Page 36

Chapter thirty-six

A Mother's Welcome

M y feet found the hard, russet marble ground below them moments later. I only stumbled slightly as Gemini and I materialized before a grand bronze throne. Steps made of the same russet marble with rivulets of bronze and copper woven within them flowed downward to where we stood before it. The walls were made of the same material, all the way to the hard, mahogany ceiling and the shining copper chandelier. The light was dim, like a candle guttering out. No one was here. No one had been waiting for us, preparing for this room to be occupied.

“What—” I started but was interrupted by a sudden feminine voice calling out from beyond the mahogany doors at our backs.

“I know you aren’t so stupid as to shadow step right into my throne room, Gemini Morningstar,” the voice sang as the doors flew open and a woman with blonde hair and a flowing chocolate gown strode inside. She flicked a wrist and the copper fixtures on the wall as well as the matching chandelier above us flamed to life, lighting the entire room.

Her eyes settled on Gemini for a moment before flicking to me. She froze, her hand still held aloft from the gesture she had made to light the room. Her lips parted as her eyes widened.

“Seren,” she breathed.

“Mother,” I replied, disgust roiling in my gut as I addressed her.

She rushed forward, the train of her gown flowing out behind her, and embraced me. I froze, every muscle tense as she squeezed me tightly. Her heavy necklace pressed into my collarbone and I winced.

“You’re here,” she said in wonder, pulling away but still holding onto my shoulders, shaking me as if to prove to herself that I was real. “You’re alive.”

I nodded because I didn’t know what else to say to this woman I had never known but who called herself my mother, who claimed some maternal hold on me.

“Your father will be so happy to see you,” she told me and I froze, my fake smile faltering.

“My father?” I asked, stunned. “I thought he was dead.”

Her grin turned wicked at that.

“And I thought you were dead,” she mused. “Seems the Morningstars have a penchant for faking deaths.”

She raised one arched brow to Gemini, letting her judgmental gaze flick over her from head to toe. My heart pounded against my chest at her words. A penchant for faking deaths? Did she know about Lark, that he was still alive, that they had never executed him? How could she?

“We do what we must to escape those who would do us harm,” Gemini professed through gritted teeth, her gaze narrowed to a glare.

“And that’s me, I suppose?” my mother asked with a roll of her eyes as she strode past us and ascended the steps to the throne. She collapsed lazily atop it, propping her feet up on one arm and leaning her back against the other as she draped one arm lazily off the side and looked at us. “I always forget what they think of me in the Bone Court. Am I the mother who went crazy after losing her daughter and started seeking vengeance? Or am I some crazed, narcissistic autocrat trying to take over the realm? Remind me, dear Gemini, for I can never keep track.”

It caught me off guard, how callously she discussed all the perceptions of her that I had been exposed to for the last few months.

“All of that and more,” Gemini hissed.

“And today?” my mother asked, raising a brow. “What must I be today for you to finally return my precious child to me after nearly sixty years?”

“The woman who keeps tearing the world apart to find me,” I said.

My mother turned to me, a smile growing on her lips.

“Fierce, like her mother,” she observed with a grin.

I just gritted my teeth and did not answer.

“Where is Alban?” Gemini asked, narrowing her gaze at the woman sitting carelessly upon a throne that wasn’t hers.

“My father is indisposed at the moment,” my mother answered, not even looking at Gemini anymore. Her gaze, instead, was fixed on her nails as she inspected them one after another. After a moment, her gaze slid back to me. “But he will be so pleased to finally meet his beloved granddaughter.”

She shifted slightly and I noticed it then, the soft glow emanating from her necklace. No, not a necklace. An amulet. I stopped breathing.

“As much as I’m looking forward to so many reunions,” she started, her gaze darkening as she rose slightly in the throne, peering down at us again, “we have business to take care of first.”

