It was time to do the thing I didn't want to do— the thing I avoided at all costs, the thing that I dreaded more than almost anything in the world.

It was time to talk to my mom about my love life.

We returned from the Sylvan Court the morning after my incident. I'd already arranged for the shop to be closed today and tomorrow, so I thought it was probably best to take the time to do the research I needed to do.

And there was... a lot.

Unfortunately, part of it involved talking to my mom, and potentially to my grandma. Even though I'd spent years obsessed with the idea of finding my soul mate, that was sort of the problem. I was fixated on finding them. I never really looked into what was supposed to happen after that, assuming that locating them at all was the hardest part of the process.

Stupid, I know.

My mom was retired, technically, but she worked part time as a nurse at our local hospital. She wasn't normally off work on Fridays, but I happened to get lucky. She was at home when I called, and she said I could come over.

Maybe that was actually unlucky. I hadn't decided yet.

I didn't bother knocking when I arrived. I had a key, and I just pushed open the pale blue-green painted door as though I still lived there. Mom got annoyed when I knocked. She said it was like I thought I couldn't come home.

"It's me!" I called, at least wanting to announce myself.

"Come in, honey, I'm making tea!"

I couldn't see my mom, but she was most certainly in the kitchen at the back of the house. Despite the fact the place looked like a perfectly modern small-town home, they'd done up the place in a subtly witchy way. My mom's mundane friends wouldn't have much to question when they visited, but witch visitors would clearly be able to see signs of the craft all over the house.

The front door was painted traditional haint blue— apparently at least one of our ancestors had contact with the Gullah in South Carolina or Georgia, and they'd brought that tradition into the family. The woven door mat in cheerful yellow and white featured a pattern of repeating knots that represented a protective spell. The cute dried herbs hanging in bundles over the door with elegant bows and flowers could easily be used for cleansing or banishing in a pinch. The cabinet of herbs and teas was meticulously organized, but so was everything else in the kitchen, making my mom look like a particularly enthusiastic chef.

The only thing that did look overtly witchy, at least to me, was the altar to the Moon Goddess.

A wide, wooden shelf in a raw, curving shape, sanded smooth over time, held the altar. It was on the wall in the living area, and for the most part, you'd have to really peek to know it was something important rather than a knickknack shelf, but I knew what it was.

My grandma was a traditionalist, and she kept up the altar. She always said that witches have paid their respects to the Moon Goddess as thanks for their magic, but I never really understood how anyone knew where it came from. In any case, the Moon Goddess, if she existed, didn't really seem picky about if witches wanted to associate with her or not. I knew of plenty of witches with perfectly good lives and perfectly functional magic that were Norse Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist— the list went on. Even our altar, due to a long history of folk Christian practice in the family, blended symbols associated with the Moon Goddess and Christianity.

It was a complicated balance, apparently, and one that I'd never quite understood.

To my grandma, it was a form of respect to have an altar in the house, so we'd always had one growing up. I didn't currently keep one in my apartment. I had a functional workspace for cleansing and casting, but it wasn't dedicated to anyone.

"Is Gramma here?" I asked, bending down to take off my shoes.

"She's napping at the moment. Why? You need her?" Mom called from the kitchen.

"I just thought she might have some generational witch info I could use," I said vaguely, plopping down on the sofa.

Mom appeared only a moment later with two servings of tea— hers in a delicate teacup with a saucer, and mine in a chunky mug. I took it from her gratefully as she sat beside me, leaning into my side gently so that our shoulders touched. A hug without hugging, we called it.

"I found my soul mate," I said, leaning my head on her shoulder. I didn't have the emotional energy to work up to it any more.

I just needed my mom.

"And yet you don't look happy." Mom took a sip from her teacup, but I didn't feel her posture shift, didn't feel her breathing change.

"And you don't seem surprised." I sat up straight and looked at her, trying to gauge her expression.

"A mother knows," she said, shrugging. "Well, I knew something was off, but after your child tells you she can see the Threads of Fate at four years old, a soul mate just doesn't stack up."

Fair point, honestly. Finding your soul mate was, at least, something that was on the table for every single witch in existence. Mom could have been emotionally preparing for that for a long time.

It was... significantly less likely that she'd prepared for her child to be the Weaver.

"I'm having... dreams. I think they're dreams, at least—"

"You're getting the visions," she said, nodding. "It's part of the process. Soul mates meet each other through lives.

So it was true. Calen was right about soul mates meeting and developing over time.

