by A. L. Tyler
“Do you even get it?!” She screamed at him. “Do you even know how ridiculously reckless—I could have died! Do you see that kid there on the bed? Jesus—my grandfather died like that Griffin! Died! You could have orphaned him trying to play hero, or whatever the hell you thought you were doing!”
Griffin paused for a moment. He leaned forward in his chair, staring at Brandon with what seemed to be an overly exaggerated look of thoughtfulness on his face. “Really, Lena, I’m waiting for some simple thanks. You have no idea how many people I had to bribe and kill just to show up that day. And I wasn’t going to ask just yet, but since you’ve brought it up—you leave for over six months, and you come back with a three-month-old baby. That kid, there on the bed. A Silenti baby. I think I’ve been very patient on that front, perhaps even uncharacteristically so. So now you’re going to tell me where the baby came from. I thought there were no secrets between us, after all, and you show up with a baby.”
And there it was. She could feel him watching her, maybe even prying into her mind slightly—he was genuinely curious, but at the same time…
“Are you interrogating me?” She said, in as even a tone of voice as she could manage.
“Do I need to?” He asked, still leveling his piercing gaze in her direction. He had a completely neutral expression on his face, as he always did when dealing with a business matter. It was unnerving.
“He’s mine.” Lena said simply, quickly, and mostly without thinking. She sat down on the edge of the bed and scooped Brandon back into her arms, picked up the bottle and resumed feeding him. Of the two, she would rather have the world think he was hers than ruin Olesia and Devin’s lives further.
Griffin sighed. He stood up and moved toward her until he was standing only a few feet away, arms crossed, staring down at her. Lena could smell the detergent on his laundry—it had been so long since she’d had clean clothes. “Silenti DNA is a tricky matter, Lena. We can only ever be so sure because it’s possible for parents to pass on DNA that they themselves never actually utilize. Now, to appease my own curiosity, I had Doctor Evans perform a test while you were out. Several, in fact. Do you know what they said?”
Lena felt the rage surging in her veins again. If not for the baby in her lap, she probably would have lunged for his throat right then. “That you’re a pompous brat and you had no right?”
“Not quite.” He said, the humor gone from his voice. “The initial test showed that this child only bore a slight resemblance to you—perhaps only a five-percent chance of being your child. But when he looked closer, he noticed something odd. Would you care to take a guess as to what it was?”
Lena glared up at him. “Are you coming to a point any time soon? Because I’m going to need another bottle if you’re not. Jesus, have you people been starving him or what…”
“He noticed that the two of you share certain rare genetic markers. Extremely rare. Found in only one family, ever. Your family. The Darays.”
Still staring into his eyes, Lena tried not to blink. Panic was rising in her throat. Griffin might be willing to keep the secret, and hopefully he had so far, but no one could ever find out about Olesia. It would raise too many questions. “I told you—he’s mine.”
“I would believe you.” Griffin said, still staring her down. “Except that your injuries were quite substantial, and the doctor discovered something quite…mysterious, I’ll put it…while examining you. The fact is, princess, that you’ve never been pregnant. So I’ll ask you again—where did the baby come from?”
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Lena finally looked away and nodded slightly. She couldn’t do this alone; that’s why she had sought Griffin out to begin with. As fate would have it, they had found each other again.
“What have you been telling people?” She asked quietly. Brandon had finished his bottle. She laid back down on the bed and pulled him up to rest on her chest.
“Well,” Griffin said, diverting his eyes. He was moving away from the bed again. “I confirmed the leading rumor. I said that he was mine. Ours.”
Lena closed her eyes. She felt a headache coming on. “What?”
“You told me no one could know the truth about him. You didn’t tell me what the truth was, so I was left with very few options. He could be yours—but I know for a fact this child isn’t ours, so that’s what I said.”
“Griffin,” Lena said, the anger in her voice failing to the depression she felt, “You cause problems just to cause them, don’t you? Do you realize what kind of life you’ve condemned this poor baby to?”
“It wasn’t the only reason. I practically had no choice.” Griffin’s voice was almost a little too peppy. Lena looked over and realized he was about to say something she wasn’t going to like. “When the picture first came out, people started talking. They wanted to know who the father was—“
“What picture?” Lena interjected.
“Some human-born snapped it in a diner in Missouri. You’re wearing a baggy sweatshirt and your face is a little fuller, and your hair looks...odd. Like maybe you were trying to not look like yourself.”
“Oh, God.” Lena muttered; she remembered. It was the night she had passed Kelsey off to her father; the night of Devin's first attempt at coloring her hair. They had been eating nothing but junk food for several days straight at that point, she had been feeling frumpy, it was cold out, and she had thrown on one of Devin’s sweatshirts to keep warm. “Continue.”
“Naturally, as Silenti do, they started fitting the pieces together. You’d kept to yourself so much while people were around last summer and fall.”
“Because I had just come out of that ordeal with Rollin and I really wasn’t feeling up to social games.” Lena said.
“You were spending a lot of time hanging around the family doctor, discussing things.”
“Because he was taking care of Devin.” Lena replied.
