Ashes at the Altar

Chapter One

This kingdom was built on blood and bone, and it’s going to be taken by force.

I jolt awake to Mama’s fingers brushing my cheek, light and careful. She’s kneeling beside me, rocking that little smile I remember—­like she’s in on some secret I’ll never get. The dream’s already slipping away, leaving me stuck back in my real ghost kingdom. The one I’ve been trapped in for what’s felt like two weeks now, with Mama and Taron, right here in my old childhood home.

“It’s okay, baby. You were dreamin’ again,” she says, her voice slow, sticky, like honey that just won’t let go.

I shift on the couch, throat dry as hell.

“You always dreaming ’bout something,” she adds with a tilt of her head. “Almost forgot what a heavy sleeper you are.”

I pull back from her touch and sit up. The plastic underneath me crunches—­way too loud in the heavy quiet between us. It’s part of a protection charm, one of those old-­school things Mama Aya taught me. I even read about it once during one of those dusty lessons nobody ever pays attention to. The way the old folks keep plastic on their couches—­not just to keep them clean, but to keep bad spirits from sticking to them.

“Where Taron . . . I mean, Dad?” I ask, glancing toward the hallway.

Mama sinks down onto the couch, as if her bones are too tired for standing. “He’s in the back,” she answers. “Still digging through the spell books. I left plenty out for him.”

She pushes herself up again with a soft grunt and crosses to the dining room table. A bundle of sage rests beside a row of candles. She runs her fingers across the leaves, eyes fixed on something only she can see.

My eyes roam the room—­walls lined with glowing runes, holding this whole fake-­ass kingdom together. They pulse faintly, stitched like thread in a quilt. Not just random markings, either—they look like the ones from the old quilts I saw Mama Aya make that one time with us sitting on the porch. The symbols remind me of the kind our people used to stitch when they ain’t have nothing but cloth and faith. Stars. Arrows. Crossroads. A whole map of survival etched into the house that raised me.

“Something about being here again,” she murmurs almost to herself. “I never thought you’d be the one to bring us back here.”

My mind flashes to when we first got here, when her and Taron were both trying to figure out the spell I cast. I had ’em shook for a minute, especially Mama. She really thought I was about to send her back to that prison world. The motherless-­child song is still stuck in my head. Instead, I put my own twist on the lex talionis spell. I rebuilt my childhood home and brought them here, to my ghost kingdom. I thought it might give us a chance to fix things. To give this messed-­up family we have a chance to move forward.

That’s the goal.

But now, standing here . . . I don’t know if this is the healing I imagined.

’Cause truth is, it ain’t playin’ out clean or pretty. Ain’t no perfect closure or easy forgiveness. There’s still tension. Still silence in the room when certain names come up. Still things none of us know how to say out loud. I made a kingdom out of memory, but I can’t control what people bring into it. I can offer a place, a second chance—­but I can’t force folks to meet me in the middle.

And maybe that’s the real work. Maybe the magic wasn’t just about fixing them.

Maybe it was about finally understanding that healing don’t always mean harmony.

Sometimes, it just means choosing not to carry what’s not yours anymore—­and standing in the rubble anyway. Still loving. Still ­trying.

But when the three of us first got here, we barely talked. Things unsaid felt louder than any words we managed to spit out. Taron mostly keeps to himself. Even now, whenever he glances at Mama, I can see him wrestling with several things—­maybe trying to forgive her for all she did, or maybe wishing she’d disappear for good. It’s been weeks now, stuck in this halfway place together. I don’t know what they’ve said to each other behind closed doors, or if they’ve said anything at all. But sometimes I catch ’em sitting on opposite ends of the porch, quiet, staring off like they’re watching ghosts only they can see. Seeing them like that, reminding each other of their worst moments—­maybe this isn’t so different from a prison world after all.

But no matter what I call it, we’re stuck here. Because to get out, I’d have to undo the whole thing—­break the spell wide open. And if I do that, Marinette gets her chance to slip free too. If I leave, she’ll find her way in. She’ll take Mama again—­or worse, she’ll use Mama’s body to burn everything and everyone I care about down to ash.

So nah, leaving ain’t really an option right now.

“What did you dream?” Mama asks, waving her hand over three white candles. They flicker to life with a small flame.

Damn. I’m catching myself slipping. Just hearing her talk that way—­soft, the way she used to in my memories, even if they aren’t real—­I feel something in me start reaching for it before I can stop it. My heart goes dumb and forgets why I stacked all these walls around it. That’s the danger of being here. This ghost kingdom tugs at the old wounds, hushes the bad memories, and turns Mama’s voice into warmth when I know damn well it’s a warning.

I can’t let that happen. I can’t afford to forget how cold things got between us. This spell—­it may be rewriting magic, but I have to make sure it doesn’t rewrite the past too.

“This time? I was filling a hole with a shovel,” I say, and the moment the words slip out, the dream crashes back in.

There was a bird—­bright feathers everywhere—­fluttering up out of the hole I was filling, as if it had been buried there.

“No matter how much dirt I threw in, it just . . . wouldn’t fill.”

