Bloodlines

by Trisha Lynn

  Chapter Eleven

  .... Loki ....

  He really hoped the King was prepared for his daughter. She was blunt, stubborn, and willful. She was also beautiful, smart and witty. He'd seen bits of her humor and wit when he'd given her a ride home, she was quite the spitfire.

  Something he wasn't entirely pleased about. She flustered him. She threw him off track. He'd wanted to ask her about her powers in a much more easy and subtle way, but with her firing odd questions at him; it had him losing all of his focus.

  All he knew was that he needed to get her up to speed, and to the Fae realm as quickly as possible, before he screwed something else up. He didn't always do things flawlessly, but he'd never felt any kind of connection to any of the other retrievals he'd ever dealt with. She was the daughter of his King. He personally had been trusted with her safety and her speedy arrival to Faerie. He tried to tell himself that was the strange connection he felt towards her. Perhaps he was taking this mission too much to heart.

  It was no use continuing to think about how he could have handled things better, he needed to do this at her pace. He'd get nowhere forcing anything on her. She was far too stubborn for that. He'd done the first step; given her all the basic information he could. Now he needed to wait for her to process it all, and then be ready to take the plunge and go with him to Faerie.

  Sighing, he swung his sword and cut it down and across in a sweeping arch. Keeping in form was important to him, so he continued to practice solo or with one of his agents every day after the human school was out, leaving Sorryn to watch over the Princess. At school and at night she was his responsibility, for the few hours after school was his time to unwind. His time to take a breath from the agonizing plight of dealing with human school, hormonal and selfish teenagers, and the growing connection he was feeling for this girl that was his mission, his King's daughter, his Princess and the promised of his brother.

  .~.

  .... Adeila ....

  When she returned home, her mother was making some kind of skillet dinner from a frozen package. Adeila studied her mother for several moments. The woman was short, slightly plump in the middle and backside, with vibrant dark red hair and lovely deep brown eyes. Her skin was pale as porcelain and she had tiny plump fingers.

  Adeila looked nothing like her parents, at least not in the recognizable way her siblings did. She had very light brown hair bordering on dark blonde with natural lighter tones, ice blue eyes, naturally olive tanned skin and a tall, willowy frame.  Even her face was different, she had high cheekbones and a kind of heart shaped face set off by the dark lashes surrounding her eyes and slightly overly full lips.

  Now that she knew the possibility that they weren't her parents she was determined to find some kind of resemblance, but that was an epic fail. Not a single thing about herself could be traced to her parents. Nothing. Maybe she'd try a new tactic.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Adeila's mother, Kathryn Burton jumped and looked back at her, one white ear piece in her ear, the other dangling down her chest, attached to a tiny music player inside a band on her arm.

  “Sheesh, Adeila. Way to scare ten years off my life.”

  “Sorry, thought you knew I was here. I've been sitting here for like ten minutes.”

  Kathryn just went back to her stirring. Adeila almost left right then and there, because clearly her mother didn't give a crap, but she was determined to get something out of the woman. She let out a small sigh and steeled herself.  “Can I ask you something?”

  Her mother barely turned her head, so that Adeila could easily see the look that clearly said not really, but if you must.

  Fine, Adeila thought, you can just suffer through this. Her mother took a sip of red wine but didn't even turn around to face her.

  “How was my childbirth?”

  Kathryn sputtered and nearly choked on the wine. “What? Why would you ask that?”

  “Just curious, is all. Some class thing.”

  “Well, you were my first born. So it was long and painful.”

  And that was it, all she'd get, she knew it. “How many hours?”

  Her mother seemed to think and said, “Fifteen.”

  What else could see ask? “Which hospital again?”

  “Sacramento General, just like your brother and sister. Why don't you let me finish the dinner you likely won't eat, please?”

  And there, that was it. All she'd get. Most mothers would have loved embarrassing their child with details of their birth. Nope, not her mother.

  Adeila made her way upstairs to her room. She had pages to read and a paper to write. She took off her coat, then her sweater. When her sweater came off something white came floating off of it. A feather. It was white with silver and speckled a dark brown. The Gyrfalcon. That was odd; she hadn't seen a feather land on her. She picked it up and twirled it around her fingers. She looked around, ran a hand through her hair, then put her sweater and jacket back on and grabbed her school books. She just couldn't handle the confides of her room right now. She felt stifled; smothered by the four walls.

  Strangely she felt the need to take the feather with her. She found a barrette and clipped it into her hair, not caring how unsanitary it was.

  After two hours of reading and homework, she sat Indian style in a chair looking out into the back yard. The sunset had already painted the sky in pinks and yellows and now darkness crept in all around her. She was content just to sit there, letting the coming blackness slither about her. To welcome its cold fingers and try to forget that she may be some Faerie princess that can move shit with her mind.

  Once it got too dark to see, and she didn't feel like getting up to turn on the outside floodlights, she got up to go inside. Maybe she'd go to bed early. Then her stomach rumbled and she realized she had missed dinner. Not that she would have eaten anything her mother had cooked anyway, but still.

  She'd been contemplating about asking her mom to see a picture of her while she was pregnant with her but decided that was just too plain weird to ask of her mother. How else could she get some sort of clue about whether she was truly adopted or not, though?

  When her mind finally came back to the present she was standing with her hands gripping the railing. The darkness had made its way completely across the yard, and she could barely make out the few trees that spattered across the manicured grass to than be engulfed by trees for the rest of the few acres they owned.

  It always seemed odd to her that her parent's didn't really like nature, but yet they chose to buy a house so enveloped by it. They had told her they had lived in a tiny home near the outskirts of the state forest on the other side of town, a home that her father’s uncle had owned and rented to them, when she was born. They had moved here a few weeks after her birth. The home called to them they had said. This seemed odd for people that wanted nothing to do with nature, and rarely even sat outside. The whole situation was just odd, but who was she to judge?

  They spoke so little of it, she barely knew anything. But something, everything just seemed off, especially now, with the possibility of the lies she'd been fed her whole life. She did not trust enough to completely jump to the conclusion that Loki was right about her adoption or even the Faerie tale he spun. She was smart enough to delve into the possibility that what he told her was in fact the lie. She needed to find out the true answers herself. Just like the rest of her life. Every aspect of her life right now was a question. One that only she could find answers to.

  Their lawn was cut by the neighbor’s eldest son who still lived at home, since her family didn't even want to do that kind of maintenance to their yard. She herself had built the tiny rock wall, with the hosta and perennial flowers around it, a few years ago. She enjoyed building things like that, with natural objects and then making the soil birth new life. The elderly couple next door complimented how they'd never seen the flowers she had grown in the colors that they were, or as large and beautiful. They had told her she must have one heck of
a green thumb. This seemed odd, considering she had just used some wildflower mixture she bought at the local hardware store. But she did have to admit the picture on the front of the seed pouches didn't do the flowers justice in any way. The ones that she had grown were huge, full and vibrant, in colors that were insanely different and unique. She was proud of her little stone wall, and flower garden.

  She looked over towards it, as if she could see the blooms in the darkness but instead her eyes flitted across, to a figure perched on the stone wall. The damn falcon again. It was seriously stalking her, or something. It had to be two different ones, or several different ones. This one must have a nest very close by.

  She stared at the bird for several moments; its glinting golden eyes almost seemed to be holding her own. When a small hint of buzz came to her blood, she hightailed it for the sliding door and rushed up to her room, without even grabbing something to eat. She just wasn't dealing with this magic, buzzing, mystical stuff tonight.

  When she finally fell into a fitful sleep; she dreamt of waterfalls, steel gray wolves, and a very blurry outline of a golden colored horse.