Eden Riverwallow's Arc

Chapter 12 of 18

Eden walked home with the empty cup in her hand. The corruption in the woods was already thinning. Dead leaves crumbled to gray dust behind her boots. She should have felt lighter. She did not. She kept hearing him say You are ending me, and hearing herself say I'm letting you stop, and she could not tell if either of them had meant it as love. A black cat sat on her doorstep when she reached the cottage. Sleek, blue-eyed, tail curled around its paws like it had waited a while. It had not been there that morning. Willow drifted down beside it and frowned. "That's not a stray," Willow said. "That's a witness." The cat stood and walked inside ahead of Eden, as if it knew the floor. It jumped onto the table and sat next to a book Eden had never seen before. Heavy. Silver-bound. Her name was pressed into the cover in small letters beneath the words FAMILY HISTORY. Eden set the cup down. Her hand shook once and stopped. "The cottage gave you that," Willow said quietly. Eden opened it. The pages were thin and dry. She turned past names she half-recognized, past her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother. The line kept going back. The cat watched her fingers. She found him four generations deeper. His name written in the same careful hand as the rest. Maleficit Evervood. Married to a woman whose face Eden had seen in an old photograph on her mother's shelf. A daughter listed under them. The daughter's daughter. Down and down, to Eden. She sat on the floor because her knees would not hold. "He was my great-great-great-great-grandfather," she said. The words did not sound like hers. "He knew," Willow whispered. "He knew." Eden pressed her palm flat on the page. "He wanted me on that seat because it was his blood. Not because he loved me. Because I was his." The cat leaned forward and touched its nose to her knuckle. The cottage door opened. Kane stood in it, one hand on the frame, favoring his hurt side. His white hair fell over his eyes. He looked at her face, then at the book, then at the empty cup on the table. "You did it," he said. "He was my grandfather." Her voice cracked. "Kane, he was singing to his own daughter's daughter's daughter. That whole time." Kane crossed the room slowly. He did not touch her. He knelt on the floor across from her and set something on the boards between them. The cracked moon amulet, the one with his hair inside it. He pushed it toward her hand. "He didn't love you," Kane said. "He wanted the line back. That's not the same." "Then what did I give him at the end?" "An out." Kane's tired eyes stayed on hers. "That's mercy. Not love." Eden closed the book. The cat curled against her hip. She picked up the amulet and held it in her fist. Something in her chest settled that had not settled in weeks. It was not the answer she had wanted. It was an answer. She looked at Kane. He did not look away.