Motherly Advice

Havermouth, Five Years Before

Aislen’s legs gave out in the bedroom, and she sat heavily on the bed. She should be happy, she told herself. She should be overjoyed. It was, as everyone in the tiny kitchen had repeated again and again, an amazing, incredible opportunity, an act of generosity by the school and Zeus Forest Works that she would have been a fool to turn down.

Why did it feel so wrong?

She knew why, she answered herself. Because Rhett had told her not to go to Rideten. Because going to Rideten meant leaving the Triquetra behind in Havermouth.

In less than a month, the Triquetra had turned her life inside out and upside down. Somehow everything had become focused on them, their presence dictating how her days went, what she did, how she dressed, what she ate, where she slept…

She did not know now if she could separate herself from them and survive it. She did not know if she wanted to do so.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Tiffany said from the doorway. “It is the right thin