Chapter 42

Chapter 42
Anna POV: 

The world was gold. That was the first thing I remembered—the way the afternoon sun caught the stalks of the tall grass, turning the meadow into a sea of shimmering honey. I was sitting at my mother’s feet, the wild clover tickling my knees, and the air smelled of crushed mint and the sweet, heavy scent of coming rain. To a six-year-old, the world was a playground of secrets, and my mother was the keeper of them all. I wanted to know every single secret. What my mother didn't kno was the visions had started. My power grew and sometimes I could already guess the secret before she even told me. 

"Keep your head still, little bird," Mama whispered. Her voice was like the rustle of silk against stone—soft, but with an edge that commanded the wind to listen. Sometimes I thought she cared and sometimes I felt fear coming off of her in waves. 

I tried to sit like a statue, though a ladybug was currently making a daring trek across my knuckles. I watched its red shell move, wondering if I could use the tiny hum in my fingertips to make its wings turn gold. I reached out with my spirit, feeling the tiny pulse of the insect’s life. Just as the air around my hand began to shimmer with a faint, emerald glow, Mama’s hand clamped down over mine. Her grip was startlingly strong, her skin cool and smelling of damp earth and rosemary.

"No," she hissed. The warmth of the sun seemed to vanish for a second. "Never show it, Anna. Not to the bugs, not to the trees, and especially not to the men who look like men but carry iron in their souls. Magic is a target on your back. Do you understand? It is a beacon for the hungry, and the world is starving for what you have." 

"But it feels good, Mama," I whispered, my lip trembling as the emerald light snuffed out under her palm. "It feels like the sun is inside my skin. Like I’m part of the flowers."

"The sun burns things, Anna," , Her voice softening as she went back to my hair, though the tension in her shoulders remained. Behind me, I could hear the faint clink-clink of metal. She wasn't just braiding my hair; she was weaving a cage. Between the strands of my blonde hair, she was threading thin, shimmering wires of silver. They were cold, biting into my scalp, acting as a tether for the power I so desperately wanted to let out.

"Why the cold metal?" I asked, wincing as she pulled a knot tight. "It feels heavy. Like I’m carrying stones in my head."

"Because the world is heavy," she murmured, her breath warm against my ear. "The silver keeps your light inside. It keeps you hidden. It keeps you mine."

I didn't understand why I needed to be hidden. I wanted to run through the forest. I wanted to show the ancient oaks how I could make the bluebells dance just by humming. But the way Mama said "mine" made me feel safe and trapped all at once—like a bird in a gilded cage that hadn't yet realized it had wings. I never saw mama use magic. 

"Will you always be here to braid it?" I turned slightly, catching a glimpse of her face.

Isolde was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at. Her eyes looking down at me like the deep woods before a storm—dark, turbulent green—and her smile never quite reached them. She reached down, cupping my face with both hands. Her palms were calloused from the garden, smelling of salt and ancient things I couldn't name.

"I will be wherever the roots are, Anna. Remember that. When the shadows grow long, and the men in black robes come with their bells and their iron... you must not be the flower they pick. You must be the thorn that makes them bleed. If they find you, they will try to turn your heart into a stone. You must turn it into a weapon first."

Suddenly, the sun blinked out.

The meadow didn't fade; it charred. It happened in a heartbeat—the gold grass turned to black ash under my feet, the stalks crumbling into grey flakes that swirled in a sudden, freezing wind. The sweet mint smell was replaced by the stinging, metallic stench of ozone and burning pine.

"Mama?" I reached out, but her skin no longer felt like earth. It felt like cold, polished porcelain.

She wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking past me, toward the dark treeline where a thousand white masks stared back at us. They were motionless, standing like statues between the blackened trunks of the trees. They didn't look afraid. They looked... expectant.

"The cycle begins, little bird," Her voice no longer belonged to the woman who had tucked me into bed. It sounded like a thousand dead leaves skittering over a fresh grave. She began to back away into the rising smoke, her face cracking like a dropped mirror. Shards of her skin fell away, revealing the weeping-woman mask of the Inquisitors beneath the surface.

