forward. She looked as fragile as she always did, but now she appeared weak, as if she could be broken. “Please, Ronan,” she said, the words clearly an effort. “Leave and forget that you saw me here.”
Anger was gradually replaced with worry, and Ronan’s eyes and mind refocused. He was looking at his mother, but she was not the same. “Mum, what’s wrong?”
Finally she looked up. The unexpected presence of her son and his companion was almost too much for Edwige to bear. She felt her body wobble, and she leaned against the door, not knowing where she found the strength not to fall into a heap on the floor. Placing her hand on her hip she tried to capture a pose from her past, but it only served to remind Ronan how small she had become since the last time he had seen her.
“Mum, please, what’s going on?” Ronan pleaded. “You don’t look right.”
When Ronan reached forward to grab his mother’s arm, Edwige lurched back and stumbled awkwardly until she grabbed the back of the couch. Ronan was about to run to his mother’s aid, but Vaughan entered from the bedroom, and the realization hit him—his mother had left her children to live with one of Them. “What the bloody hell is going on here?!” Ronan screamed.
Vaughan ignored Ronan’s question and the boy himself. “Would you mind closing the door, son?”
he asked. “Don’t want to give the neighbors a show.”
Absentmindedly, Michael closed the door behind him. When he turned around he saw Edwige’s prized painting hanging on the wall across from the sofa. Clearly she wasn’t just visiting his father’s apartment—she was planning on living here for a while. The realization was as shocking to Michael as it was to Ronan, but he remained silent, not knowing what to say. Ronan didn’t have that problem.
“Answer me!”
As if pushed back by the force of her son’s words, Edwige slumped onto the arm of the couch. She only moved, flinched was more like it, when Vaughan placed his hand on her shoulder. “Your mother made me a very happy man and moved in with me.”
The clock on the wall ticked, the blinds tapped against the kitchen window courtesy of a restless breeze, but there was no other sound in the apartment. Until Ronan felt that if he didn’t scream he would lose his mind.
“You’ve abandoned your children! You’ve ignored me for months! And all because you’re living with this ... thing!”
Vaughan took a step forward in an attempt to defend his significant other. Edwige, however, preferred not to be rescued. She held up her hand, which looked slight against Vaughan’s chest, as a silent request that he allow her son to vent, say whatever he needed to say, no matter how ugly the words might sound. Reluctantly, Vaughan agreed. But it didn’t mean that he would remain quiet. “You should watch how you talk to your mother,” Vaughan reprimanded.
The only reason Ronan didn’t lunge at Vaughan was because he felt Michael’s hand on his arm.
They hadn’t come here to incite violence; they had come here searching for peace. Granted the rules had changed when Edwige opened the door, but still these were their parents, and wasn’t it some consolation to have finally found Edwige? She wasn’t dead; she wasn’t lost forever; she wasn’t taken from Ronan like Michael’s mother was; she was still alive, and in time their relationship could be repaired. Michael knew that Ronan couldn’t see that now; he was too consumed with shock and anger.
The best thing Michael could do was get him to leave, get him far away from the mother he had been desperately searching for.
“I think we should go,” Michael said softly.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Vaughan replied. “It really makes me so ... bloody happy to see you again.”
Michael had no idea how he felt. There was a part of him that was indeed happy to see his father again, but finding out that he was living with Ronan’s mother, that maybe he was in love with her, had turned things around, changed things so drastically. He was filled with so many feelings, he was almost numb. He nodded his head, heard himself mumble something, and felt his hand tug at Ronan’s arm to get him to leave.
“Michael’s right,” Edwige said. “You should go.”
It wasn’t going to be that easy. “Not until you tell me why you’ve abandoned your children!” Ronan demanded. “This is not how we act! We’re not like Them!”
Before Vaughan could move to defend his race, Edwige stood in between her lover and her son. In between the two robust figures, she looked like a porcelain doll that had been tossed aside and had lain dormant for years. “You’re better off without me,” she answered. “You don’t need me anymore.”
Michael shuddered at the sound of Edwige’s voice. It was so fragile, so lost, it sounded just like his mother’s when she would shut down. Michael looked at Edwige closer and saw that she had some of the same physical characteristics that Grace had when she was depressed and despondent. He also knew from experience how quickly depression could turn into rage. Ronan was about to get his first lesson.
“You mean you don’t need us!” Ronan shouted back.
“No, I don’t!” Edwige shouted, her voice finally reclaiming some of its old thunder. “I don’t need to have my children scampering at my feet, begging for my attention, tugging me to look at them when I should be looking at myself!” Edwige paused to take a breath and watch the color drain from Ronan’s face. “I have spent more than enough time being mother, father, protector, problem solver, nursemaid, fool! I am done with all that, do you hear me?! I want to live my life, not yours! And this is the life that I’ve chosen!”
Edwige shook violently, but no one could tell if it was because her tirade had weakened her or had reintroduced her to her celebrated strength. The rush of excitement distracted her long enough that she didn’t notice Ronan move until he was across the room.
“How dare you bring this with you?!”
When Ronan turned around, they all saw that he was holding a simple, mahogany box. And they all knew that the box contained Saxon’s ashes. “How could you disgrace his memory by bringing him here?” Ronan asked in a voice that once again reminded Michael of a little boy. “To the home of one of the people who murdered him?” His mouth opened once more to ask another question, but no words came out. He had to try a few more times to be able to speak again. When he did, he was through with questions; he had nothing more to ask. “I don’t understand how you could do that.”
It was good that Ronan didn’t have any more questions, because Edwige clearly wasn’t going to answer her son. She only wanted one thing from him, the box he was holding. “Give that to me.”
Michael watched as Ronan’s grip on the box softened. His whole body seemed to cave in, and it looked as if he finally realized that he was holding his father’s remains in his hands, the father who had died a violent and ghastly death, and that he was standing in front of the mother who he had thought might have suffered the same fate. Michael thought these revelations would bring Ronan peace, some odd comfort, maybe not now, but in the near future. Not a chance.
“I said, give that box to me!” Edwige shouted, sounding exactly like the woman she used to be.
“I’ll give you exactly what you deserve!” Ronan shrieked. “TRAITOR!!”
Ronan flicked open the latch on the box and held the lid as he hurled the contents at Edwige. His father’s ashes remained brown and black as they flew through the air, changing color only when they touched Edwige’s skin.
“Ahhhh!!!!”
As the ashes touched Edwige’s body they turned bright red and became flames that penetrated her skin. Michael, Vaughan, and even Ronan watched in horror as Edwige screamed out in agony, her arms outstretched, her head tossed back, as the little pieces of fire pierced her flesh, ripped through her, turned chunks of her body into pockets of flame. She screamed even louder when she saw Saxon suspended in front of her.
It was anguish enough to be reliving the physical pain that her husband had suffered, but casting her eyes once again on his face, she was also forced to relive his emotional suffering. Consumed with the flames that had once destroyed Saxon, Edwige reached out to try and hold onto the image in front of her, but it was only an apparition. She could only see Saxon; she couldn’t touch him. Even still, she could feel every raw emotion that had coursed through his body while his life was being brutally destroyed.
“Saxon!!” she cried. She felt the fear that he desperately tried to keep hidden, his anger at her betrayal, his disappointment when he discovered that she had violated their sacred covenant. She felt it all, and it was more excruciatingly painful than the red-hot flames that were passing through her.
“PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!” she cried out to no one and to everyone.
Vaughan ripped the tablecloth from the dining room table—the pewter candelabra that sat on top of it
