Immediately, my arms go cold, but the scar on my upper arm tingles and aches as I try to catch my breath. I was so close, but . . . “It’s no good.” Tears burn at my eyes.
They were wrong about me—all of them were wrong. I don’t have this in me. Or if I do, it’s not enough.
Rowan shouts in rage, and I turn in time to see him barely beating back one of the monsters. He’s panting, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort of the fight, and I can see he’s tired. Sweat has begun to bead on his brow, and his muscles are already drawn with the exertion. The beasts are toying with him, wearing him down, and at this rate, he won’t last long.
He will die because of you—because he chose you and you failed him, a voice deep inside me taunts. And then you will be alone, and you will die as well.
I have to try again, but as I press my hands to the rock, I know deep down, where you know things without having to think about them, it will be useless.
Because you know what must be done, the voice whispers. Because you know what your mother did to you.
“No,” I say, grabbing the scar on my arm, even as the terrible truth settles over me like a shroud.
What was it my mother told me after they found me in the woods—after she ordered me to forget what had happened out there?
The clearing, the monsters, even the sound of Rowan’s exertion as he tries to battle the monsters falls away, and I can hear my mom’s words clearly, echoing in the far recesses of my mind. This will never happen again.
And with them comes the memory of the sharp surprise of her fear and an even sharper pain. An unbelievable pain, because how could my mother have hurt me like that? I was just a child, and even as it was happening—even as the silver blade bit into my skin, I couldn’t believe my mom was capable of hurting me like that. Even as the blood trickled down my numb arm, the younger me couldn’t accept what she did.
I don’t even need the Dark Ones now—the memories that have lain buried and suppressed for so long rise up like a wave and overtake me. The look on my mother’s face when she collected me from the police station that night wasn’t relief—it was terror. Not for me or for what had happened to me out there in the darkness. No. Even my five-year-old self understood she was afraid of me.
My breath rushes out of me at the memory of her blue-gray eyes nervous, fearful as the police explained where they’d found me and what I had told them. How long have I tried to forget the memory of that night? How long have I been trying to earn back her love—to earn a place in her life—by being the perfect daughter?
By doing what she commanded and forgetting. By always doing everything she asked of me.
Not five feet away, Rowan is being driven back against the rock by one of the beasts, and when it accomplishes its final victory over him, he’ll be gone. And then it will turn on me, and any chance of saving Olivia, of getting back to my world, will be lost—all the human children in this world will be lost right along with me. All because I’ve been too afraid to do what needs to be done.
I remember now what my mother did that night when I was barely five years old, and I know how to fix it.
In this world, power requires sacrifice, Pan had once told me. The pain of his Queen carving into his skin had given him tremendous power. But my mother had done the opposite.
Pain. Sacrifice. Power. The words come together to form a terrible truth.
When we’d come home that night, my mom had started packing, but not before she took me into the kitchen and held ice to my arm. Not before she sharpened the point of a knife and opened my arm so she could place a sliver of metal beneath my skin. A rune, a protective spell against the voice in the darkness that called to me. A defense against what I was. What I am.
Because she was afraid of me.
I look at the dagger in my hand and I don’t let myself think about how it will feel. I look at the scar I’ve lived with for so long, and without any more hesitation, I press the sharp tip of the blade into my skin.
The angel smiled at the boy, her eyes hard and unforgiving. He knew that must mean something, though he could not think what it could be. There was a dull ache behind his eyes. There was something he should be thinking of, remembering. But he couldn’t imagine— “And if I want to go back?” he asked. “There is only forward for you now,” the angel said. She held out her hand again. . . .
Chapter 33
I DON’T FEEL THE PAIN at first. Until the blood wells from where the point of the knife has sliced into my skin, I don’t feel anything at all. It’s like a paper cut you don’t notice until it starts to bleed—and sting.