Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
That’s what I get out of this short conversation between the two of them.
My not-mother backs up and once again, the door closes.
The devil bends down, takes my hand, holds it, and points to my finger. “The ring. See? That’s where the ring was, little Pie. Right there on your finger. You can see the outline.”
I look down at my hand, and sure enough, he’s right. There is a pale band of skin around my ring finger where something recently was, and has been for a long time, but is missing now.
“What happened to the ring, Pie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you take it off? Hmm? And maybe leave it somewhere?”
I shake my head no.
“Then what happened to it?”
“I don’t know.”
I really don’t. I can’t even imagine what ring he’s talking about.
Well, maybe that’s not true. I have a lot of rings these days. Any one of them could be the ring he’s talking about.
He’s frustrated with me. I can tell. But he’s not mean, like the woman I will end up calling Mother. He doesn’t yell, or stomp, or threaten me. He just… talks. In a nice, soothing, low, rumbly voice that makes me like him.
“You were in the ritual this morning, remember?”
I actually don’t. I have no memories of this other world where they took me from. And by the way—‘ritual’? What the hell?
“You were in the room with the gods, remember? And you got a gift. A bag of rings. Does that sound familiar?”
Well, it’s certainly interesting. Because my history seems to be a muddled mishmash of lies and half-truths. And this little revelation right here falls into the category of half-truth.
Ostanes claimed to be my real mother. But I’m not feeling it. Still, she is connected to me in some way, that I do feel. But the bag of rings more than kinda fits. It fits pretty damn good. Because I do have a bag of rings.
But I certainly didn’t back when I was a child.
“Remember?”
I shake my head no.
“You know the words, Pie. You know them. What did Ostanes say to you? And which god gave you the rings? Was it Saturn?”
I don’t answer him because I’m so confused right now.
Why the hell would Saturn give me a bag of rings?
“And then,” the devil-man continues. “You were in the room with all the people—remember the people? And the royals? Hmm? This sounds familiar, right?”
It really doesn’t.
“And the gods. They were all there. You had the bag of rings—plus the one on your finger.” He stops here to place his finger under my chin again and tilt my head up, trying to force me to look him in the eyes.
I won’t do it.
He doesn’t push, just continues with his recap of what, apparently, happened earlier in the day. “And then, Lisa and I opened the door and brought you here. And we did that, Pie, because we need. Those. Rings.”
So. That’s how it happened. I guess it’s nice to finally know the truth. They kidnapped me from some ritual—which could’ve been a life-saver, now that I think about it. Whatever kind of ritual it was, it couldn’t have been good. Then somehow, they opened a door, grabbed me, and took me back through it.
They took me out of my world and brought me to this one so they would have time to coax the spelling words out of me and find that stupid bag of rings. But I never did tell them the words because they must not have known that in this world, the magic is impotent.
Humans, and this world we live in, are not magical. Not the way they are in Vinca and other places.
So something went wrong with their little kidnapping scheme.
Something happened on the journey from there to here. Something happened to me, and my magic, and my memory. And I never did give up those words. There was no way I could. Because when I walked through the door I came out the other side a human girl, and no longer a royal beast.
I’m suddenly outside the bathroom. I don’t really recall what happens next in there. A little more coaxing from the devil, I guess. But nothing more than that.
I think he knew too. I think he figured it out. But instead of telling Lisa that the whole thing was a bust—they would not be getting my magic and whatever plans they had made were now moot—he just… left.
He left her, and he left me, and then… I simply became someone else.
And if Pia hadn’t been in my hand when they took me, I might never have woken up.
I might’ve just slipped into being that other little girl who had no magic and saw no talking birds, and didn’t get dropped off at CPS three years later after the devil ran out on my new mother and she finally came to terms with the fact that he had left her behind and now she was gonna do the same to me.