Sarah
I’m not sure I’ve totally come back to reality when I leave Kenna’s room and fall directly into Sydney’s waiting arms.
“Did you just deliver a baby?”
“I think so?” I rest my head in the crook of his shoulder as he wraps his strong arms around me, holding me tight. “Am I awake right now?”
“You’ve been out for over a day, Sarah. I don’t think you should even be up and walking around yet.” He scoops me up and carries me back to the room where I woke up, telling me in a quiet whisper that this is his personal apartment whenever he visits this side of his family. My back hits the mattress, but I’m not alone.
Sydney curls his body around mine, and the quiet solitude of the room settles over us like a wet, cold blanket.
We’re silent for a long time. I watch the light of day fade through the windows, casting silver beams of moonlight across the carpet.
“Is Blake safe?”
“He is. He’s fine, Sarah.”
I nod, my eyes filling with tears I can’t blink back. “Gabriel is dead.”
“Yes. His body was brought here and burned. I saw to it myself.” He turns away for a moment, and I hear a drawer open, then close. I close my eyes as a sense of magic settles around me. “This is yours now.”
He curls my fingers around the hilt of Gabriel’s knife. I smooth my thumb over the moonstone. It thrums to life beneath my touch, lighting up a small spot on the bed. “Destroy it.”
“Are you sure?”
I turn and curl against his chest, leaving the knife behind. He holds me close, cupping the back of my head as I let two decades of trauma ebb through my body and flow outward.
“It’s over, Sarah. We can go home. We don’t have to worry about this anymore. Evander spent the last few days hunting down Gabriel’s co-conspirators. They’re dead. It’s done.”
I feel him reach over me to grab the knife. He puts it back in the drawer, returning his touch to my body, smoothing my hair away so he can run his hand down my spine.
I fall asleep somehow. He might have, as well, because I wake to him still lying beside me, my cheek resting on his arm as he absently strokes his knuckles over the curve of my waist. Dim light spreads across the carpet. Early morning.
“She needs to eat something soon,” says an unfamiliar voice, alerting me to another person in the room.
“I’ll make sure of it.”
Weathered hands grasp the strange obelisk on the bedside table. The glowing orbs burn out, and the hands retreat.
I only sit up when I’m sure I’m alone here with Sydney.
“We’re going to go home tonight.” He sighs as if preparing to say something he knows I won’t like. “There’s something you might consider doing first.”
I sit up, resting on my elbow. “What?”
He sits up too, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Just… breakfast is out in the sitting room. You should shower and eat something, then we need to meet with Ella and Ryatt.”
It sounds serious. He starts to get out of bed, but I grab his hand. “Kenna and the baby?”
“They’re fine,” he smiles, leaning down to kiss me but stops. His hesitation guts me.
“I’m okay, Sydney.”
“I just–” He leans his forehead against mine. “You manipulated time, Sarah. You changed the outcome of that battle. I was dead, I’m pretty sure. My dad was mortally injured. We all would have died but you… you went back.”
“I had to–”
“I love you,” he says, kissing me tenderly. “Sarah, I love you. But never do that again. Never put yourself through that again. Your powers are… extraordinary, but they’re immense. You’ve been out for an entire day, and there were a few moments when I wasn’t sure you were going to wake up again.” He lowers his head, kissing my hands. “I don’t know what else to say. Even my aunt and uncle don’t understand the scope of what you can do.”
“I don’t care,” I tell him, chuckling a bit. “I feel fine.”
He shakes his head, “I just can’t wrap my head around what happened yet.”
“I promise you, I have no plans of having to go back in time to rescue anyone again… unless you need it.”
“I think we’re done with danger for a while,” he says, meeting my eyes.
“I hope so,” I reply. I pull him toward me and kiss him slowly, tenderly, savoring the feel of his mouth on mine.
“You need to eat something. I’m going to take a shower and then we’ll go.”
“Go where?”
He pushes off the bed and runs his hands through his hair. “Ella distracted herself during Kenna’s labor by arranging the arrival of someone I think you might want to see. If not, you don’t have to.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
* * *
I follow Sydney down another long, gilded hallway. This castle is massive. I’ve never been anywhere quite like this, and I immediately lose track of where we are as we take another set of spiraling stairs down into another level of the fortress that overlooks an equally golden city.
It strikes me quite suddenly that this is my homeland. My grandmother on my father’s side came from this place–Moonrise.
But I don’t feel at home in the winding hallways or amongst the witches who flutter around us, going about their duties as maids, healers, and scholars who work in the incredibly gargantuan library Sydney briefly showed me.
During our walk I got the run-down on how Kenna’s doing and confirmed that I had, in fact, delivered a baby in the last twelve hours, and that hadn’t just been a weird dream. The baby boy’s name is Aris, and Sydney said he is about as bald as they come, with the faintest hint of blond hair like Evander.
Finally, when my thighs are burning like fire after our sixth set of unending stairs, we come to a very simple, very old wooden door.
“We’re eight stories underground,” Sydney says lightly, as if that’s supposed to calm some of the nerves ricocheting through my skull. He opens the door inward, ushering me inside a small, empty room with dark stone walls. I rub my arms, chilled by the stale air. I’m wearing another flowy dress, similar to the gowns I’ve seen Kenna and Ella wear from time to time. Simple, one color, but vibrant and silken, the dress and matching robe of deep red flow out behind me as I look at the second door on the far side of the room.
