Page 15

CHAPTER 15

BAELEN

D arshaw nudged me out of my thoughts with a fanged smile. “Let’s see her now.”

I shook my head. I should have known he was going to insist on seeing her and portaled back sooner, but he deserved to know everything. He was the one who raised me when my fathers kicked me out of Tartarus.

“I need to get these…”

He interrupted me with an eye roll. “I’m sure your problems in the human realm are many and difficult, so why not ease your mind with resolving your family differences before you fight your battles there?”

“I don’t have time.” I looked at the artifacts in my hands. Elizabeth would expect me back with them soon so the witches could begin their defense against the otherworlder invaders.

“There should always be time for family. I think all of you have forgotten that. It’s time to fix it, especially since we don’t know how long they have left.”

Perhaps talking with her might cool some of my anger and take away the betrayal that tainted my bond with Clawdia.

“All right. Let’s see her first. Clawdia told me where she is.”

The blue swirl of the portal revealed rubble, but I stepped through, curious about where she’d been hiding.

We were still in Akar—the dim day and the familiar landscape told me that—but this place was on a distant island south of the mainland where Mother had grown up. It was her escape and one that both Darshaw and me hadn’t returned to because it had been destroyed when she went missing.

He cursed. “Right under our nose.”

I reached out and touched … something but instantly recognized the power of a relic. The image of the destroyed cottage shimmered out of sight, and a small cottage revealed itself, lit by dim lights and covered in the night flora that glowed.

I gritted my teeth. “Hidden by an artifact from my fathers’ treasury.”

He shook his head, equally furious. “Of course.”

We strode into the cottage without knocking, both of us angry and glaring, but when the woman inside turned around, we both stopped in our tracks. Her red eyes pierced mine and their familiarity brought so much of my repressed emotions to the surface that I almost choked.

Memories of her hugs flashed in my mind, the smell of her hair oil enveloping me as her arms held me tight and washed away my fears after a night terror.

I remembered her soft voice and how she’d stroke my face as I slept, singing softly about the darkness meeting the light. She was proud and smiled widely as she taught me to fight with the many weapons she’d mastered, telling me tales of each and how she’d used them to best her enemies.

I’d missed her but didn’t realize how much until now. The emotions had been too clouded by anger that had washed away the longing, the child inside me that just wanted to see his mother, to talk to her.

I’d ignored that inner child for as long as I could, but doing so had only caused me pain. It was time to push away the anger and let him speak, but I was shaking with rage and relief. I couldn’t form words.

Speaking my truth was not my strong suit.

Darshaw forgot his anger and let out a sigh so deep that he nearly melted into a puddle on the floor. Then he was pulling his sister into his arms and muttering, “Thank Darkness you’re alive.”

“Of course I am, brother.” She chuckled even as he squeezed so tightly I thought she might lose her head. “I wouldn’t leave you truly. I just needed some space.”

“For thirty-five years?” he asked incredulously, pulling away to cup her face.

“You’ve been alive so long that I thought it would feel like a blink to you.”

There was probably some truth to that. My parents and uncle were some of the oldest creatures in the realms, and after being alive for thousands of years, the passing of a few years must be short, all things considered.

But he stared into her eyes, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted to pop her head off or strangle her, but his arms shook slightly as he growled, “You know it wasn’t. You’ve felt the distance in those years, sister. I’ve missed you. Why did you have to hide? And here, of all places?

She smiled and lifted a shoulder. “You know I’ve always loved this place.”

He let her go and sighed as he leaned against the kitchen countertop. “I was sad when I saw it destroyed. I thought it was a sign from the great forces that you were dead and didn’t think to come closer to see the ruins.”

She nodded slowly. “I know. I’m sorry I caused you pain, but I needed you to focus on Baelen while I focused on my visions.”

“You could have told me to watch him. You could have let me raise him properly instead of letting your mates make him feel worthless and unwanted.”

She shook her head, her dark hair gliding like a curtain over her shoulder. “Had I told you, you would have tried to stop me. You would have told him where I was, and you would have forced me out of my vision threads, but I needed to be there. I needed to weave them the way I wanted his future. The best version. If I didn’t…”

“Only you know that for certain. I’m sorry, but my feelings of betrayal and hurt aren’t erased. You have a lot of making up to do, especially considering you are dying with your mates.”

She laughed, and her eyes were soft as she looked at him. “We all die eventually, brother. We’ve lived far longer than others.”

