She smiled. “Perhaps I am.”
“So you’ll live as humans.”
She nodded. “Perhaps. I will see where the road takes me.”
“But what about the others in the Shadow Guild?” I asked. “Their place has been taken from them. Many were forced to leave Guild City. Those who stayed were made to feel like outcasts.”
I knew I shouldn’t be trying to change the past, but I couldn’t help asking. It was all so terrible.
Her eyes darkened with sadness. “And that breaks my heart, but what is done is done. You are proof of that. Time has continued on, the Shadow Guild staying hidden until you found it. If you and I were to return to Guild City and change things, then the entire course of the future would be modified. People who need to be born might not be born, while others would die. I discovered my father’s subterfuge too late, and too much time has passed.” She reached out for me but drew her hand back before making contact. “And seeing you proves that I’ve made the right choice.”
“Because I found the Shadow Guild?”
“And proved that the future has unfurled in the way I hoped it would. My line has continued. I have faith in fate and my path.” She jostled the baby a bit. “I assume the future is a better place?”
I thought of it for a moment. “There is no one like your father in Guild City, so yes, I suppose. It’s not a perfect place, and a lot of the world is a mess. But the Shadow Guild is continuing. It will continue, once we clean it up a bit.”
“And you are the leader?”
“That’s what my friends tell me.” Though I hadn't embraced it yet, that was for certain. Guilt struck me.
It was my heritage. And I was ignoring it.
“What of your family?” she asked. “How are they?”
“My father was a bastard, and I never knew my mother. But she must have had magic.”
“Never knew her?”
“She died shortly after I was born.”
“Tragic.” She frowned. “Had she known she had magic, I imagine she would have left you a letter. Something to explain.”
Maybe. I hoped so. “She may never have known. We lived in the human world.”
“Oh, my.” She shook her head. “What a path I have set us on, to live in the human world so long.”
If my mother had survived, would we have found out what we were together?
I gripped Grey’s hand hard, drawing support from him. He rubbed my back with his other hand, and I looked at the woman. “I need to know what I am. I only know what I can do, and even that is ever changing.”
“You are coming into your power. It takes a while, with magic as strong as ours.”
“I need it to be strong.” I gestured to Grey. “We’re Cursed Mates, and our time is running short. A seer has told me that I can save us and that the answer is in my past, but I have no idea how.”
She frowned, her brow furrowing. “Really?”
“Yes. What are we? How do I break the curse?”
She bit her lip, clearly distressed. Her gaze moved between the two of us. “I did not anticipate this.”
“Neither did I,” Grey said. “But I want to spend my life with Carrow. Without your help, though, it’s going to be a very short life.”
The baby began to whimper, as if sensing its mother’s distress, and she rocked it carefully, her eyes shadowed. Finally, she looked at me. “I don’t know how our magic can possibly break the curse. But I can tell you what we are, at the very least.”
I nodded, wanting her to spill it all quickly.
“You are a Soulceress, a member of the only known line in Britain. Maybe the world.”