Free Rivulet by Jamie Magee

tenderly and nodded once as a gasp and a tear escaped me.
    I walked slowly to her side, trying to push my emotions down so I could touch her. “How?”
    Her wise eyes held my gaze as she reached for my arm. I flinched, still terrified for her, but either she didn’t notice or she didn’t care how cold I was. Her hand squeezed my shoulder with more strength than I’d ever known her to have. “I woke up, Genevieve.”
    “Just like that? After almost four years?”
    “Just like that,” she repeated in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard.
    “I need to get your doctor, call everyone. They are going to be so excited. You have no idea how afraid I was that I…that I would have to say goodbye.”
    “Sit, I don’t need a doctor,” she said, edging me to the bench at the end of her bed.
    “I need to call everyone,” I protested, refusing to sit down like this was just another ordinary day, like this was not the most insane turn of events that I’d ever witnessed.
    “They know.”
    “And no one bothered to tell me?” I said as my instant anger seemed to intensify the ice that was forming. With a deep breath, I managed to make it go away.
    “You need your rest, though. I understand you’ve had a troubled night.”
    “She really is spying on me, isn’t she?” I muttered, knowing that Cadence or the guys hadn’t told Gran about my night terror. I would have been the first person they would have told that Gran was awake if they’d seen her.
    “What is that look in your eyes, Genevieve? Why are you so distressed?”
    I tried to swallow the emotions. I really did. But tears spilled down my face as I looked away. “I can’t let you wake up, only to figure out that I long ago lost my mind.”
    “Why on Earth would you think such things?”
    I shook my head as I harshly wiped away the tears on my cheek. “I’m in love with a past that I can’t understand how I’m linked to, and that love affair has caused me to keep everyone at arm’s length. I’m stressed, to the point that the night terrors are back, to the point where my own mind is shutting down the images I’ve come to rely on.”
    “The North Wing,” she said tenderly.
    I looked up at her waiting eyes to see her smiling slightly.
    “Why did you tell me that wing was mine?”
    “Was I wrong?” she asked, raising her brow as a half-smile emerged on her aged lips.
    “It’s not of this world. I mean, most of it is, but sometimes I hear things there that make no sense, that turn reality into fantasy.”
    “Nothing in that wing is fantasy. That is the beginning, Genevieve. Your beginning.”
    I knew she meant that I had been adopted by the Falcons, that I was now and forevermore a Falcon, but she just didn’t understand what I was talking about.
    “I’ve seen myself. I’ve…I’ve watched a life there for years now.”
    “And why are you troubled by that?”
    I shook my head. “Because I think it’s over now.”
    She reached her arm around me. “Child, it’s not over, for your soul still thrives. It’s time to move forward now. Make a new beginning.”
    “I wish I could,” I said under my breath as Wilder’s image slid through my mind. I still couldn’t do it. I still couldn’t imagine giving us another chance. “I’ve tried letting people in, but I freeze. Literally.”
    “Then you have not found your fire. It will come.”
    I blushed as Sebastian saturated my thoughts, as he often did each day after I left that wing.
    “I wish I had your faith.” I glanced over at her. “Your will to fight.”
    She laughed as if I had said something ironic. “You are fighting right now. And you need to keep fighting. Never doubt your emotions, your gut instinct. Follow your soul, and you will never go wrong.”
    I nodded as I looked away. “I’ve been trying to see you for days. Rasure wouldn’t let me. Ben had to take legal action. Can you believe that?”
    “You need to get that woman out of our home,” Gran said boldly to me, which was