"And you didn't tell me this before... why?"

"You know your grandmother," she whispered, nodding towards the hallway.

That was fair, but I wished she'd found another way to tell me. Grandma was weirdly twitchy when it came to romantic relationships. She loved the idea of me growing up and marrying a nice witch boy, but she wouldn't talk about soul mates much unless I directly asked her, and she absolutely forbid any conversation about my dad.

In fact, maybe it was just my dad she was twitchy about.

Since my mom and grandmother somewhat jointly raised me, that meant that I hadn't grown up with much knowledge about soul mates or my dad. I knew both of them existed, and I'd gone through a phase of obsessing over who my dad was as surely as I obsessed over the identity of my soul mate.

Both of them were a little like fairy tales, though. I only knew what I'd read in books, or what I'd heard from the few soul mate witch couples that managed to find each other.

"Do you know if people are supposed to look the same in soul mate visions? Like, even if it's a different life? So we can recognize them, I guess?" I offered.

There had to be some sort of explanation why Calen's face looked the same in all my dreams. It seemed logical that maybe my brain had substituted his current appearance for whatever he looked like in the past? Maybe to help me recognize what was happening?

My mom's brow furrowed as she leaned in a little closer. "No, they shouldn't. Why?"

"Are you absolutely sure?" I pushed. Mom hadn't found her soul mate, so she'd have to be going off stories of other people. Maybe there was an exception.

"... Calen looks the same in mine," I admitted grumpily.

"Are you sure he's not Sylvan?" Mom asked quickly. She didn't hesitate for a moment, to the point that it was almost suspicious.

"Why?" My eyes narrowed as I tried and failed to read the expression on her face. Mom was very, very good at emotional poker when she wanted to be, but she could never hold it for long.

"It's..." She paused, sighing heavily. "Past lives can look identical, or at least very similar, but it's incredibly rare. If he looks the exact same as the people in your soul mate visions, it's more likely that he's the same person."

What? That wasn't an option on the table. It shouldn't be an option on the table. Witches lived longer lives than humans, yes, but not by hundreds of years.

"How is that even possible?" I asked, stumbling over my words. "Calen is a witch. Otherwise he wouldn't have a Witch's Mark— and how do you know all this, anyways?"

She sat back against the sofa, staring at the ground, teacup still held in her hand. She wasn't drinking from it, though, just sitting.

"Mom?" I pressed.

There was another long pause. I didn't know what she'd failed to tell me before, why she'd hidden it, or where the hesitation was coming from, but I needed to know this. If it was related to the strange Thread tethering me to Calen, if it was related to the strange things happening around me, I needed to know.

At this point, it might be crucial to survival.

"Your father was my soul mate," Mom said carefully. "He was full Sylvan."

My mouth dropped open.

"What?!" I practically shrieked, brow furrowing. I had to fight not to drop the mug of tea in my hands.

Full Sylvan? As much as Grandma hated Sylvans, my father was one?

Well, maybe that was part of why she hated them. Or maybe she hated them before, and that was why he wasn't here now. Either way, this didn't make any sense, and it didn't

"He was much older than me," she continued, not bothering to let me examine the fact that the father she'd barely ever mentioned to me was both her soul mate and Sylvan.

She didn't bother to address the fact that I was half Sylvan.

"How much older? Wha— what species was he? Why haven't you told me this?" I stammered.

"Old enough to have lived several times the length of my life, but I don't know more. He was able to recognize me by the way I felt more than the way I looked, and then... then I started having soul mate visions."

A thousand questions swirled in my head.

"Grandma always said witches were the only ones with soul mates," I said.

"She did. She was wrong." Mom looked at me as though she expected me to say something or brush it off, as though a truth that I'd been told my whole life hadn't suddenly shattered.

Oh. Great! That was so simple. Super simple, wasn't it?

If you couldn't tell, I was certainly freaking out at this point. This was just a hair much to spring on someone on an otherwise peaceful Friday morning. I'd been prepared for quite a few things coming into this conversation, but finding out my dad was Sylvan was not one of them.

"Maybe witches are the only ones with marks, but we aren't the only ones with soul mates," she continued. "Maybe it's because one half of our pair is a witch. I don't know, but we were— we are— soul mates. Wherever he is."

"He's alive?!" I put down the mug of tea. At this rate, I was going to drop it if one more surprise came out of my mother's mouth.

"I presume, yes." She didn't look at me, but she did stare at her teacup like she wished it had a shot of whiskey in it.