It’s heavier than the last, and the metallic taste of magic hangs thick in the air as the door opens a touch, and Ella pokes her head out. “Oh, good. I was starting to think you weren’t coming. Are you ready?”
Am I? I haven’t seen this man since I was a child, and even then, my memories of him are fragmented and blurred by time. I nod nonetheless, and she holds the door open for me and Sydney. He’s not going to leave my side. He promised, and I squeeze his hand in confirmation as Ella leads us down another long, narrow hallway toward an archway that spills amber light across ancient stone tiles that line the floor in jagged, hooked squares.
Ryatt’s voice, low and rough, thrums into earshot as I edge toward the archway.
But another voice follows, and my body tenses with sudden excitement that my mind hasn’t allowed. It’s more lifted, more sophisticated, with a slight accent.
“She’s here,” my father says before he comes into view. Chains drag on the floor. A shuffling of feet as someone turns around….
It’s like looking at an older, much more masculine version of myself. Atticus–his long blond hair, the same icy shade and texture as mine, meets my eyes. His eyes are different–a different shape and shade.
I got my eyes from my mother.
“I understand that you go by Sarah now,” he says softly, carefully.
I look down at his wrists, which are bound by thick chains of silver, but cuffed by iron. He’s a prisoner. Gabriel’s henchman but for the sole reason of protecting me.
It’s enough to cause my chest to tighten painfully. “Yes, I do.”
“Your mother hated the name Sasha, but her pack held the tradition of the elders choosing a newborn’s name during their first full moon,” he says. “Sarah was her first choice, but they considered it too modern. Sapphira. That was your name between her and I. Sarah for short, in her lullabies.”
My heart wrenches at the quiet, dull pain in his voice. I spot Ryatt in the corner of my eye, his arms crossed and his silver eyes glowing with unnatural power as he watches the exchange, his expression unreadable.
Sydney steps up beside me. Atticus’s eyes slide to him, looking him up and down. “I owe you my gratitude, Prince, for finding her and ensuring her safety.”
Sydney simply nods, and the room falls quiet.
I suppose I should say something. “Do you know why I am the way I am?”
“Your powers?” When I nod, he smiles sadly, shaking his head, “Your mother is to blame for that, I believe. You were conceived during a rare full moon which held significance in her pack. She told me you’d have the powers of the Goddess. I prayed that you wouldn’t, that you’d take after her shifter side, but you are half-witch regardless.”
Ella shifts her weight somewhere behind me. “Atticus, we’re on borrowed time–”
“I understand,” he says sadly, his eyes downcast for a moment before his gaze rises to meet mine. “You’re safe now. I know you’ve been through hell, Sarah. I am sorry I wasn’t able to protect you from the beginning. I tried–”
“I know you tried to protect me,” I blurt out, my eyes going glassy. “I remember–I do remember–”
His eyes water as he looks away. “She would have been so proud of you.”
Even Ryatt, normally stoic with an eternal scowl, flexes his jaw and seems to be trying to gather himself.
“Gabriel is dead,” I tell Atticus, choking on the words. “I’m free.”
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
“What do these powers mean?” I ask, my voice straining. “What am I supposed to do?”
“She will be offered the same ritual we offer mystics who chose to leave the order,” Ella cuts in, and Atticus nods, swallowing hard.
“You can give them up, give them back to the Goddess,” he says quietly, “but you’ll fit right into this family if you keep them.”
Something inside my heart snaps, sending a torrent of emotion hurtling uncontrollably to the surface. Sydney, sensing this, steps closer and places his hand on my lower back.
Atticus catches his movements and smiles softly. “I am a prisoner of Eastonia, Sarah, for good reason. I’d do it all again if it meant you’d have this outcome. A mate, and a son, I hear, already born.”
“Blake,” I whisper, choking back a sob.
“Blake,” he repeats, smiling around the word. But something shifts in the room. Magic. I can feel it seeping in, coating the room in something inky and dark. Atticus notices and sighs, turning his eyes to Ryatt, who nods. “One day, I’ll meet him. Until then–” he looks at Sydney, “guard them with your life. That's all I ask of you.”
“I will.” Sydney’s voice is sharp and clear, echoing over a haze of magic that settles over the room and snaps.
My father disappears, chains and all.
“Where did he go?” I gasp.
Ella and Ryatt exchange glances. Ryatt replies, “Back to the prison in Tarsian where he’ll remain until his trial next year. It’s out of our hands, even as king and queen.”
“He’s the son of Kane, Sarah,” Ella says sadly. “We didn’t have a choice, even knowing the truth.”
“I know,” I swallow, aching to be back in bed, to hide my tears.
Ella approaches me, her face twisted in grief. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through. We do have a ritual we could perform to give your powers back to the Goddess. It’s exclusive to the mystics, used when their own kind wishes to leave their order and sisterhood. It would work for you.”
Sydney stiffens beside me. Give up my powers?
Powers I just learned came from the mother I’ll never remember?
“No,” I whisper.
Ryatt and Ella nod, but Sydney gently tugs on my arm. “Let’s go. We need to prepare to go home.”
“We’ll leave at dusk, when the sun sets,” Ryatt says.