounging sofas.
“I did.” Thyme’s gaze searched my face. Was he looking for the traces of the person he once knew?
“What happened to her? Why did she give me up?” Those questions had haunted me my whole life. Every time I left one family to go to the next, I asked myself if there was just something about me that made it easy for people to give up on me.
Until Magnus and Parker, I’d had no one to call family. Now, I had Mori, Cody, Toth, as well as Parker and Gregoris. We seemed to keep finding people and absorbing them into our group. Shifters, demons, a witch-demon hybrid, and me, the human .
Thyme went so still, it looked like he was barely breathing. “Damon, whatever you’re thinking, I swear it wasn’t that. Fern, your mom, loved you so much. All she thought about was you. I—I lost touch with her after you were born. If I’d known sooner, I might have been able to find you.”
It still blew my mind that Thyme was much older than me. He looked to be around twenty-one, with a sweet, innocent face. His ethereal looks hid a lot of pain and secrets. Like knowing my mom.
“How long have you known about who my mom was?”
He studied me again. What was he looking for? The ghost of my mom wasn’t going to suddenly appear! She hadn’t when I’d begged for her to come get me for years after she left me at that office. I didn’t even remember her face, or what she sounded like. My mom was a vague shape, shadows of memories, a life of knowing I’d been loved at one point. It just wasn’t enough for her to keep me.
“When we first met, there was something about you.” He picked up the water as if to take a sip, then set it down. “After the attack, when we touched, I felt a trace of deep magic. This stuff was practically etched on your soul, it was so deep.” Thyme let out a heavy breath. “I pushed it aside, and you,” his eyes met mine, “were careful not to touch me again, so I put it out of my head as residual magic from breaking the portal.”
“That was weeks ago,” Mori said with a frown. I hated that expression on his face. It didn’t belong there.
“I know,” Thyme stated simply. “So I had people look into Damon. It all aligned. Fern, the timeline. It all made sense, but I still didn’t want to believe it.”
“But you believe it now?” I scoffed. “Why now? What’s changed?”
“Basil.” Thyme slid from the seat and shuffled on his knees. He stopped on the floor in front of me. “Damon, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t understand. What does Basil have to do with this?”
“He knew. About you, your mom, my transition. He knew about it all. I thought it was our dad that was the problem, but it was Basil the entire time. Fern knew, and she protected you. It killed her.”
Panic seized my breath. I clutched a hand to my chest, wrinkling my tux. Breath wouldn’t come. “I’m here, Damon,” Mori soothed, his touch calmed me enough to take in much needed air.
“Thyme. What the fuck are you saying?”
The witch looked at me with pity in his gaze from his place at my feet. “I’m saying that you are a witch, Damon. And you’re my brother.”
I shot to my feet, causing Thyme to tumble backwards into the low table. The sound of glasses clinking then shattering followed me as I stalked to the other side of the room, my hands in my hair. I tugged on the sandy blond strands, the bite of pain tethering me to reality. This was wrong. A mistake.
For a minute, the club was silent as they let me stifle the scream working its way up my throat. I worked for control, falling back on my training. Emotions clouded judgment. Those with poor judgment, without all the information, made stupid mistakes and got themselves dead.
Stupid was one thing I wasn’t.
A witch… no… I couldn’t be.
Thyme and Basil were my brothers? I wanted to laugh at the lunacy of the thought. There was no way. Sure, I could have taken after my mother, but we were nothing alike.
A familiar hand rested on my shoulder. Mori turned me to wrap his arms around me. Mori was safety and love. With him near me, everything would be okay. I finally took a full breath .
“I’ve got you, Damon.” He pulled back to meet my eyes. “Whatever you are doesn’t matter to me. Witch, demon, shifter, elf, ogre—“ His lips twitched with a barely suppressed smile.
“Ogre?” My eyebrow raised in question.
“Just one of the many ideas I floated around to explain how special you are.” He punctuated it with a kiss to my forehead. It felt like a balm washing over me. “I honestly thought you were part fae. You’re just so pretty.”
“At this point, I’d take that over this. How can I be related to them? I don’t understand.” I rested my head against his chest. He was in that in between state with only some of his demon features out. I wanted my full demon lover, but that tux he wore was too splendid to ruin with the transformation.