“We’ve lived for duty. It has not been a blessing.” He crossed his arms. “If we suffer, we suffer together. You promised me when you mated those monsters that it would not mean I lost you.”

“I know. Perhaps in my final days I’ll be able to live without the burden of duty and instead have fun. You can join me. Take some time away from the kingdom.”

“If I leave for a long time, I’ll come back to see someone in my throne. Yet I hope we can enjoy whatever time we have. If you leave me, I won’t be far behind. I’m not meant for this world without you, sister.”

It frustrated me, this conversation. My mother, who I hadn’t seen since I was fifteen, hadn’t even acknowledged I was in the room with her, and yet she and my uncle were planning their deaths as though losing them wouldn’t kill me. As though I shouldn’t concern myself with it. I looked away and clenched my fists to control myself.

Darshaw coughed and finally glanced at me. “Let’s not dwell on deaths. I think you have another guest waiting to greet you. He’s not as excited as I am, but he is just a child.”

When her eyes met mine, I nodded, broke the contact, and said, “Mother,” in the calmest, blandest voice I could muster.

“My child,” she breathed. She moved to stand right in front of me, but I didn’t reach out, and neither did she.

“I haven’t been a child for a while.”

I held my breath as she reached up to cup my cheek. She hadn’t needed to reach the last time she saw me. I was a child then. “You are always a child in your mother’s eyes, and it still pains me to see you hurt. Especially since it was I that put it there.”

She held the same power to force me to talk as she always had, whether to confess to throwing apples at the palace rooms or tell her of some pain I didn’t want her to know about. As I stared into her eyes, my tongue loosened, and all my hurt and questions poured out.

“I’ve held on to the last words you told me like they were my manifesto. I trusted your vision with me as the savior of the titans, and I trusted you when you told me you needed to leave, but I was fifteen , Mother, and I needed you. Why did you have to leave and stay away for so long?”

She sighed, stepped back, and waved for us to follow her as she said, “Let’s sit while I explain.”

The cushion on her sofa tried to consume me as I sat down opposite her, and I wrestled with it, using the armchair as leverage while Darshaw chuckled behind me. I noted he didn’t attempt to sit and side-eyed him as my mother spoke.

“Thirty-five years ago, I saw a vision of a witch in the human realm. She was going to get pregnant and abort the baby. I didn’t understand why the great powers would show me such a redundant vision, but when I looked into the threads, looked into the witch’s powers, the potential of the child, I eventually saw you, fully grown with this child and two others, soul mates, making a family.”

I raised a brow, surprised her hear it was Charlie she saw first. She pulled a pillow into her lap and played with the tassel.

She continued, “I knew it was important. The more I looked, the more I saw a way for me to save the titans, but I needed time to weave the threads, to force this woman onto a path in which she wouldn’t abort her child but instead gave him away.”

Her fingers weaved the strands of the tassel together.

Her voice was low and quiet when she said, “I wasn’t supposed to leave for long, but your fathers refused to believe in the possibility. They were too worn down by disappointments, too wrapped in their own guilt, too proud to trust me. I admit I was angry with them, but I wouldn’t leave you for their actions.”

She looked up at me, staring directly, meeting my gaze so I could see her sincerity bleed from her eyes.

“The last thing I wanted was to leave you. I wanted you to have the parents I dreamed you’d have, to know our unconditional love, but that didn’t turn you into the male you needed to be for this mission. It didn’t give you the opportunity to meet your soul mates.

“I told you I would return when I could, and I know it’s been lonely, that your duty smothered your pain, and I’m furious with your fathers for treating you as they did. They will feel my wrath for hurting you, but I swear to you, it was the best future I saw for us all. Your soul mates make it worthwhile, do they not?”

Would I have preferred the love of my parents and never known the love of my soul mates?

The love I received from my soul mates didn’t erase the hurt inflicted by my parents’ mistreatment and neglect of me. I knew which option offered me less pain.

But knowing Zaide and Clawdia, even Charlie, and the family we were creating made the difference. Had I never known them, I wouldn’t wonder if I were missing out on anything.

Yet being without them now would leave me a broken male dying for the taste of light. They made it worthwhile … and that softened my anger toward my mother.

I understood her decision to save the titans and the realms because I had the same desire, the same duty to the balance of the interlinked dimensions, but I didn’t like how she’d gone about her plan.