She waved a hand and Gemini fell to her knees. I gasped and reached for her but then I was spinning away, floating upwards and toward my mother. The floor beside her bubbled and then rose, that russet marble material liquefying and shaping itself into a chair. She placed me firmly in it and turned back to Gemini who was struggling against some invisible bonds I couldn’t see.

“Such a strange thing, the mind,” Ariadne mused, sucking on her teeth as she watched Gemini’s struggle. “You don’t even have to be bound. You just have to think you are. Paralysis by thought. Neat, huh?”

“Let me go, Ariadne,” Gemini hissed. “I returned the girl. I brought her to you.”

“And I will keep that in mind as I mete out all necessary punishments.”

Punishments? My gaze snapped up to my mother’s as she raised a hand and called out.

“Bring them in.”

Horror filled me as I turned to the doors on the opposite side of the room to find Rook being led inside by half a dozen guards in bronze armor. He was shackled with chains of some material that I didn’t recognize but could feel as it ate away at my power even from this distance. I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to him against his skin. Behind him came Cass, her hair half unbound, her eyes dreary and full of sorrow. Then it was Lark’s turn. Over a dozen soldiers surrounded him, yanking painfully on his chains as they walked. After all of them came a gorgon, Lycurgus, I hazarded a guess.

“No,” I gasped before I could stop myself.

I tried to rise but my seat grew manacles around my wrists and locked me into place. I met Lark’s gaze and felt a weak attempt at reassurance. My heart fell when I realized that this was why it had been so difficult and so rare to feel him while he had been away. It wasn’t the distance between us. It was those chains restricting his use of magic. My breath hitched. How long had they been captured?

“I assumed you would come for them eventually,” my mother said, rolling her eyes in my direction. “I just didn’t think it would take so long. I had to rip that hole open into the Court of Wanderers just to get your attention.”

“I—I didn’t know you had them,” I confessed.

“No?” she asked and seemed genuinely surprised. “Well then, out of curiosity, what are you doing here?”

“I came to convince you to stop the rifts and because…” I trailed off, my gaze flicking down to the amulet hanging over her breast.

“Ah, they put you up to this then, did they? Traded you to get their precious father back his power? Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree, dear. This amulet doesn’t hold their father’s power. It holds mine’s.”

My jaw slackened.

“You—you stole your own father’s magic,” I repeated because I couldn’t believe it. “My grandfather. You—”

“I tried to reason with him,” she told me with a dramatic sigh. “But the man hardly ever listens to me anymore. Thinks I’ve lost my mind with maternal grief.”

“Now, why would he think that?” A familiar voice drawled from before us.

Ariadne’s gaze snapped to Lark where he knelt beside his aunt, sister, and best friend. She flicked a wrist and he grunted but remained upright, though his arms and legs were shaking with that effort alone.

“Stop!” I cried. “Please.”

My mother’s eyes flicked between us for a moment.

“Oh,” she said, her tone holding a note of interest. “That’s new.”

I looked to her, desperately.

“Let them go,” I begged. “Please, just let them go. I’ll stay. I swear it. I’ll stay with you.”

“Ren, don’t—” Lark started but my mother flicked her wrist again and he growled in pain.

“Please,” I gasped. “Please don’t hurt him. I’ll do anything.”

Tears were running freely down my face now as I pulled against the marble manacles around my wrist. It wasn’t my best negotiation strategy, I would admit, but I wasn’t in the right state of mind to haggle. I could feel Lark’s pain through the bond and I could feel him pushing away from it, trying to maintain that brave face for me, for all of us.

“Anything?” she asked, raising a brow.

Lark’s pain stopped. I could feel the moment it cleared. He hung his head, taking deep, controlled breaths. Cass watched him, her eyes wide with terror. Rook was pulling against his bonds, snarling. Gemini just closed her eyes and waited.

“Richard,” my mother said and a door off to the side opened up.

A man with honey blonde hair and keen green eyes stepped into the chamber and my heart bottomed out. Because I knew, at very first glance, that this man was my father and that meant I knew what he had endured at the hands of this woman. All the abuse, decades of mind controlled subservience and trickery. Decades.

