Marianna
I get dressed, and then we’re ushered down to the basement of the castle in short order. Soren doesn’t set Skye down until we reach the web of hallways leading to what I thought were storage rooms but end up being an intricate, absolutely unreal, training facility built levels below the main floor of the castle. There, we enter a small arena of sorts, where several guards are already waiting for us, as well as… Sydney.
Blake and I haven’t married yet, but Sydney is as close as he can be to a father-in-law at this point in time, and that’s written clearly on his face when Skye runs into his waiting arms, but his eyes remain on mine. Silent. Hollow with both grief and startling understanding. There’s no room for anything else, but I… I feel nothing but anger.
Soren’s talking, but I barely register a word he says as I stare back at Sydney, my hands curling into fists at my side. I want to say what’s on my heart–that he should have known that Blake would become this, that he could see it clearly in his son’s eyes, that he knew Blake was struggling–had struggled his entire life–with these powers and not because he didn’t understand them..
Blake knew what he was capable of this entire time, and it weighed on him until he broke, and did something so reckless I could scream.
I turn from Sydney before I can spit the venom simmering on the tip of my tongue that he doesn’t even deserve, but I just need someone… anyone, to take it out on.
“Oh my gods, Anna!” Mom bursts through a group of warriors clogging the doorway, her arms outstretched. Skye screams for her grammy behind us, and then her little arms are wrapped around our waists, her face buried between us. I let the tears fall. I let them drown me, soaking in the dusty collar of my shirt–Blake’s shirt that Soren swiped for me, along with a pair of joggers. I fell asleep in Blake’s arms last night, totally unaware of what he was planning to do.
That’s the part that hurts the most. The secret he kept. That last night, when we were tangled together, and wrapped in each other’s arms… that he kissed me, whispering what I realize now were broken promises of a bright future ahead of us, where everything is always warm, always good, and always easy.
“Marianna, I need to speak to you,” Sydney says over the hushed voices of the guards and the whimpering cries of my mom and Skye. I turn to him, letting him see the acute pain behind my eyes, but I let my family go and walk to him, slowly, wading through the guards waiting for Soren’s directions, I believe, because Maeve isn’t down here with us.
She’s dealing with everything above–her broken city.
Sydney takes me by the shoulder and guides me to a quiet curve of the indoor arena–training grounds, I realize. “I’m here to take you, Skye, and your mother to Veiled Valley.”
“Why?”
“It was what–what Blake wanted,” he says with a perfectly straight face. Gods, he looks like Blake right now. Stern, emotionless, but his eyes are a torrent of things left unsaid, feelings he can’t or won’t voice.
He might think he’s lost his son. I let the knowledge sink in, mingling with the dread, confusion, and utter grief I feel.
I press my hand to my chest without even realizing it, like I can feel the strings of our bond just beneath my skin–still intact.
“He’s not dead.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Is he coming back?”
Sydney takes a shallow breath, his lips parting with the exhale, but Soren’s voice rips over the murmurs in the crowd. “Security at the castle is being tripled as of right now. Find your leaders and regroup to be assigned to your new posts here and throughout the city. Go.”
The guards move out silently, and Soren turns to me, but I look back at Sydney. “I’m not going to Veiled Valley. I’m going to stay. So is Skye, and so is my mom. We’re going to stay here.”
Sydney glances at Soren.
I lick my lips, finding them dry. “I can’t go. If he comes back–if something went wrong… I need to be here. I can’t hide from this. He’s my mate. I don’t understand why he did this, or why he didn’t even tell me goodbye, but I know with my entire heart,” I breathe, tears welling in my eyes, “that he wouldn’t do something like this to… hurt anyone. He went to find Hannibal, didn’t he? He told you, right?” My voice cracks painfully as I look over my shoulder at Soren. “He only trusted you. He told you what he was planning. You knew?”
Soren’s eyes are glassy, but he lowers his gaze to the floor. It’s confirmation enough.
“Let me take your mom and Skye to Veiled Valley, just for a few days, until this blows over. Until we know more. You can remain, of course. Maeve could use the company.” Sydney’s voice is raw, but he’s not here to argue. “Skye will be with family. It’s going to be chaotic here for a while.”
I nod, too torn to shreds to even process the next minute, let alone the new few days.
My mom doesn’t argue. She holds tight to Skye as I walk back to them and kneel, taking Skye’s hands in mine. Her face is damp with tears, and her eyes shine violet, just like Blake’s. It kills me.
It gives me a single shred of hope.
It brings me to the ground.
I caress her cheek and lean my forehead against hers. “You’re going to go with your grandpa on an adventure for a few days. We’ve never been to Veiled Valley before, but I’ve been told it’s beautiful. And there’s a friendly ghost in the castle who can make toys out of thin air.”
“Can the ghost bring Daddy back?”
Daddy. I haven’t heard her call him that before. My heart crushes under the weight of my grief. “You can ask, and maybe the ghost will bring you a dream about him. What do you say? Can you be strong and brave for me? For Grammy?”
She nods, straightening up, her shoulders squared.
“That’s my girl.”
I rise to speak to Mom, but Skye squeezes my hand, her voice a low murmur–a brief, breathy whisper. “Daddy gave me a dream before he left for his trip. It’s upstairs, in the sphere in your room. His favorite. He said it would be there for you when he left. You just have to look.”
“What?”
“You need to go, Sydney,” Soren says over the top of us.
I feel my soul being torn from my body as Mom clutches me close, pressing a wet kiss to my cheek. “Its just a few days. I’ll bring her back, okay? Just give it a few days.”
“Mom–”
“Maeve wants to speak to you,” Soren says, and I’m effectively torn between what needs to happen and the reality that everything I know is swirling down the drain.