“Right now, we don’t have the full story. Why don’t you come back and listen to Thyme?” I was grateful Mori didn’t call him my brother. “Once we have all the information, we can decide what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
Mori looked at me with sympathy. “Damon, you have magic. You might want to have it for when Basil comes again. If he knows who you are…”
He didn’t finish that sentence. Didn’t have to. There was no way I’d join Basil on his pathetic quest for more power and domination over the witches, shifters and demons. I was an unknown threat. An additional complication, as he’d said.
Fuck!
This was all so messed up.
“Okay,” I said, reaching for his hand.
Together we walked back over to the sofas where Oak and Thyme were in quiet, though heated, conversation. Guess I wasn’t the only one blindsided by the news.
Bitterly, I sat in front of Thyme, waiting for him to destroy all I thought I’d known about my life. At least I knew I had Mori there to pick up the pieces after.
“I’m sorry, Damon. This situation is fucked up. If it wasn’t for Basil recognizing you, I’m not sure I would have told you. Yes, you deserve to know, but I also… well, let’s just say your… aversion to witches has been noticed.”
“You try growing up in some of the homes I did over the years and see how you turn out!” I spat. “It’s not like they put you in therapy, it’s the fucking foster system,” I huffed, settling back against Mori. “Most days I was just grateful for food and a warm bed. None of them cared I was gay, they just were scared of people like you and your brother with your magic taking their control,” I spat bitterly. “Or they were the cast aside ones. So jealous of those with power with theirs taken from them, they taught us to hate you. ”
As an adult, I saw what their hatred was: fear. They were at the bottom of the food chain with no protections against the magic witches could wield against them. Even the ex-witches were vulnerable, making them lash out. I had tried hard to not let my feelings show in my interactions with the witches. They couldn’t help how they were born. The conditioning was hard to shake, though.
Stubbornness had me grasping at straws. “How do I know for sure you’re telling the truth? That I really am your brother.” Accepting that was easier than calling myself a witch. My upbringing had really done a number on me. I was trying, goddammit, this had just been a fucking long emotional day.
“I can take a hair, twine it with mine and do a spell,” Thyme offered.
“Right, that means nothing to me because I don’t know what a non related result would look like.”
Oak held out a freshly plucked hair. “Thyme can demonstrate it with mine. After he proves he’s your brother, I need you to listen to him. I get you’ve been through a lot, but we need to plan. You’ll need to be trained—“
“Woah! Hold on! One thing at a time.”
“Of course!” Thyme said brightly. He did the spell quickly, one of his hairs wrapped around Oak’s dark strand. The light from the magic flared red. “Red is no match. Green is what we’re looking for.”
“Right.” I reached up and pulled at a hair, taking three with it. With one hand, I rubbed the spot as the other passed the hair over.
Thyme repeated the spell, word for word, the same. Green.
Brothers. I’d just gained two, one of which I might have to kill before this was all over. Fratricide wasn’t on my list of reasons for going to hell, just as well I didn’t believe in God.
Wishing this to all have been a dream, I fixed Thyme with a look and said, “Tell me about my mom.”
He quickly complied.
“I met Fern when I was twenty. She was a little older, around twenty-five, I think. She wasn’t part of the coven because her family had been cast out. Her father disagreed with my father about how things should be done. Her father was less powerful than mine. You know how these things go with covens.”
The witch’s nerves were palpable.
“For a long time I’d been struggling with being in a female body. I was powerful, next in line to lead the coven over Basil because of how much power I had. Did you know women generally have more magic?”
I shook my head .
“Our goddess venerates the female form. So you can imagine I was under the stress of being the heir, living under the expectations set for me, and hating what I saw when I looked in the mirror.”
Inside, I felt pity for that young Thyme. With all the struggles he faced just to live his life freely.
“Fern was hanging around with some people I fell in with. We made friends quickly. Because I loved her, just as friends, not more at that point, I begged my father to consider taking her into the coven. Not her parents, though. She would have to cut ties with them. He agreed, and Fern was brought back in.”
After a quick drink, Thyme continued.
“Quickly it became clear that father was attracted to her. She was pretty and her well was deep.” At my frown, he added, “She had a lot of magic.” He continued. “They began an affair. He’d had many by that point, only a couple got pregnant, none of them kept the babies. Later, I found out Basil was threatening them. Scaring them into ending the pregnancies and paying them off. When Fern became pregnant, she came to me. She begged me to help her hide from my father in return for helping me with my transition. She got together another couple of witches she used to hang with, and they did the spell with me.”