“How?” Lark growled, eyes wide as he beheld my father who was not a day over thirty.

Ariadne’s grin was fiendish.

“I have a few new tricks up my sleeve, Canis,” she answered, standing from her throne with a flourish. “Come to me, husband.”

Husband.

Ariadne backed toward me a step, taking my manacled hand in hers and reaching out the other toward him. He crossed the room in a few long strides, taking her hand and peering over her shoulder at where I sat, chained. I thought he must be under her control, that nothing else could compel him to stay here, with her, to marry her. But then his eyes met mine and they were so full of sorrow and such a deep, visceral regret that I couldn’t imagine any of those feelings were of her making.

“Look at us,” Ariadne said, beaming as she gripped our hands. “A family, whole, finally.”

“Where is grandfather?” I asked.

“Resting,” she told me. “Comfortably. How sweet of you to worry over him, child.”

She caressed my cheek and I fought the urge to bite those pale white fingers.

“What have you done, Ariadne?” Gemini asked, her voice low as she stared right at my father, the mortal who seemed frozen in time beside her.

“Oh, this?” Ariadne asked, waving a hand over him as though it was nothing of consequence. “I made a deal with Sophierial and she handed over this little ancient recipe her court has been holding onto for millennia. They call it the Elixir of Eternity. A bit dramatic if you ask me. But it works. One sip and you live forever, just like us. Only without the magic. Sorry dear.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me and I understood two things at once. One, that she did not know I could use magic and that might be an advantage if I played my cards right. Two, that she intended for me to drink the elixir myself. My eyes widened as I looked at my father at her side. His jaw clenched but he didn’t say a word.

“He—you made him immortal?” I asked, stunned.

“I did. And I intend to make you immortal too, dear,” she answered with a smile that I thought might be an attempt at maternal nurturing. “Just one sip and we can be together forever. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, I suppose. Sophierial did warn me it wouldn’t work if the drinker was not willing and your dear dad here nearly died quite a few times before he emerged, made anew. But you’re half immortal already so I can’t imagine it would be as hard for you.”

“No.”

She paused, blinking in confusion.

“No?” she asked. “What do you mean no?”

“No, I won’t take it,” I replied, shaking my head.

“I’m offering you eternal life.”

“And I’m denying it. I enjoy being mortal. I like that part of me that’s tied to them, to him.”

I nodded in my father’s direction and saw his gaze soften somewhat.

“They raised me,” I told her. “They were there for me when you weren’t. You didn’t even start looking for me for fifty years.”

“He told me you were dead!” she shouted, pointing at Lark.

“I want to die someday,” I told her and she paled. “Old and gray and surrounded by people who loved me, knowing I lived a life that made a difference, a life that mattered. Because time matters, mother, when you don’t have an endless supply of it. Every moment counts. Every relationship touches your soul. I won’t abandon my mortality and I won’t become a pawn in whatever game you’re playing here.”

She stared at me for a moment, stunned, and I felt a swell of pride from deep within me, where I had locked that fragment of Lark away so that she could not find it. My father was looking at me in a way that gave me strength. Lark was flooding my soul with pride. Because of them, I stood my ground. Because of them, I held my head high and told her no.

But then Ariadne flicked her wrist and Lark went skidding forward on his knees, still bound in chains. My eyes widened and shot to where he came to a stop at the foot of the stairs.

“Mortals,” Ariadne hissed as she descended those steps until she reached him. “So small minded. So wrapped up within their own brief lives they’re incapable of seeing their potential, of seeing the bigger picture.”

She raised a hand, flexing her fingers, as she came to a stop beside him.

“I’ll give you one more chance,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “Say you’ll take the Elixir.”

My eyes widened in my panic, shooting from her to Lark where he knelt at her side. His jaw was set, that dark, intense gaze upon me as he shook his head slowly.

“Don’t,” he muttered in warning and then the hall filled with the crack of bone and Lark’s thunderous cry of agony.