"Mama, don't go! Don't leave me in the dark!"

I tried to run to her, but the silver wires in my hair grew long and heavy. They lashed out like iron snakes, wrapping around my throat, my arms, pinning me to the scorched earth. The silver turned to cold iron, searing my scalp, dragging me down into the dirt that now felt like a hungry monster. I wanted to scream again, but when I opened my mouth it felt filled with blood. 

"Remember the debt, Anna," her voice echoed, fading into a rhythmic, metallic tolling that shook the very foundation of my mind. 

"The cycle breaks when two bloodlines mix. The bells don't hurt a Luna." 

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

The sound didn't come from the dream. It was coming from my soul.

My eyes snapped open, but the darkness didn't leave. The gold meadow was a lie, a ghost of a life I’d lost a lifetime ago. There was only the weeping dampness of a stone wall and the suffocating weight of cold iron around my wrists. 

I wasn't six anymore. I was a prisoner.

I gashed my breath, the air in the cell tasting of salt, mold, and old blood. My wrists burned—a sharp, sizzling heat that told me the shackles were infused with the very iron Mama had warned me about. But the pain wasn't just mine.

Through the golden cord that tethered my soul to Silas, I could feel a jagged, pulsing agony. It was different from mine; it was a deep, thrumming roar of frustration and physical torment. I wanted to reach for him but the chains would not let me move. 

"Silas?" I croaked, my voice sounding like I’d swallowed glass.

I couldn't see him, but I could hear him. Across the hall, or perhaps just in the next pocket of shadow, there was a heavy, wet rattle of a breath and the unmistakable clink of heavy chains.

"Don't... don't give them... anything," his voice drifted through the dark. It wasn't the cocky, arrogant Silas from the inn. It was a man being broken, his voice a rasping shadow of itself.

I pulled against my chains, the iron biting deeper. The green light of my magic flickered weakly in my veins, but every time I tried to call it forward, the iron dampeners in the walls seemed to suck the life out of me, leaving me hollowed out and gasping.

I looked at my hands, barely visible in the dim, flickering torchlight from the corridor. They were shaking. I remembered the ladybug. I remembered the silver wires.

"I saved you," I whispered into the dark, a tear tracking a hot path through the dirt on my cheek. "I saved you, and you led us right into the mouth of the wolf." 

"I'm sorry" Silas choked out. "I'll get us out of here little one, if it's the last thing I do." 

The tolling sound returned—the heavy footsteps of someone approaching our cells. It wasn't just a guard. The air grew cold, a predatory chill that made the hair on my arms stand up. The scent of old parchment and funeral incense drifted in through the bars.

The High Inquisitor was coming. And he wasn't alone.

I leaned my head back against the cold stone, closing my eyes, desperately trying to find that gold meadow one last time. But the meadow was gone. There were only thorns now. And the thorns were beginning to grow.

The heavy door at the end of the hall shrieked open. Two sets of footsteps echoed—one heavy and measured, the other light, airy, and eerily familiar.

"Anna of the Woods," the Inquisitor’s voice rasped, stopping just outside my bars. "You've spent a lifetime running from your mother’s shadow. It's time you stepped back into it."

He stepped aside.

Standing behind him was a woman in robes the color of dried blood. She didn't wear a mask. She didn't need one.Here eyes reflected the color of a forest before a storm, and in her hand, she held a spool of silver wire. The wire meant to keep me weak, keep me her pet. The Witches of the Wood Hilda had helped me with that. she had told me the wire were chains to keep my magic and my power closer to The Dark Sisters. My heart stopped. The air left the room.

"Hello, little bird," my mother whispered, her smile sharp enough to draw blood. "Mama’s home."

The Dark sisters were witches of power but they only had power through siphoning from others mainly from their own blood. My mother wasn't here for any reunions. She was here to turn me into her vessel once more.