Griffin smiled sardonically. “No one expends that much energy just to save a human-born, they’re a dime a dozen, even now. And then I left, and people were suspicious enough about that.”
Lena sighed, seeing how things were falling together. “Because you’re a devious bastard.”
“And then you left on this unexplained road trip, taking a couple of human-borns with you, and aren’t seen or heard from after the first few days of being gone.”
“Howard told me not to contact anyone because the Alarids had gone missing…” Lena said, rubbing her brow. This was a big mess—and she knew she was going to have to clean it up. She just didn’t know how yet. “Speaking of, Alexis? I thought they were all dead?”
“Nicolas Alarid contacted me not too long after I went back to California.” Griffin picked up the chair he had been sitting in across the room and moved it closer to the bed. He sat down, leaned back, and put his feet up on the nightstand. “It seems the family was receiving threatening mail over their stance on letting human-borns onto the Council, as the Alarids had a staunch record of refusing representation to human-born families. They seemed to know details of the family’s everyday goings on, and Nicholas was starting to split the family up just in case there was a traitor in their midst. He sent Alexis to live with me; I tried to warn you not to go, because a large family like the Alarids taking such precautions is a sign that upheaval is imminent, but you refused to heed me.”
Lena tried to take it in—Alexis, his cousin, had been staying with him. It was her voice she had heard over the phone so many months ago.
“But anyways, back to what I was saying,” Griffin started again. “People started figuring out the timeline. The phone call you placed to me last January put your delivery date sometime not too soon before, which meant the child would have been conceived the previous spring. We spent quite a lot of unintended, unmonitored alone time together after the shooting in Texas, and people haven’t forgotten it. The timeline doesn’t match up exactly, but close enough for most. It’s what they want to believe, either to love us
or hate us, so the details don’t exactly matter. ”
Lena was frowning; yes, it did fit. She had a hard enough time explaining away things that had absolutely no backing—there was no way people would believe the truth when there was so much evidence to the contrary. Griffin put his feet down and leaned in towards her. “Believe me, it’s nothing personal. It’s that as you’ve been known to say, people are happy with the lie. It fits, and it doesn’t require any manner of elaborate explanation for them to understand. Plus, it makes me the father of the most worshipped child in our world, putting me back in undisputed power and you back in favor with at least enough of our kind.” He was smiling in way that was almost too reminiscent of her grandfather. “I know you never wanted children, but we’re Silenti, Lena—this is what we do. I saw an opportunity and I took it. With this child, I can seize control of the Council for the Old Faith. I will bring order to this situation.”
Cocky bastard. Lena was almost amused with his arrogance. He thought she would ever let him do such a thing? “I thought you didn’t believe in the religion anymore, Griffin. You realize what you’re doing? Perpetuating these lies?”
Griffin was smirking. Lena wasn’t sure why, at first, but then he reached into his back pocket and withdrew a few small pieces of paper, folded in half. Lena recognized them immediately. It was the will she had written in the cabin. “I’ve known you since we were children, Lena, and you’re right—you wouldn’t say it if you didn’t have proof. You don’t believe in faith. I don’t even need to know what it is, because you wouldn’t have written this otherwise. I know you well enough to trust this.”
“I lied.” She said quickly, trying not to stare too intently at the confessions in his hands. “I lied to make you happy.”
“On your deathbed? I don’t think so.” His smirk had grown into an almost menacing grin as he reread her notes. “Classic. Just classic. So I’m going to ask you one more time, and then I really will bring on the interrogation. Is there anything you wish to share with me regarding my son?”
“You wouldn’t. You need me to pull this off.” She said, hoping she was right.
Griffin was still smiling. At her. It was an odd thing to see after so much time apart, so much dispute between them. “Perhaps. I can think of another way to test if he’s a Daray.”
Lena raised her eyebrows; she wanted to believe he wasn’t so reckless as to bring the portal into it, but she knew he was. “And if my last information stands, Jason Rivera is sitting on top of it. So good luck with that. Not that I would ever let you—not that I would ever let you do any of this! My son is not going to be your political leverage.”
“And you’re going to stop me how?” He said in his usual arrogant tone.
She racked her brain for something that sounded plausible, but he was just so far ahead of her—every time she threw something out he already had a response. He knew things she hadn’t counted on him even being able to know. “Paternity tests might not be very accurate for us, Griffin, but I’m betting they’re accurate enough. And with my word as well, no one will believe you. There were plenty of others that went on that trip with us.”
Griffin was silent for a moment as they both looked down at Brandon. Then his eyes wandered back up to her face. I know you wouldn’t. You need me to pull this off.
“I’m not going to let you do this.” She said, silently praying that her nonchalant tone didn't sound too forced.
“I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice.” His smile was somehow familiar…greedy. He got up from his chair and started for the door. “We do this my way…you cannot lead. You’ll cooperate because we both know it makes it easier with your cooperation, but in fact, I don’t need your cooperation anymore. With him, I don’t need you anymore.”
As the door clicked shut, Lena looked down. Brandon had fallen asleep on her; she was a little surprised that he had handled everything so well. She had been screaming at Griffin, so angry and upset that she could have tried to kill him, and he hadn’t even peeped. She gently shifted him from her chest onto the bed next to her, in the crook of her arm, just as they had slept in the shelter together.
