Page 149 of Evermore

Something dangerous flickered across Aeris’s beautiful face, a brief glimpse of the power she usually kept carefully veiled. “You don’t command gods, child.”

“And you don’t command this house,” I countered. “I’m sure Elowen asked you to leave, didn’t she? Before I arrived. Yet here you sit.”

Aeris’s smile thinned. “I was hoping for a civilized conversation.”

“Hope somewhere else.”

The sound of another carriage rattling up outside provided a welcome interruption. Thea, thank the gods. I needed to warn her, to let her know who waited inside. I kept my eyes on Aeris as I took a step back toward the entryway.

“Your persistence is irritating,” Aeris said, rising from her chair. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Stubbornness runs in your blood, after all.”

Before I could respond, the front door swung open. I turned, ready to signal Thea to stay back, and instead found myself staring into a face I hadn’t seen in fifteen years.

My father.

I had no words. Nor feeling in my feet as I stared at a man that’d died to me the day he stopped responding in that fucking opium den. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to throw up or fall to my knees, or slam the door shut. He just stood there, older, grayer, the lines of his face deeper than I remembered. His clothes were simple but clean, nothing like the ragged garments he’d worn in those last days. Thea hovered anxiously behind him, her expression a mix of apprehension and sorrow.

I stumbled backward. The knife nearly slipped from my suddenly numb fingers. A thousand questions fought for dominance in my mind, but I couldn’t voice a single one.

He didn’t look at me.

His eyes fixed on something, someone, behind me. His weathered face crumpled with a storm of emotions: recognition, shock, grief, anger.

“Treasure? I see you’ve found your mother,” he said, his voice the same smooth tone I remembered.

The world tilted beneath my feet as I slowly turned to follow his gaze straight to Aeris, whose perfect composure had finally cracked.

47

Paesha

My blood turned to ice, then fire, then something that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be, which was fitting, apparently, since I couldn’t decide what the fuck I was anymore either.

“What did you just say?” The words scraped out of my throat like broken glass.

A demigod? Me? The homeless kid from Requiem’s gutters, the girl who’d danced for coins, who couldn’t even keep her father from choosing opium over her, that girl was supposed to be half-goddess? And not just any goddess, but Aeris, the supposed Goddess of Renewal who’d schemed, and tried to bind Archer to Ezra, and apparently abandoned her own daughter without a backward glance?

The Remnants exploded across the floor, dragging darkness with them as they slithered up the walls, reacting to my fury and confusion. Winter materialized beside me, her spectral form more solid than I’d ever seen her, blood dripping from her nose as snow cascaded around her. For once, I didn’t try to rein her in. Nor the others that appeared. One after another, after another. Until I could hardly see anyone else standing in the entry of our humble home.

“You knew,” I said, turning back to Aeris. The words felt inadequate, pathetic even, against the storm of emotions threatening to tear me apart from the inside. “All this time, you knew.”

Aeris managed to compose herself, shoulders straightening as she met my gaze. “It was… complicated.”

“Complicated? You abandoned me. You left me with him.” I jerked my chin toward my father, who still hadn’t looked at me. “And then what? Had a good fucking time watching the chaos ensue? Was it entertaining for you?”

“Paesha—” Elowen started, but I shook my head sharply.

“No. I want to hear her say it.” I stepped closer to Aeris, close enough to see the flecks of gold in her eyes. Eyes that, I realized with a sickening lurch, were slightly tilted like mine. “Tell me. Did you help Ezra hunt me down? Did you sit back while I was tortured in the Maw? While I bargained away my freedom to the Maestro? Answer me!”

“You don’t understand?—”

“Then make me understand!” I roared, the Remnants surging higher, coiling around the chandelier, blotting out the light. “Or better yet, don’t bother. Get the fuck out.”

Aeris’s face hardened, the maternal mask slipping to reveal something ancient and calculating. “I’m only trying to help you, Paesha. There are things you don’t know, forces at work that?—”

“I don’t care.”

“You should,” Aeris said, her voice dropping lower, a challenge in it now. “The Treeis bond you share with Archer, you’ve realized it by now, haven’t you? The bond that should never have existed.”