She's the reason the heart of my family had been torn apart. Because that night, I'd unwittingly chosen her. Now, years later, she's my prey.
[Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns']
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NELLE:- Cursed by a terrifying dark power, I'm a secret hidden in plai...
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My mother smoothed her hair with trembling fingers, though there wasn't a strand out of place, however, the gesture seemed to settle her. A moment later she placed her hands on her lap, folding them on top of one another, and began to speak softly. "Tabitha Crowther was my best friend since childhood. We were thick as thieves, she and I." She may have smiled, but whatever it was quickly faded. "Years ago, when you were seven years old, she phoned to warn me. She knew the Horned Gods were coming for you that night. And just like Tabitha, she gave no thought to herself or the fact that she was betraying the Horned Gods." She shook her head as if she couldn't believe it herself. "I'd never breathed a word about Tabitha. About what she was, what she could do."
"She was an other?" The shock of it left me breathless.
That was why the Horned Gods were there the night of the car crash.
My mother nodded. "I never divulged her secret to anyone, not even with your father. Just as she'd done the same for me. She'd never told a soul about you either. Not even her husband, Varen, knew."
I was other...as Tabitha Crowther had been too.
And then I remembered Graysen had been there that night too. He'd have overheard his mother's phone call.
"Your father overheard me talking to Tabitha. And in my panic, I hadn't realized what I'd said, I'd been worried for her too." She glanced toward my father, but he didn't meet her eye. She sucked in a breath and squared her frail shoulders. "Your father made me choose. He said, if we could give the Horned Gods someone else, it will divert them from you." She wet her dry lips with her tongue and this time when she looked his way, he turned away from her fully. Perhaps because he couldn't face what he'd asked her to do, perhaps because he couldn't look at her while she told me the truth. I watched him make his way to the window, his back to us both as he leaned his palms against the glass and stared at the lightning forking across the rolling black clouds.
My mother's gaze dropped to her hands as she began to rotate the wedding ring around her too-thin finger, the gold band too loose to fit properly because of the weight she'd lost. Deep creases gouged her brow. "You were fast asleep in the family room when Master Sirro arrived at the estate, and you never knew he paid you a visit. I don't know by what miracle, only Zrenyth knows, but he never detected anything other about you."
I shot a look at my father's turned back. "And Master Sirro just accepted that, without talking to me, investigating further?"
He kept his gaze on the roiling storm. Down below, stretched out on the vast lawns, the marquee was flooded with light and life. "It was a tumultuous time between the Houses, Nelle. The Horned Gods did not tolerate others. Families were betraying one another."
"Your father dropped a heavy hint about Tabitha, suggesting that the rumor about you came from her and that she'd done it to protect herself," my mother said, raising eyes welling with tears.
