Page 3 of The Beginning (Covert Moon, #1)

Marigold

The Human Realm

* * *

I should have known something was brewing when Calyx asked me to spend the night last night.

She didn't normally ask that of me—she knew better than anyone that things between Mother and me were.

.. intense, to put it lightly. Our family home had become a minefield over the years, each room holding memories of slights and disappointments that cut deeper than I would ever admit out loud.

The grand foyer where Mother had once told me my magic was "disappointingly weak" for a Blaine.

The library where she'd compared my spell-casting unfavorably to Calyx's natural talent.

Even the kitchen, where I'd overheard her telling a friend that she "worried about Marigold's future prospects. "

"I know it's your birthday, and I know Mom can be a pain, but I'm here, and we're the best of family, so you have to come!" Calyx's voice bubbled through the phone with that particular enthusiasm she got when she was trying to convince me of something.

The phrase best of family was her spin on ‘best of friends,’ only better. She sounded so earnest it was impossible to refuse. "And happy almost-twenty-one! Please, Marigold? I want to celebrate your big one with you before you move away forever and I never see you again!"

The dramatic flair was pure Calyx. She had a gift for making everything sound like the end of the world, even when we both knew I had no plans to leave or move anywhere.

Well, not anywhere far, anyway. Even though once I turned twenty-one, I could.

The thought had crossed my mind more than once lately—packing up my little apartment and finding somewhere new, somewhere the Blaine family name didn't carry weight and expectations.

And it wasn't that I was unhappy about being asked—not at all.

In fact, the opposite was true. It was nice to be remembered, to have someone who actually cared that I was about to hit a milestone birthday.

It felt good to have a fuss made over me, even if it was just by one person.

My sister's call was like a small bright spot in what had been shaping up to be a thoroughly depressing day.

If I was being honest, it had been a long week.

Actually, more like a long month. I hadn't been sleeping well, and night after night of restless dreams was starting to catch up with me in ways that went beyond simple tiredness.

I found myself jumping at shadows, my nerves frayed to the point where the slightest unexpected noise made my heart race.

For the past several weeks, I'd been chased by these unsettling dreams—or rather, variations of the same dream that visited me just about every night.

They snuck in like thieves, disrupting what little peace I could find in sleep, and their effects even crept into my thoughts while I was awake.

The dreams had a sticky quality to them, clinging to my consciousness long after I'd opened my eyes and tried to shake them off.

The Somnias potion I'd bought from Janie at the apothecary downtown hadn't done anything for the dreams. I'd followed the instructions exactly—three drops in warm milk before bed, consumed while focusing on peaceful thoughts.

Nothing. If anything, the dreams had gotten more vivid, more invasive.

To say it had been exhausting would be an understatement.

I felt like I was living half my life in a world I couldn't control, at the mercy of whatever dark corner of my subconscious was manufacturing these nightly torments.

No matter how the dreams began—and they varied wildly in their opening scenes—the progression was always eerily similar.

Sometimes I'd start out running for my life through empty city streets, my footsteps echoing off buildings while something unseen pursued me.

Other times I'd find myself trapped in a dark alley where the walls seemed to close in with each passing second.

The setting might be a graveyard where the headstones shifted and moved when I wasn't looking directly at them, or I'd be lost in thick, sticking fog that muffled sound and made every direction look the same.

But regardless of how they began, the end of each dream was always, always the same.

I would find myself on my knees, gasping for breath that wouldn't come, my body wracked with excruciating pain that felt more real than any dream had a right to feel.

And there, towering over me like some dark sentinel, would be the mystery man, looking down at me with an expression I could never quite read.

His features were always obscured, hidden in shadow as if light itself bent away from his face.

All except for his eyes, which were hooded beneath dark, heavy brows.

Whoever he was, he had the most wonderful, warm, dreamy green eyes I'd ever seen—awake or asleep.

They were the kind of eyes that should have been comforting, that should have made me feel safe.

But they didn't.

As nice as his eyes were, they did nothing to quell the feelings my dream-self was always having in those final moments: dread that turned my insides to water and made me feel hollow and weightless.

Heart-pounding fear that seemed black and endless, like staring into an abyss that stared back.

Sweaty panic that rattled my ribcage and made my breathing feel shallow and shaky, as if my lungs had forgotten how to work properly.

There wasn't much about the dreams that made a lot of sense when I tried to analyze them in the cold light of day.

The scenes jumped around without logic, the timeline felt fractured, and the details were always just slightly wrong, the way dream-logic tends to be.

But there was one thing that came through with crystal clarity every single time: someone wanted me dead.

The certainty of it was absolute, undeniable.

Was it the man with the beautiful green eyes?

I couldn't tell. He never revealed his intentions, never spoke, never moved beyond that silent watching.

His face remained a mystery while his eyes bore into mine with an intensity that left me feeling exposed and vulnerable.

I had no idea what he wanted or why he appeared in my dreams night after night, because it all came to me in pieces—fragments that refused to form a complete picture no matter how hard I tried to fit them together.

Unfortunately, the dreams scared me out of sleeping.

I'd taken to staying awake as long as possible, drinking coffee late into the night and finding excuses to keep busy until exhaustion finally dragged me under.

Even then, I'd wake up multiple times, heart pounding, checking the shadows in my room for threats that weren't there.

But none of that was my sister's fault, and there was no point in explaining to her the absinthe-eyed man who'd been keeping me awake every night.

How could I tell her that I was afraid to close my eyes?

That I'd started leaving lights on like a child afraid of monsters under the bed?

She'd worry, and Calyx had enough to deal with living in that house full-time.

So while I detested going back to the house I'd grown up in—the place that held more painful memories than happy ones—I was truly grateful that Calyx had called. Her voice was like a lifeline, pulling me out of the dark spiral of my thoughts.

It was, after all, my birthday. My twenty-first birthday, which should have been a celebration, a milestone for a witch, a day when family gathered to mark the passage into awakening and true magical adulthood.

Not that my parents were doing a damn thing to celebrate. Hell, to them, it wasn't even a day worth taking note of, unless you considered my mother's social calendar more important than her own daughter's major birthday. Which, apparently, she did.

The indifference shouldn't have stung anymore.

I was old enough to know better than to expect anything different from them.

But birthdays had a way of making me feel like a child again, hoping for something that was never going to come.

I'd spent the morning trying not to check my phone every five minutes, waiting for a call or text that I knew wouldn't arrive.

Instead of having a celebration for their oldest daughter, my parents had chosen to host a dinner party for my mother's cousin, who also happened to be the Governor, and his political cronies.

The timing couldn't have been coincidental—Mother was too calculating for that.

This was deliberate, a message as clear as if she'd written it in the sky: your big moment doesn't matter.

You don’t matter.

My birthday aside, the party left my sister to fend for herself in a house full of strangers and political schmoozing.

We were never included in my mother's party plans unless she felt it would help her image politically, which wasn't often.

When we were little girls, Calyx and I were props to be wheeled out when needed and hidden away when we might interfere with the adults' important business. But that time had long since passed.

Calyx being on her own wasn't a big deal—she was seventeen, after all, practically an adult herself—but she was still my little sister.

Despite everything, I felt protective of her.

She normally came to my place when our parents hosted an event, partly to escape the chaos and partly because anything beat being at Blaine Mansion during one of Mother's productions.

And that went double when there was a political event involved.

The staff would be running around frantically, trying to anticipate her every need before she could find fault.

The house would be filled with the kind of people who measured their words carefully and smiled without warmth, all of them trying to gain favor or position.

The air itself seemed to thicken with pretense and calculation.