I could only imagine my mother, a woman only slightly younger than I was now, taken in by a man much older with so much influence, then hearing the whispers of what Basil had done to others like her. Fern sounded like she had a good heart. She had helped Thyme become his authentic self.
“With a few working the spell, the drain on my magic wasn’t nearly as bad. I’m no slouch in the power department, though I’m nowhere like Poppy and Zinna, like I used to be. Being this,” he pointed down himself, “was worth losing what I gave up.”
“It sucks that there was such a high price.”
“That’s the thing, Damon. Magic always has a price. Depends on if you’re willing to pay it.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.
“We believed no one knew Fern was pregnant. Father was absolutely livid she had helped me transition. He had been dead set against it. For what she had done, he cast her out of the coven. Nearly cast me out, too. I was sent away for a while, so he didn’t have to see me, which suited me fine. I took Fern, and we crossed the country. We were still concerned about Basil, and she began having visions as her pregnancy progressed. When you were born…”
Thyme’s voice cracked.
“Goddess, you were so cute! Fern wouldn’t settle in the hospital. Kept saying we had to leave. Had to bind you. She made me swear I’d never tell a soul until you came to me. We left as soon as we could. Went to Canada for a bit. There, Fern gathered all we needed for the spell.” His face changed. Sadness washed over him. “She was different after you were born, distant. All she could focus on was your safety. She loved you so much. You followed her every move when she was in the room.”
He took a drink of water. “We argued a lot but, eventually, I gave in. We performed the spell on you when you were just a couple of months old. Fern poured so much of herself in there, she was drained for weeks afterwards. It affected her health. I did what I could. It—it wasn’t enough.”
My heart hurt for my mother. For having to make that choice. She really had loved me.
“I got a call when you were five months old and Fern was still recovering. My father was dead, and I needed to return to the coven for the funeral. I couldn’t not go. In my absence and because of my transition, Basil was appointed High Witch.”
Thyme wiped away tears. I frowned.
“I’m not crying for him. These were for Fern.” He wiped some more away. “I loved her and let her down. She was the one that told me to go. I should have gone back to her sooner.”
He twisted his hands in his lap. Oak put a quelling hand over his. Their eyes met, something passing between them .
“By the time I did return, she had left. I looked everywhere for you both but couldn’t find you. So I went back to Northarbor and waited. Then, just three years later, she called. Fern was sick. She was dying. All the while, she had been putting a lock on your magic, hiding every trace of you both. It had drained her, but she said you were essential to defeating Basil. Fern kept laughing, saying she’d hidden you from the wrong one, to be careful of Basil… I thought the spells had driven her mad. The visions she had shown me seemed clear, that it was my dad who was the problem. She should have been free once he died. It only made her worse.
“What I didn’t get was Basil and my dad looked like twins to anyone else. To me, the differences were obvious. Her perceptions colored Fern’s vision. When she saw Basil, she thought it was my father. Our father, I guess.”
“So what happened?” I wanted to know why I was put into foster care.
“I failed her. She asked me to come, to find a new family for you, but Basil was watching me like a hawk. I couldn’t move without him breathing down my neck. The next thing I knew, I was getting a call from a hospital saying Fern had died.”
The room echoed with the silence that followed .
Thyme sniffled. I just felt numb. There were faint stirrings of pity for them both, but that was it.
This story felt like it belonged to a stranger. I guess it did. I never really knew Fern, never knew my mom, I was too young.
“I searched for you. I swear I did. But you were lost in the system and completely human to all tests. I buried Fern and tried to move on with my life. She knew things, though. Her visions had told her what was to come. I didn’t believe her then, I do now. In the notes she left, she told me things.”
He launched himself at my feet again. This time he took hold of my hands. A sudden golden flare erupted between our joined hands, bathing the entire club with its blinding light.
A pain shot through me, sharp and piercing my very soul.
Then a click.
A current tried to sweep me under. It felt vast. Too vast.
It was over in just a moment, leaving me panting for breath.
The wave ebbed, waiting.
Panic overtook me at the alien feeling inside. I felt the power inside me, ready to spring forth.
Protect.
Guard .
Safety.
I clung to the last feeling with everything I had. With my last conscious thought, I was gone.