Page 62 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One

M IRTH

I slip through the dimly lit stone corridors of Waterfell Castle, my father’s seat of power. The thrum of the intersection point is still strong under my feet, but somehow not as intense as it was the last time I wandered these halls a month ago.

Though I took the helicopter from Lake Thun Castle, it’s after dark when I arrive. So I head for the twins’ rooms first. My conversation with my father can wait just a little longer. The world won’t collapse if I take a few measured moments for myself.

The murmur of quiet, sweetly pitched voices draws me to the open doorway opposite the twins’ shared bedroom. I step just beyond it without knocking so I don’t interrupt.

Dark-wood furniture and casings, and jewel-toned fabrics dominate the space. The wall to my immediate right is filled with framed photos from baseboard to ceiling. All feature people, some of them patinated and fading. Eleanor’s bedroom. I’ve never had reason to step within it before.

Eleanor is curled up in the middle of her bed with a twin nestled to either side. The combat mage reads from a large picture book, but her sky-blue eyes flick up to take me in as I hover in the doorway. Her lack of surprise at seeing me confirms that Anne has already been in touch.

The twins don’t notice me, so I just smile at Eleanor, then lean in the doorway and greedily watch the three of them.

I can’t remember anyone cuddling and reading to me and Armin. Not even when we were as young as Twinkle and Tinsel are now. And I’m loathe to admit even to myself that I wouldn’t have thought Eleanor to be the sort of mother to do such a thing. Anne, yes.

Anne came into our lives about a year before both Armin and I were sent off to school. Eleanor didn’t join the family until a few years after that. But I’m not even remotely jealous as I watch the moment continue to unfold between mother and children.

Twinkle furrows his brow with great seriousness.

Tinsel jabs her finger at something pictured in the book, authoritatively. “Dragon!”

I stifle a genuine laugh because I know the book, and I know the main character — a young girl learning about gardening from her grandmother — isn’t a dragon shifter. But I wouldn’t want to be the person to tell Tinsel that.

There are no dragon shifters because dragons don’t exist in our world.

And shifters don’t transform into purely mythical creatures— though Anne’s cath palug designation stretches that particular rule of nature.

The existence of the exceedingly rare kitsune shifters blurs that mythology-versus-reality line as well.

The cath palug, also known as a chapalu, is a rare gigantic cat shifter, feared for its wicked claws and doomed to be hunted by legendary, epically brave knights.

If you pay more attention to literature than real history.

I bought that series of books for the twins for their last birthday, so I’ve read them myself at least a half-dozen times. No dragons.

Eleanor’s gaze flicks up to me again. She mouths something that looks like, ‘Do you need me?’

Lip-reading isn’t a skill I’ve ever needed to hone. Armin and I could communicate with a single look.

I shake my head, mouthing back, ‘Father?’

Eleanor nods. ‘Study.’

I already know that my father works into the wee hours of the night, so I really don’t need the confirmation. But I slip reluctantly away, because I have a few questions that need to be asked before I can sort out the next steps unfolding before me.

Eleanor watches me go.

My father, seated behind his burnished-gold mountain-ash desk, is waiting for me with a tumbler of mage-brewed whiskey already in hand. The grandfather clock just inside the door chimes the hour, oddly ominously, as I step through into the study.

Did he pour the drink the moment he felt me step onto the property?

Is he trying to shove away the memory of the last time I stood before him across from this desk, just as I am?

Or was it only when my footsteps turned into the long corridor that separates his study from the family residences that he felt the need to fortify himself for the conversation to come ?

Since when has our relationship grown so charged that my father needs a drink in hand — even if just as a distraction — to deal with me?

Since he had to come for me after Bolan rejected me?

With my essence pouring out of me unchecked, sobbing and terrified of hurting anyone?

Or of hurting anyone else, to be specific.

Or was it after that? The months upon months of my refusal, over and over again, to test the full reach of my power?

After his utter frustration with me became apparent, because when I finally managed to dampen everything I had within me based on his tutelage, I then had access only to minor abilities.

My empathy. My inherent resistance to all essence-craft.