I watch my mom and daughter disappear into the aether with Sydney. Then, I spend the climb back to Maeve’s office wondering if my mom arrived in Veiled Valley desperately ill from the jump. I think of how Skye must be feeling, how it was selfish of me to ask her, a seven-year-old, to be strong. Guilt riddles my senses useless as I move on autopilot into Maeve’s office.
The queen stands behind her desk, her eyes cold and serious as she speaks with several very important looking older men in uniforms–the commanders of her royal forces.
“Commander Andrews will station his captains and their regiments along our borders with the Roguelands and the Deadlands, while you, Commander Ashwood, will be moving your forces into Tarsian. The Royal Guard of Tarsian already has their naval fleet waiting off the coast, but you will aid their ground operations along their shores.” She sighs, drawing in a breath, before continuing, “Alpha King Soren will base his operations in–in Twin Rivers and aid Alpha King Ryan in the Deadlands, if it comes to that.”
I blink, and beside me, Soren straightens as his mate meets his eyes with a brief glance. I’ve heard rumblings of Soren possibly being Alpha King of the Roguelands, but I’ve never been there, and I’ve never heard anyone call him that.
But his mate, his queen… she just did. It’s a momentous moment that quickly gets swept away on the tide as the commanders leave hastily with their orders.
“You will go to the Roguelands immediately. Ryatt will meet you there. He still has sway with some of the larger packs. No trained warrior will be spared. Everyone with training must report to Twin Rivers,” she tells her own mate in a voice I find foreign. It’s icy and stern, but the look on her face….
Soren moves toward her desk as she begins to shatter, but she quickly regains her composer, waving him away. “Will you please go check on Fallon? She’s with Jane and Patton. She’s getting Fallon packed to leave for Veiled Valley shortly.”
Soren grits his teeth like he’s biting back whatever he wants to say, but nods, glancing at me before leaving the room. Maeve sits behind her desk and briefly hangs her head. I barely breathe as the Queen of Eastonia rolls her neck and looks right at me.
“I didn’t know he was going to do this.”
“That’s not why I wanted to see you,” she says under her breath. “I just–things are moving quickly now, Marianna. My sister and her son are in Veiled Valley already–my mother went to fetch them. My brother-in-law is moving his pack to the Deadlands officially, and I’ve just given the order for my father to prepare to launch certain factions of his Ghost army to Emberfyll, using it as a base, and for what?” She laughs darkly, a cruel sound that rattles my bones. “You knew Blake better than anyone, and even you didn’t know what he was capable of, did you?”
I can’t tell by her tone whether she’s accusing me of something, but I can see the lines of stress stretched across her face. Shadows dance below her eyes as she turns her sea-green gaze on mine, shaking her head. “He’s more powerful than me.”
“He doesn’t want to be.”
“You were there when he made me vow to kill him if he set foot in my kingdom again. It was a blood oath. I have to do it, Marianna, if he returns.”
My heart sinks into my stomach.
“You don’t have to–”
“What was he thinking?” she says, more to herself than to me, as she runs her fingers through her hair, disrupting the neat updo. “What the fuck was he thinking?”
“I think you should go upstairs and be with your mate and daughter,” I whisper, but she’s staring blankly down at her desk like I’m no longer in the room.
I see myself out without another word to her. I have to, because of what Skye told me before she left, because of what he left for me. The castle is in an uproar as I rush to the fifth floor, ignoring the maids and staff who clog the hallways, unsure what to do or where to go as their normal routines spiral out of control.
I lock myself in Blake’s suite–my suite, by all accounts. I think about our conversation last night in the shadow of the moon, when it’d just been us talking about a wedding, about eloping, about taking Skye to Maatua and forgetting the world all around us.
That conversation had tasted so sweet–a sharp comparison to the bitter taste in my mouth when I open the door to the bedroom.
Sunlight makes the glass still embedded in the carpet glimmer like sparkling diamond shards. The shattered windows let in a rush of heat. Glass covers the bedspread. It’s a mess, but one thing remains untouched, because it hadn’t been there when the temple exploded hours ago.
A moonstone sphere sits dormant on the edge of the bed, like Blake somehow placed it there before he got lost in the aether of his own design. It shines in the sunlight, beckoning, but I’m paralyzed in the doorway.
It takes several minutes to find my nerve, and when I finally do, I pick my way across the glass covered room and sit on the edge of the bed with the sphere in my lap, and there’s only one thing I can do.
“What did you want to show me?” I whisper into the silent heat.
The sphere flares with light and then images. Memories that take my breath away. Memories from his perspective, like he bled his mind into the stupid glass ball before ruining our lives, and I… hate him for it. I don’t understand. I can’t understand.
But then the images fade into something… new. Something that hasn’t happened yet. Things that are all sunshine and warmth. A pristine, white sand beach. Skye in a little bathing suit running around, her hands full of shells that she leaves at our feet while we lounge in the sand. His hand intertwined with mine, his thumb tracing my wedding ring–the ring he slipped on my finger in another image, where I was dressed in white in a forest of… flowers, and he was there, looking down at me, and we married in the sun, on a warm, spring day…
An image of a grand house in the woods nearby, with that startling view of Moonrise’s forest. It’ll be quiet there, according to this last gift from him. The… kids. They’ll love the backyard. He’ll spend an entire weekend with his brother Liam building a play set, only for one of our… boys–gods–to fall and break his arm within three days because he jumped off the top of the slide onto his brother–his twin.
The final image is so far in the future I can’t fathom it. That same house cloaked in snow. A bitter cold evening warmed by a fire. A grandchild on his knee with violet eyes and a huge, gummy smile while the others–many others–play with the toys they got for Solstice, our living room a wash of colors and random sounds.
I blink back tears as the sphere goes dark and empty, but I’ve found the answer to the question that’s been plaguing me since this morning. Why?
That future is his why.