“Why couldn’t I tell my fathers about the mission you gave me to save the titans? If they’d known?—”

“They would have stopped you. They would have insisted that gods cannot interfere so directly, not even through their son, and they would have trapped you in that palace to become their caretaker. The titans needed you, Baelen.”

I knew she was right.

As calmly as I could, I replied, “Like Darshaw said, your explanations don’t ease the pain your plan has caused me, and I need time to think more about it, but I appreciate that it was a difficult decision for you to make.” The silence was uncomfortable, made worse by our locked gaze. Finally, I said, “Clawdia said you were unwell, but you seem fine.”

“I’ve aged.” She chuckled humorlessly. “But I am getting by. I am no longer having so many visions, and therefore the sickness your fathers have been feeling has crept into me.”

“And yet you’ve remained to suffer alone even though they have each other.” It didn’t seem fair.

She smiled. “I was waiting for you to take me home.”

I shook my head, suddenly angry again, and spilled more of my feelings. “I hate your visions, and now you are passing them onto my soul mate. Now she has to suffer, and I have to relive all the manipulation, the lies, the forced smiles all over again with the woman who owns me body and soul. I can’t escape her.”

She raised a brow and asked softly, “Do you want to? You would leave her to this curse alone?”

I glared at the insinuation. “I don’t want to, and I would never leave her, but the visions will destroy us, just as they destroyed you and my fathers.”

“There is never one cause of a relationship breakdown, Baelen. My visions might have caused my choice to leave your fathers, but they are responsible for their reactions just as you are. They were proud, dismissive, and rude when I approached them, and in my visions, I saw how they hurt you because you are half akari.

“Despite that, they are my soul mates. I’ve spent thousands of years with them. I know their flaws and have missed them during our temporary separation. I know they’ve missed me even as they’ve cursed my name.” She smiled in a way that reminded me of her predatory nature and said, “I look forward to seeing them soon.”

I restrained a shudder, suddenly feeling sorry for my fathers even though I desperately wanted to watch her teach them a lesson.

She continued, “You have the same power of choice your fathers had. You can choose your fear of visions and create the terrible future you imagine. Or you can open your heart and mind to the possibility that your future can be as happy as you want it to be. Because happiness is found in the small things. Joy is the small touches, the kind words, the little gestures.

“Clawdia won’t see those moments in her visions. She will only see what the great powers wish her to see to guide you on your larger path. In the moments when the ground shifts and duty calls, you need to stand together, trust each other, and care about each other. She needs you, so don’t be too hard on her, child. She already has a great weight on her shoulders, and all she wants is your love and support.”

Her words struck a chord with me, and I nodded, my anger melting away like frost. Despite being absent for thirty-five years, a mother’s advice could still reach me, steer me.

She stood, smiling, and patted my shoulder.

“You have always been my priority, Baelen, and I know it felt as though I abandoned you, but I’ve watched you in my visions. I’ve seen your struggles and your triumphs. I’m so proud of you.” My eyes filled at her words, and I blinked them back, embarrassed. “You think I lied when I told you that you were going to be the savior of the titans, but I didn’t. I just knew you couldn’t do it alone. You are never alone, now you have them.”

She laughed as she spun around, looking at the floral decoration of her small cottage. “I will miss this place, but it’s time I left. As much as it’s been my home, I think it’s time I returned to their side.”

Darshaw pulled her in for another hug. “Good luck, sister. You won’t find them welcoming, but I have faith in your ability to win them over.”

“If they are angry, it means they still love me, and I’ve never lost a battle.”

Her fangs descended, and I was reminded that her soul mates tasted as good to her as mine did to me. For thirty-five years, she survived on other blood? A newfound respect settled inside me as I acknowledged her sacrifice. I wasn’t sure I could ever do the same.

But I hadn’t met my children yet.

Darshaw nudged my head, and I stood. “Send me home before you visit your fathers. I don’t need to witness what comes next.” He shuddered, and my mother laughed, playfully hitting him as I created a portal for him back to his castle. “I will be in touch, sister. I will kill them if they hurt you.”

She lifted her shoulder and replied, “We hurt each other, brother. It’s time to forgive it all.”

I portaled us straight into my fathers’ suites and watched her face as she looked around what used to be their shared home. The portraits of her were gone, all of her clothes and accessories removed. I wasn’t sure if they were removed to another part of the palace or if they’d really gotten rid of all her things in a rage.

She didn’t seem upset.

