And why was she sucking up to her royal bitchiness?
Oh, that’s right. She’s my step mother too.
I couldn’t stop the giggle that escaped through my lips at that thought.
The barren step mother at that!
I was in every bad human fairy tale mother had ever read me. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty... Hopefully Charity didn’t turn into a dragon anytime soon.
I turned my head away, trying to get a hold of my ridiculousness. I was going a little hysterical.
“What are you doing here, Mallory?” Charity asked.
“I... I came to help, if I can. Ava has been staying with me for the last few days, and she has been talking to this locket about her father and all sorts of strange things.”
She held my necklace up and I scowled at her. “That’s mine,” I snapped.
Charity took it with a rather triumphant smile. “What is this Ava?” she asked, each word drawled out.
“It’s my mother’s locket,” I said. At least I didn’t have to lie about it. “She gave it to me the day she died.”
Charity raised an eyebrow. “Hmmm... and is that all? Or does it contain more secrets than that?” She conjured a table and waved Tavlor over to her. “Make it reveal its secrets.”
She practically pushed him towards the table and his gaze met mine.
Oh, please don’t.
But what could he do? And would he help me if he could?
Tavlor waved his hand over the locket and it suddenly opened.
I gasped, tears springing to my eyes. “Please don’t hurt her! Please!” My voice reached a screaming pitch. I didn’t realize a sound like that could come out of me..
Tavlor looked at me and nodded once, as though trying to tell me not to worry. But my heart was in my throat as a projected image of my mother leapt into the room for a single moment, and vanished back into the locket.
Tavlor picked the locket up and handed it back to Charity. “There is nothing special about this locket, other than the love for its original owner.”
I held my breath as I looked between him and Charity. Had he just lied to her?
“There’s no magic, or hidden charms?” Charity asked, and I could hear the suspicious tones in her voice.
“No. None. If Ava spoke to the locket it is out of... sentiment.” He said the last words with icy disgust and I sobbed with relief.
“Please give it back to me,” I said. “It’s all I have left of her.”
Tavlor took the locket from Charity before the bitch could say anything, brought it over to me and placed it around my neck.
He didn’t say anything, but the tension in the room increase.
I turned to the other people of the Council. “When my mother died, we lost everything. I didn’t know... she didn’t tell us... but her magic had created our whole world. Our clothes, our books, our... servants. The house. When she died, everything....” I swallowed hard as tears clogged my throat, my nose, my eyes. “Everything disappeared.”
Charity shrugged. “That’s what happens when you die. Your magic disappears.”
“But I didn’t know that!” I practically screamed at her. “My sisters and I... have nothing.”
There was a shift in the room, I felt it the way I can fell people’s emotions some times. An empathy, a love, a sadness for what I’d gone through.
But my shackles didn’t come off, so I simply went quiet and wiped my eyes with my bound hands.