“Show me,” the crone demanded, no longer bothering to hide her eagerness. “Let me see, then I will choose.”
Serrik reached into his chest—not metaphorically, but by physically pressing his hand through his own flesh as if it were merely an illusion. When he withdrew it, his fingers clutched something that pulsed with a dark, iridescent light, like oil on water.
“The Web.” Serrik’s tone was once more impassive and as cold as ice. “A prison between worlds. A masterpiece of my creation. Made to please her—made to serveher.Made…to imprisonher.”
Oh.
Oh, shit.
“I beseeched her to come and behold the beautiful magnum opus I had built in her honor. And lo, she appeared, for the first time before me. Her own son. One she had abandoned to the cruelty of the fae since infancy. I saw her there, standing before me, a woman draped in black feathers, with eyes that held the violence of a thousand battlefields.”
The memory between his fingers flickered, showing glimpses of a towering figure, beautiful and terrible in equal measure.
“She spoke only three words to me,” Serrik continued. “This is necessary.She pushed me within the mirror, and shattered the glass. I screamed for her, begged her not to leave me. But she turned away without looking back.”
The crone’s eyes were fixed on the memory like a starving man looking at a turkey dinner.
Ava shook her head. He tried to lock up the Morrigan in a magical prison…only to be locked up instead and abandoned. It was hard to know who was really at fault. “And you’ve never seen her again?”
“No. Never.” His eyes met Ava’s. “That is the sum total of what I know of my mother first-hand. One memory of abandonment.”
“Abandonmentthat followed betrayal.”The crone extended her hand. “This memory for all of hers. That is your offer?”
“It is.” Serrik’s voice was firm. “A memory of the Morrigan herself. Something few living beings possess.”
The tension in the room built as the crone considered. Finally, she nodded once, sharply. “Agreed.”
Before Ava could speak, Serrik had placed the dark, pulsing memory into the crone’s outstretched hand. The moment it touched her skin, she gasped, her eyes going wide and then vacant as she experienced what he had offered.
“The Web,” she whispered, her voice distant. “I see it now. What it truly is…”
Serrik turned to Ava while the crone was lost in the memory. “Your memories remain your own,” he said quietly. “All of them.”
“Why?” Ava asked, her voice barely audible.
“My only memory of my mother is a painful one. You…” He glanced to the corpse in the bed. “Seem to value yours more than that. I will remember the events as an abstract, as a story told to me. I have no need to see the events play out in my nightmares.”
He had nightmares.
That…was weirdly comforting.
The crone’s eyes cleared, the memory having run its course. She clutched it tightly, as if afraid it might be taken back. “Our business here is concluded. The girl keeps her memories.”
And with that, she turned and faded into the shadows, leaving Ava alone with Serrik and the body of her mother.
Ava studied Serrik for a long moment, as if seeing him for the first time. She asked the question that had been burning in her mind again. “Who are you,really?”
Serrik was looking at her mother’s corpse with all the emotion of a statue. “Keep your memories close, Ava Cole. Even the painful ones. They are the proof that you were loved.”
“You knew this was going to happen.”
“I did. I did not know which memories the crone would take. I did not think you would have much of value.”
“Oh,fuck you.”Well, there went her language again. “Much of v—justfuck you.”She sighed. “I just?—”
Serrik was gone. Blinking out of existence, like he’d never been there at all. It left her alone in the dream with her grief, her memories, and the faint, lingering sense that she had witnessed something far beyond her understanding—something ancient and unfinished.
Something she had the feeling that she was now very much stuck in the middle of.
