Mari Mancusi - Scorched

Darius raised an eyebrow. “No, no,” he corrected, giving her a cold, hard look. “I mean your mother.”

Trinity stared at him, her mind reeling at his pronouncement. “That’s impossible,” she protested. “My mother is dead.”

“On the contrary,” Darius replied smoothly, “she’s very much alive. Would you like to see for yourself?”

Trin nodded dumbly—what else could she do? She tried to tell herself it was some kind of sick joke, a trick Darius had concocted to screw with her head. Because her mother couldn’t be alive. Trinity had seen her body, her head blown to smithereens. Her beloved bunny slippers still on her feet. The emerald ring still on her finger.

She twisted the ring in question almost violently, her stomach flip-flopping madly, this close to throwing up. How could she be alive? There was no way. No way on Earth.

Except, what if there was?

Giving one last longing look at Emmy, still stuck in her cage, she allowed Darius to escort her back to the staircase with the three hallways, this time taking the one to the left. The only one she hadn’t been down. She followed the light from the Dracken leader’s industrial-strength flashlight, her pulse pounding out her fear as she forced her feet to step, one foot in front of the other, down the featureless hallway. She wondered dully if she should try to escape. To overpower him and make a run for the elevator where Connor was probably still waiting. But Emmy was locked in a cage, and now more than ever, she couldn’t leave her behind. Not now that she knew what the Dracken were planning to do with her. She couldn’t even dare risk sending a message to Connor to let him know what had happened for fear Darius would intercept it and learn of his location.

And then there was her mother. If she was really here somehow—really alive—there was no way Trin could just walk away. Not without knowing for sure.

They stopped in front of a door at the far end of the hall—a simple door made of wood with no fancy locks to keep it secured or closed. Darius wrapped his hands around the knob and pulled it open, gesturing for Trinity to enter. She did, stepping into a small bedroom.

It was stark and barren, with none of the luxuries of her own room upstairs. A plain twin bed, lodged up against one wall, fitted with crisp, hospital-cornered sheets. A washbasin and toilet sat against the other, simple but recently cleaned.

But it was the back of the room that pulled Trinity’s gaze. A lone figure, silhouetted in the darkness, rocking slowly in a small wooden chair. From here, Trin could just make out the woman’s long, stringy black hair and emaciated frame, a dingy white tunic dress hanging from her shrunken flesh.

She stepped closer to get a better look, her mind a crazy tangle of hope and fear. She wanted it to be a lie but she wanted it to be the truth all the same. As she approached, Darius flipped a switch and light flooded the room.

Trin gasped, staggering from the shock. It couldn’t be.

But it was.

“Mom?” she whispered

The woman in the chair—her mother—did not respond. Instead, she continued to rock herself slowly, as her vacant black eyes stared into space. Trinity ran to her, dropping to her knees, peering up at her, waving her hands in her face. But it did no good. Her mother did not respond.

“What’s wrong with her?” she demanded, turning back to Darius. He shrugged.

“She’s in the Nether,” he said simply. “It’s where she prefers to spend all her time these days. It’s more pleasant in there, I suppose, than her everyday reality.”

Looking around the room, Trinity couldn’t blame her. Slowly she rose to her feet. “She was dead,” she protested weakly. “I saw her body. And the coroner confirmed it. Fingerprints, DNA. It all checked out.”

“All bought and paid for,” Darius replied. “You’d be amazed at how little the coroner charged us for the false identification. He had no idea how valuable she really was.”

“But why?” she asked, staring down at her mother, feeling out of body and disconcerted. The last two years she’d had to deal with the horror of walking in on her mother’s corpse. Only to find out now that it belonged to someone else entirely. “I mean, why go through all that trouble to fake her death?”

“The space-time continuum is a fragile thing,” Darius explained. “Your mother did die the first time around—she accidentally mixed up some pills and took too many of the wrong kind—the day after spending Christmas with you. Because of this, you were sent to live with your grandfather, where you bonded with the egg. We still needed that to happen, but we wanted to save your mother’s life this time around, just in case. So we went in a day early and replaced her with one our own—a Dracken woman who didn’t survive the trip back in time. We simply dressed her in your mother’s clothes and used her as a stand-in. Thus, the important threads of the timeline remained largely unchanged. We did unfortunately have to change the cause of death, seeing as keeping her face intact would have given the game away. But with her history of mental illness, it didn’t seem too farfetched to have her blow her head off.”

And Trinity had believed it. Believed her mother to be capable of such a horrible thing without even questioning it. What kind of daughter did that make her?

“Oh, Mom,” she whispered, reaching down to embrace the woman who’d given her life. She was cold and stiff, but Trinity clung to her all the same as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea!”

She thought back to all the resentment she’d allowed to build up inside of her over the last two years. Believing her mother had broken her promise. Had abandoned her on Christmas Eve forever.

But that had never been her mother’s intention. The Dracken had stolen the last day of her life. Ripping her from reality and imprisoning her all alone, in a dark lonely room—as backup in case her daughter didn’t meet their expectations. It was all too horrible, too much to even contemplate, and she felt guilty as hell for every bad thought she’d had over the last two years.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” she babbled, burying her face in her mother’s lap, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry I ever accused you of letting me down.”

But her mother did not answer. And soon the guards arrived to take Trinity away.

Caleb trudged down the mall corridor toward his bedroom, his heart heavy and his legs feeling like lead. He’d been a total duffer to believe his brother. He should’ve known better than to leave the headquarters on a wild chase for a dead man. But the idea—the slightest possibility—that Trin’s grandfather wasn’t actually dead was too much to pass up. If he’d been able to find him, to bring him back, he would have finally proven himself worthy of her.

Instead, he had only proven himself pathetic.

He was so wrapped up in his own misery, he scarcely noticed at first all the shouting and banging coming toward him in the opposite direction. Finally it registered and he looked up to see what all the commotion was about. To his shock, his eyes fell upon none other than Trinity herself, being dragged roughly by two Dracken guards. She was struggling and fighting with all of her might but they refused to let her go. Furious, Caleb stepped into their path.

“Have you gone mad?” he demanded. “How dare you treat her like this? She’s the Fire Kissed.”

“Not anymore,” the first guard said with a smirk. “Now step aside and let us through.”