"You presume?" I was beyond baffled, my mouth hanging open.

"We agreed that it was best for both of us if he left. Your grandmother was... violent towards him," she sighed, shaking her head. "Not to mention that the witch community we lived in at the time wasn't kind of Sylvans, and no Sylvan

"So you couldn't find somewhere else?" I spluttered.

"You have to understand that the witch and Sylvan dual communities have only started to surface in the last decades since you were born. They're relatively new, and we didn't know if they were safe," she explained. Her shoulders were hiked up to her ears, and she looked exceedingly uncomfortable.

I didn't say anything. I didn't really know what to say. Instead, I just stared, trying and failing to process my own history, and let her continue to talk.

"Your appearance took after me, thank goodness, so I didn't have to find a Sylvan family to take you, but..." Mom paused, the phone line crackling with a heavy sigh. "I think your biology takes after your father. I think it's only going to get stronger."

"What was he?" I asked again. I would keep pressing if I needed to. This information could make or break my magic, and could maybe even explain why I had control of the Threads in the first place.

"I'm not sure," she said, shaking her head. "He wasn't even sure. He said he was an elemental of some kind, but... mixed heritage."

An elemental?

Elementals were the rarest of all types of Sylvans. They were so rare that they were almost legendary. I'd never even met one before.

If I was half elemental, then... why hadn't I shown any aptitude for elemental magic?

"I know what you're thinking, and I don't know the answer," she said. "Maybe your magic took after me as well as your appearance, or maybe your ability to see the Threads of Fate suppresses any other magical tendencies. I don't know."

Both sounded logical. Maybe one day I would figure it out, but for the moment, I didn't have time to worry about it.

How had she done it, though? How had Mom handled the separation? Things with Calen were rapidly becoming more and more complicated, but I still couldn't fathom being apart from him. It was like a feral instinct that called for us to come closer, to be near each other.

"How do you deal with it?" I whispered. "Living without him?"

"It hurt the most when he first left," she said quietly. "I... I went into a deep, dark depression. Your grandmother took over caring for you, but I... I hated her during that time. I blamed her entirely for making him leave."

"Do you still?" I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer.

"Yes."

"Do you still love him?"

"I do," she said without hesitation. "I'd love to try again one day, if we can. If not... next life, maybe."

Next life. I kept hearing that, but I still hadn't really processed it. I was going through memories of my past lives with Calen, and I... I didn't want to process it. I didn't want to think about what had happened. Were they all as horrible as the last dream?

I opened my mouth to speak, but a bright, white light flashed in my face. My head felt like it was splitting open all of a sudden, and I felt more than heard myself cry out in pain as my senses faded. I couldn't feel my own body, couldn't see or hear what was around me.

A vision swam before my eyes, as clear as if I was there. I couldn't move, could only try to breathe and watch the scene.

I brushed a curl of blonde hair out of my face to get a better view of the stage in front of me. I was sitting in a box at an opera performance, and some vague part of my present-day mine recognized the music. It was... something famous? My present-day-Sunday mind felt like mush, trapped in the thoughts of whoever I was now.

I looked down at the program in my lap, but I couldn't quite read it. I did notice the green dress I was wearing, though— it was ornately embroidered with gold thread and cream-colored pearls, and I wondered if the long sleeves meant it was winter.

"Elizabeth," a voice whispered, and I felt someone squeeze my hand.

I looked over, almost unsurprised to see Calen staring at me. He tugged on my hand, and I stood from my chair, drawing the curtains around the box closed. Adjusting my dress, I settled myself on his lap, desire rushing forward like a fiery jolt—

I was shaking when I came back to myself. I was still on the sofa, but I'd fallen to the side, my head in my mom's lap as she gently stroked my hair.

"Breathe, baby," Mom crooned. "I've got you."

I sat up and wrapped my arms around her on instinct, leaning into the hug. I was safe here. There were plenty of complications in my family, sure, but I was safe. Even if visions yanked me out of my own body, I'd come back here and be okay.

"They're happening more often, aren't they?" Mom asked.

"I've never had a flash like that during the day," I said, trying to blink the vision away. "They've all been dreams."

"It'll get more frequent."

"And?" I shook my head, motioning for her to go on. "Then what? What's it leading to?"

"I don't know," Mom said. "It's different for everyone. I wish I could tell you more."

"Me, too," I whispered.

I wasn't so sure how I felt about soul mates anymore. This was starting to get less romantic and more complicated very, very quickly.