Fear gripped me as I realized I didn’t. I hated it, in fact.
“You want to throw it far away.”
My arms shook as I clenched my hands down on the grip.
“You need to throw it.”
This was a thousand times worse than Grimm compelling me. That felt like someone else moving my arms and hands. This was different. She spoke of need, and I felt it. I threw the gun with all my strength, flinging it away. I swung at her with my fist.
“Back,” she said, and I was flung through the air, landing in the pile of debris, where my purse overturned. Something streaked through the air, whistling like an incoming missile. Two Harakathin, one golden white and one sparkling purple. They flew at her, biting and tearing and scratching.
I rolled to my feet in the grass and a gleam caught my eye. In my purse had been the Root of Lies. In my world, it was an ebony claw like tree roots, but here it was dull bronze. I touched it. It ran like liquid in my fingers, becoming a curved dagger. A weapon. I picked up the Root and held it against my arm. While I held it, her power over me seemed weaker.
Fairy Godmother crossed her arms before her. “Away.” My harakathin were flung out of sight, but I knew they’d be back. I stood and walked toward her. “Yes. Come to me, darling.” She reached out to embrace me. I flipped the dagger over and sliced up and back, attempting to cut her throat. On the upstroke I missed her artery by a centimeter and the downstroke cut her cheek clean through her lip so her teeth showed.
“Down!” she screamed.
The world crushed me to my knees. It felt like the sky lay across my back. She bled, and the drops turned to Glitter as they fell. “Never has one dared to strike at me in my home. Never has my blood been shed. You will wish for death, and never find it granted.”
The Root of Lies lay a few feet from me, the blade writhing as it drank the fairy blood. I saw two comets come shrieking through the sky, blessings and curse returned, but they bounced off of her like she was stone.
“I will devour your curse children later, but first I must complete my promise to you. I owe you your third wish.”
I laughed at her.
“You don’t think I can hurt you more,” she said, and she waved her hand. The sky became a mirror, and I looked out at the main hall of the castle. Ari walked like a sleepwalker, carrying the Seal before her, right through the middle of the hall. Wolves lay shredded or burned, and only the armored knights remained. Liam tore the head from an armored knight as it approached Ari, and sent a burst of flame at the others.
“I can be her.” She shifted, her face running like wax until Ari stood before me. She spoke in Ari’s voice. “I can be your friend, darling. Or I can be him.” Now Liam stood on the grass plane. “I will sweep you off your feet. You are mine now. You agree to it.”
As she spoke the words I felt something snap into place between us. A feeling I recognized from the night I was sixteen. I forced my image of her, demanding she appear as the gray queen, and she did.
Blessings, I said in my mind. Their faces snapped to me, watching with eager round eyes. They could hear my thoughts, something I probably should have realized. Please, take the Root of Lies and stab her with it. Beatus immediately flew to it and seized it, but before he could turn around, he was tackled by Consecro.
“Your playthings amuse me,” said Godmother. “As does your request to them.” She could hear my thoughts, which definitely was not good.
She held out her hand along mine, and beckoned to them. “We will play a game. Let them decide.”
The harakathin rolled in the grass, biting and squealing and screaming until Consecro used the dagger like a club, bashing Beatus. He limped over, the dagger in his hands like a broadsword.
Please, I thought, please let it be her. You are mine. He kept his little snout down, and he refused to look at me as he approached. He raised the dagger, a gleeful smile on his face. And he brought it down, driving it through my palm.
Pain shot through me and up my arm like I had never known. As my blood touched it, the dagger changed back, becoming the claw root again. It clasped my fingers like an old friend, letting my blood dribble onto it.
“I have seen your desires,” said Godmother, “and I fulfill them. I grant you your third wish. You will never be alone again.” I felt her presence descend on me like rain, pattering into my heart and mind, pushing on me, and all the while the claw writhed in my hand. As it did, an idea took form. I pushed it away, refusing to let it take focus.
I shaped my mind, calling on all the need in my heart, to see her as I needed her to be, and she changed. “Yes,” she said, “yes.” Her gray hair became black and her pale skin tan and the smell of the rain became the scent I knew from a hundred nights of reading with her or doing homework. It was the smell when she hugged me when I was sick, and when I opened my eyes, Fairy Godmother was gone. I stood with my Mom.
I gripped the Root of Lies in my hand as she hovered over me, overpowering me. Becoming me.
“Ask,” she said, feeling the question that came to me every time I saw Mom.
I waited, waited until I could feel her taking over my thoughts. I finally asked the question I knew I always had.
“Mom, do you love me?”
She breathed out a scent of warmth and kindness I’d never known. I knew the truth.
“Of course I do.”
There was one heartbeat of peace, one moment of silence, and I felt the Root tear in to me. Touching the Seal felt like electric death, and I thought I’d felt the worst I could. All the pain of six years, all the broken bones and stitches, it was nothing. The Root of Lies shot up through my skin, tearing through my arm and into her. She screamed and fought, but it held her as tightly as I did, and the thorns cut into her lungs, choking her screams into whistles. Still it grew, curling around her and through her. Thorns sliced into my scalp where our heads touched.
She writhed and twisted as the thorns consumed her. Glitter ran from her like blood as the thorns burst through her skin and thickened, blackened. The thorn branches holding me to Fairy Godmother crackled and broke. I collapsed forward, and lay in the grass, alone with pain and blood.
Something bumped into my chest, and I realized Beatus and Consecro stood before me. I willed them to come, and they did. First Beatus, then Consecro, they snuggled up next to me. In this world, I could feel them. I put my good hand on Consecro’s head and held him close. The sun set for the final time on this world, and without Godmother I could never leave. I curled up with my harakathin and waited for the end.
I FELT HIM coming before I saw him, a rumbling like an earthquake, a light shining like the first sunrise on earth. His light swept over me, shining like a spotlight, so bright it blinded me. In the light, I saw Fairy Godmother was gone. The Root of Lies had grown through her, tearing her apart, replacing every piece of her with thorns. Where she had stood, a thorn tree loomed, bent into the shape of a woman. She was dead, and the Root was destroyed. A ball of blazing light settled before me, brilliant like the rainbow, brighter than the sun.
“Marissa, my dear, what did I tell you about mirrors?”
When I looked at Grimm, there was this odd moment. See, I’d never seen him from the waist down, so I didn’t have an image of what he looked like. He looked like a butler. He looked at his legs. “I had hoped you would give me a more striking figure.”
“It suits you.” I began to shiver violently, though I no longer felt the cold. Thorns stuck out through my skin in places, and my hand was a pile of ruined flesh where the Root had grown through it.
Grimm reached down and took my good hand. “This is my home now, and in it, you are what I make you.”