My fathers, however, weren't angry; they were furious. The tick in Charos’s jaw and the pulsating vein in Riseir’s forehead warned me of an impending explosion as we stepped into the room where they were enjoying an afternoon game.

I crossed my arms as I waited for the eruption.

Finally, between gritted teeth, Riseir said, “The prodigal mate returns along with our son. I didn’t realize it would be such a momentous day.” He stood, the scrape of the chair against the marble floors sounding like a threat, before he strode over to us.

Mother didn’t flinch as he picked up her hand and kissed it mockingly. “Welcome back.”

“Of course you didn’t know I’d return today,” she replied mildly. “It’s not you who can see the future.”

Charos snapped. “No, it was you who believed she knew everything, who couldn’t confide in her mates?—”

“I’m not here to argue with you.” She held up a hand, completely ignoring her most temperamental mate. “I have returned because we are all dying, and if that is the case, we should greet the great beyond together, should we not?”

“You are dying?” Hedri asked quietly, approaching wide-eyed and slowly as though she might disappear again if he blinked.

“You thought I would escape the death of my soul bonds dying?” she asked with her brows raised and her hands on her hips.

“Your curse keeps you?—”

She shook her head. “My curse is passing to another. I’m not seeing as much as I used to. I’m weaker.”

“No,” Hedri whined.

Riseir asked, “Who is taking Fate’s curse?”

They looked at me. I shook my head and replied, “My soul mate.”

“You didn’t bring them to meet us?” Hedri asked, his eyes glazed over as he looked at my bonds. He’d been planning a feast in celebration of me finding my mates when I last spoke to him.

“Not today,” was all I replied. My eyes had shifted to Charos, who approached his mate quietly, anger and pain seeping into his expression.

“Why, Nisha?” he whispered.

Her bottom lip trembled before she sucked it in and squared her shoulders. “It was the only way.”

“I don’t believe that.”

She closed her eyes. “It was the best way to ensure we could right our wrongs, save your people, and create a son who could handle such responsibility with other unique souls who were created for this journey. They’ve already healed the shadow realm portal, and the good it’s done for the interlinked dimensions is … untold.”

“You’ve healed the shadow portal?” Riseir asked.

I shrugged as though it were no big deal and not the most traumatic event of my existence. “I’ve been busy.”

“So it seems…” he drawled.

“You didn’t leave because you were angry with us?” Hedri asked. He’d picked up her hand and held it in both his, petting it like an injured animal.

“I was angry with you. Your disbelief in my vision, your hubris, as well as the way I saw you treat our son made me furious with you.” They opened their mouths to protest, but she held her other hand up. “I don’t want to listen to your excuses right now. I understood how you felt when the life pool was destroyed, but for you to go so far and disown him…”

I raised my brows. They disowned me because of the life pool? Perhaps blamed me for not being able to stop the destruction? I wanted to ask since it was the first time I’d heard this, but Mother shook her head.

“Now isn’t the time to discuss it. We all have work to do, and I won’t allow us to settle into complacency and await our death. We are going to fight for our child’s future.”

Charos smiled, the first I’d seen since she’d left. “There’s my female.”

Riseir was still hesitant. “You are back for good?”

“I won’t leave. I want to resolve our differences. I want my soul mates back… I miss the taste of you.”

I nearly gagged as their eyes turned from angry to lustful.

Hedri pressed kisses to her hand and arm. “I knew you’d return to us, love. You were never supposed to be gone so long.”

I covered my eyes. “Please, not in front of me. This is sickening.”

My mother laughed loudly, and I glared through my fingers at her. “Sorry, Baelen.” She untangled herself, not without difficulty, from Hedri and began striding from the suite. “Walk with me for a moment, Baelen. I know you need to get back, but there’s something you’ll need to add to your collection of artifacts.”

I narrowed my eyes at the back of her head as I followed her through the corridors. “I thought you weren’t having visions anymore.”

“I’m not dead yet.”

Riseir called, “Nisha, don’t let him raid any more from our treasury.”

“What’s yours is mine, dear,” she called back sweetly. Then, as she opened the door, she added with more edge, “He will have what he needs.”

“What do I need?” My stomach turned with anxiety.

“It’s nothing terrible, I promise.” She smiled and guided me to the weapon wall before pulling off a golden axe and handing it to me. “This axe will break any bond between people. Any bond.”

“Why would I need that?”

“You’ll see when you return.” She rubbed my arm as I searched her eyes for the information she withheld. “Now hurry back. Your family needs you.”