Mama gives me that look. It’s like her trying to piece me back together without even touching the cracks. There’s worry in her eyes too, the kind she doesn’t show everybody.

Before I can blink, she’s right beside me. Her hand slips into mine—­calm, certain, no hesitation. I look up at her face. Eyes that don’t flinch. High cheekbones, full lips, and a stare that holds you in place without her raising her voice. She wears her beauty like armor—­clean lines, no frills, all intention. Her locs hang over one shoulder, neat and long, touched with the smallest streaks of gray. She didn’t have those before, when Marinette was sharing her body. There’s history in them.

She doesn’t need to speak to fill the room. Just being near her shifts the air.

“The hole just wouldn’t fill,” I whisper. “And when I looked down into it, I saw—­”

I stop. Whatever I saw in that hole still hasn’t let go. It’s curled up somewhere inside, pressing against my ribs. I try to swallow it down like it ain’t real, but my body knows better. The chill already moved into me.

Mama’s brow tightens. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t reach for comfort words. Just watches. Focused. Present. Like she’s reading the shape of the thing inside me before I can name it.

And in that silence, I feel it.

She already knows.

That wasn’t just a dream.

She starts to rub her temples, something that’s she’s been doing since she got here. I clock it immediately.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask.

“I’m fine, baby,” she says, clearly lying. She changes the subject. “Anyway, what was in the hole?”

Her question makes everything in me pause.

“I just . . . Nothing.”

Taron steps out from the shadows, as if he’s been there all along, just watching. His presence settles heavy in the room—­like the weight of something too big to say, or maybe the kind of knowing that comes from seeing too much. Without thinking, I push myself up from the couch, putting some space between me and Mama’s lingering gaze. She looks a bit rejected when I do that. He looks different. However long we’ve been here, his hair’s grown out, and a thick patch of beard’s creeping across his jaw.

Dad. The word sits heavy on my tongue, twisting with everything we’ve been through. Chancellor Taron. That name feels like shutting a door on what we had—­or never had.

I don’t know which one fits anymore. For now, I just call him Taron.

I just wish he would talk to me. But still, he came. He really chose to come with me.

I will never let you go again, son. His voice from before echoes in my head, stirring up more in my chest than I want to admit.

Taron saunters over to the table and pulls out a chair, every movement heavy. He and Mama hold a look—­a long, quiet conversation without words, something I don’t have the language for.

Then he turns to me, his voice steady. “Malik, we have to go back.”

Annoyed, I stand up. “We already had this conversation. We can’t. We have to stay here and keep Marinette away from everybody we love. Eventually we’ll find a way to exorcise her for good, a spell that doesn’t kill the tethered soul.” I glance over at Mama. There’s a flicker of guilt on her face—­quick, but it’s there.

“Once we do that, I can get back to my friends and—­”

“I understand that,” Taron says, voice tight. “But with us just being near that woman, she can twist things: our reality, our memories . . . even our minds. This magical bubble we’re trapped in? It leaves us exposed, vulnerable to whatever defenses she’s put up.”

Taron refuses to say her name. I can’t blame him. Marinette possessed my mother, the woman he loved, and he brutally lost his family because of it.

“Taron, Malik is right,” Mama argues.

He shakes his head, frustration creeping in. “He doesn’t know what she’s capable of. We need allies. Tituba, my mother—­”

Mama scoffs, and Taron’s mood flips quickly.

“What?” he snaps.

“Never mind,” she mumbles guiltily.

“No, it’s something. Say it.”

“After all these years, you still haven’t changed.”

Taron’s face tightens, his jaw clenched. “Excuse me? I haven’t changed? Let’s sit and actually talk about who’s changed, Lorraine. You and your sick obsession with bane magick have cost us more than you will ever know.”

“I made a mistake—­”

“NO!” Taron shouts. “You did not make a mistake; you intentionally did this. You ruined all our lives, and for what?! All because you wanted power. I warned you—­hell, even Mama Aya warned you—­and you still didn’t listen! Because the only person Lorraine Baron listens to is herself.”

Mama cuts him off. “Right, right, just continuously blame me—­”

They go at it, shouting, their voices rising until the walls shake with every word. In all my stored-­up trauma, I step back, my eyes catching the standing mirror in the corner.

“You put our son in danger!”

“Your son?! You didn’t want him—­”

“That’s not true!”

Their voices continue to rise, jagged and fast, slashing through the room. And they go at it, arguing back and forth. The glass in the mirror flickers, and in the reflection, I see myself as a little boy, watching the same fight, eyes wide and silent, frozen between the two of them. We both stare at each other. Sadness and fear sit in the silence between us.

I clench my fists. My breath quickens because I’ve had enough. I didn’t bring us here just to pass the same damn pain around over and over again.

The lights flicker once. Then they bob in a series of flashes.

A surge bursts from my palms like a shockwave. CRACK. The overhead light explodes in a shower of raining light. Lamps rattle. The walls hum like they’ve swallowed a storm. Every bulb in the house goes haywire—­buzzing, pulsing, strobing.

Taron and Mama freeze mid-­shout, suddenly bathed in flickering shadows.

“Stop,” I say. My voice low.

They both look at me, guilt written all over their faces.