be.” He stared at me for a moment as though trying to figure out how to handle me. “I know it’s hard to believe that Erna did that to me, that she could have had bad intentions all along.”
I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to toss out the logic that said that one of the two truths had to be correct—my parents and Dean were lying or Erna was. Despite the fact that I’d been with Erna for a decade, it was impossible for me to believe my parents were bad.
If I had to choose which world to live in, it would always be the one where my parents loved me.
“How did it happen? The stone in your head coming out, that is?”
“She was only supposed to take the stones out of your dads, but apparently the stones didn’t want to come out,” Dean explained. “She got angry. Very angry, and she forgot to focus the magic. I was on the periphery and the one she’d put in me came out. I didn’t even realize it had happened. I thought I got hit with some flying dirt or something. Kelsey found it and I’m glad she did because I felt different, but I didn’t know why.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how I don’t like tea when you make it?”
It had always seemed weird to me. “I fix it exactly the way she does. I don’t know why…of course. You would drink it because she made it. But Dean, that doesn’t mean she wants to hurt you. What she did was wrong, and she can’t be allowed to do it again, but you have to know that her people consider men to be lesser beings. That’s wrong, too, but I’m worried she did it because she thought we couldn’t trust you in the beginning.”
“Or she did it because she knew she already controlled you,” Dean said softly. “I was the one thing you insisted on, so she found a way to control me, too.”
“Why would she do that? What does she get out of it?” I’d been thinking about it since that moment she’d torn me from my mother. “We haven’t exactly had comfortable lives the last ten years. She could have settled down somewhere. With the strength of her magic, she could have made a comfortable living on any number of planes.”
“I don’t think that’s what she wanted.”
The realization of what he was saying washed over me. “You’ve been in her head. You got through whatever spell she used to hide us.”
A hint of confidence curled up his lip. “I did. Well, I got a glimpse when she tried to take you away in the forest. You’re right about how powerful her magic is. But now that my head is clear I have to wonder. She was the sixth of seven daughters, the weakest of her kin. I’ve studied up on Arete. I can’t imagine witches so powerful that Erna is their weakest link wouldn’t be on the ruling council. Yet according to Erna they were struggling to work their way up.”
“She hid her power for a long time.” At least that was what she’d told me. “She was afraid her sisters would try to take it if they realized her trials had brought forth more power.”
“Or she found a way to steal someone else’s.”
I put a hand on the charm. “How would she do it?”
“I know how I would do it,” Dean began. “I would siphon it off you. If what Charlotte says is correct and it can’t truly be contained, then that magic needs somewhere to go, and why shouldn’t it go to her?”
“Then why wouldn’t she use it? Why live in a ramshackle brugh? Why give up all her comforts? Never once has she suggested we settle down somewhere and live out our lives. We’ve struggled and been in dangerous spots.”
“I don’t know because I only had a brush against her mind before Marcus managed to get inside.”
Marcus wouldn’t have been able to complete Dean’s task. “His powers don’t work the same way yours do. He wasn’t trying to read her. He was only trying to get her to let go of me. What did you see?”
His eyes were suddenly on the darkness of the forest. “I saw a second face, something shadowy and frightening. But that didn’t scare me as much as the word she meditates on. It’s always there, always in her mind, her one goal.”