My father had wanted an heir, secondary or not, with combat-grade coercion that heeded no boundaries, that cut through essence-wrought mental shields, even those constructed by him.

But I wanted to be Mirth.

Not a killer.

Not just another terrifying purple-eyed awry.

“I need more time,” I say, gently shutting the door behind me, and without waiting to be invited to speak.

A flicker of essence seals the door, tickling against my fingertips before I fully release the handle. For a long while, that’s my father’s only acknowledgement that I’ve spoken. That I’ve broached a subject he wants to keep only between us.

He watches me. His purple-eyed gaze is steady, though not necessarily judgemental, as I move to the heavy chair across the desk from him. I push it closer to the desk, so that when I sit, we’re as near as we can be. What with him using the desk as a barrier between us.

I tug off my shoes and curl my legs under me as I sit. My father’s gaze softens around the edges for a moment .

I don’t glance toward the white marble urn still situated on the mantel over the lit fireplace.

“How much time?” he asks finally.

“How much can you give me?”

He blows out a breath, then takes a sip of whiskey before setting the glass to the side.

Then he stretches out both hands, hovering them just over the desk.

His essence blooms under his fingers, intensifying until I swear I can actually see it — not a natural talent of mine, latent or otherwise — and not just feel it.

“Our ancestors were a clever lot,” my father says, almost musingly. “When the castle was expanded, a massive ash tree was rooted on this very spot. Rooted deeply into the intersection point.”

A ball of energy coalesces under my father’s palms, growing under his hands as he parts them, then slowly raises them.

“First the ash tree was revered, tucked within the keep but allowed to continue to flourish. But another awry with a small but fierce force tried to take the intersection point from my grandfather during the transition between his father and himself, about two centuries ago. The tree was sundered during the attack.”

My heart rate picks up, though my father’s tone is calm and measured. I know I need to hear whatever he needs to tell me, yet I also want to step back and … be the pampered, powerless-but-pretty princess for just a moment longer.

It’s too late for that, though.

And I’m now certain that has nothing to do with Armin dying, no matter how desperately I still mourn him. It does, however, have everything to do with the untapped power in my own veins and all the choices I’ve made since it first manifested.

My father pulls his hands away from the energy ball that he’ s formed. As I watch, it slowly begins to rotate, tilted slightly off axis. Threads of energy stream around it, steadily glowing. And then continents form, oceans, rivers …

It’s a globe. A map of …

I’m on my knees on the chair with my elbows on the desk and leaning in as I realize what I’m looking at. “This is … these are the essence trails that connect the intersection points.” I gesture to a spot that glows almost too brightly in the heart of Europe. “That’s us.”

“Yes.”

“How?” My father is a telekinetic with strong telepathic abilities. He can gather energy, of course, but … “The tree?” I place my hands flat on the desk. “The desk is made out of the tree? And some of the roots are still alive?”

“Sustained by the intersection point.” My father brushes a fingertip across the globe hovering between us and gives it a slight spin. “Some of the other intersection points have a similar tree rooted deeply in the ground.” He points to a spot in Asia, then to one in Australia.

“So many threads,” I murmur. Interestingly, the seven brightest points are not equally distributed around the globe.

Then I notice two spots where a dimmer glow fades outward, as if not as concentrated.

A point high in the north and another deep in the south.

The threads that emanate from the seven brighter pinpoints overlap but don’t intersect with these dimmer points.

“These are the intersection points that degraded or were destroyed?”

My father nods, his gaze on my face instead of the globe. “You know the mythology.”

“That a god sleeps under each point?” I say it with a wry twist of my lips that I can’t suppress.

“That when the gods walked the earth, chaos reigned. The wars between them ravaged the land and all but destroyed humanity numerous times over.”

Still smirking slightly, I continue, “So nine of them banded together and decided to fuel an energy field that would protect humanity from the other gods in perpetuity.”

“A soul bound group, if you will,” my father murmurs. “For where else would gods be created but from the universe itself.”

“Dad,” I say, scoffing— and not realizing until it’s out of my mouth that I haven’t called him that in two decades. Not since he sent us away to school.

He just offers me a twisted smile in response.