Griffin couldn’t be serious…except that he could. The person he had been to her in the past seemed only a distant memory; he was acting like her grandfather, and she knew why. The evidence that he was only out to help himself was mounting. He had allowed Rollin to shoot her, and he never would have before. He had just found out that the religion was true, and all it meant to him was that it gave him power. Lena wasn’t sure, but she was fairly certain he had just threatened her life; what he had said was true. As long as people believed Brandon was the heir, he no longer needed her.
Already, Lena was thinking of an escape. Her brain was busy with thoughts of how she could get herself and Brandon away from this place, wherever they were, before…
But before what? The path she sought to escape was an unexplored one. The echoes couldn't help her predict something that had never happened before--there was no past to learn from.
There was a knock at the door, and Doctor Evans had come in before she could call a response.
“How are you feeling?” He asked as he walked toward the bed.
“A little sore.” She responded, somewhat despondently.
“Lie flat.” He instructed. Lena complied, and he started to check her over by pushing on various spots of her abdomen. “I have no idea how much you remember of the last time we spoke. Do you remember my explaining to you about the child?”
“No.” Lena winced as he hit a sore spot below her belly button.
“Hmm…” He pulled forward the chair that Griffin had previously occupied and sat down, pulling his ankle up to rest on his knee. “Morphine can do that. Master Corbett specifically requested that I keep you under as much as possible because of the potential complications from the hypoxia and anoxia you suffered as a result of a collapsed lung. It's a nasty way to go—you might remember from your encounter a few years ago. Our pulmonary systems have designed themselves to be flushed with oxygen to accommodate the additional strains on our nervous systems caused by the constant need to exude and interpret telepathic signals from those around us. If the oxygen stops—hypoxia—the body undergoes emergency repair in critical areas like the brain. The combination of new blood vessels springing up in an already crowded network, combined with the random firing of neurons everywhere, can cause extreme anxiety and incredibly vivid hallucinations. While I treated you for your last close call, the incident with Master Astley, your grandfather refused the use of any drugs that might put you out. The room you were in was almost directly below the Council chambers the trial was held in; I think he wanted them to feel your angst. But as I said, you’ve been receiving a steady stream of pain killers and sedatives this time, and I trust there have been no adverse side effects? Hallucinations of a visual or auditory nature, disorientation, loss of balance, headaches, amnesia, or other changes? Anything like that?”
“Headaches.” Lena said dully. “But probably not caused by anything you’re talking about.”
“I see,” the doctor smiled. “Onward we go then. The second bullet we’ve already discussed. It caused us considerable problems in the beginning, but as you may have noticed, the puncture wound has completely healed over. Your lung is fine; you will probably have some residual pain from tissue reformation for a few more weeks. Now, the first bullet—after we stemmed the bleeding, we ignored it for several hours until your ability to breathe normally was restored. The first bullet has caused many more problems—it entered through your lower abdomen there, and I would like to say that you were lucky. It could have hit a lot of things that would have been very difficult to repair, but instead it hit…Well, the simple way to put this is that it entered your body, missing several vital organs, and lodged in your uterus, almost completely severing your left fallopian tube. We had to remove it, along with one ovary, to reduce the chances of complications arising from tissue regeneration.”
The doctor was watching her with his unblinking stare.
“That’s…” She started. But then she stopped. She looked down at Brandon and ran her fingers across his fuzzy head. Was it great news?
“Master Corbett was extremely bereaved. Did he speak with you concerning this issue?”
Lena smiled ironically; she almost wanted to laugh. “No.”
“I would say that he’s been extremely worried about the both of you, but I’m not sure it’s my place.”
Lena looked up. The doctor was smiling kindly.
“He doesn’t care about us. We’re just ideas to him—we’re just the things that give him power.” She spat.
*****
The doctor shook his head. “You almost didn’t make it and he knows it. If it hadn’t been for the child, you might not have.”
Lena looked up. “What?”
The doctor gave her hand back and clasped both of his over one knee. “I don’t see it often in today’s society; most parents of your social status avoid it at any cost because of the risks. It’s the reason many parents elect to distance themselves from their spouse and children—this connection you’ve formed with the child—Brandon, is it?—it’s an addiction. One of the only ones Silenti are capable of falling victim to. You’re addicted to each other’s presence because you’ve spent so much time together. As you’ve seen, he has failed to thrive in your absence over the last month, but now that you’re back, he’s fine. Keeping him close to you helped you stay calm through the surgeries, though I’m afraid to say he must have found it rather disturbing. You should know that Master Corbett feels you’ve spoiled him because he wouldn’t eat for anything without you; you’ve got to understand that if you had died, it could have been catastrophic for a child as young as he is. Master Corbett is in favor of severing the bond you share, for that reason, and because it’s not fitting for a family of your situation. It’s only common to see this sort of behavior in children born to human-born mothers, because they don’t have the option of sending their children away and emotional attachment is much more acceptable in that culture. But that’s why we had removed him to the far side of the house; I’m afraid I’ll have to take him away with me again when I go, as per my patron’s orders.”