by L. J. Stock
“I'm not leaving you.”
“Diane,” Robert snapped, turning the corner to the living room and freezing.
Years of bad memories flooded my brain all at once. I could see the distaste on his face as he assessed me with one eyebrow raised. His thick arms folded over his chest as he leaned against the frame of the arch that separated the two rooms.
“Well, look what someone stepped in and dragged inside. I knew I could smell something off.”
I stared at him for the longest time, my hatred seething under the surface of my skin. For a moment, I wondered why he'd had so much power over me all of my life. Sure, he was big and mean, but sitting there, staring him down as he did the same to me, I realized that the only respect I'd ever had for him was because I'd thought we shared genes. There was absolutely none of that now. He was nothing; he had nothing to lord over me.
“Oh, that's original,” I taunted, hating the quiver in my voice. “How long did it take you to think that up? All seven years or just the last couple of months?”
The smirk on his face made my anger boil inside of me. The sardonic bastard made me want to slap him. I'd never been a particularly violent person in the past, but he went to the root of my anger. With a simple look, he could shake me up until I was at boiling point. It seemed things hadn't changed one bit in my absence.
“You found your backbone, little bastard.”
“No, I've always had that. I just lost what little respect I had for you.”
“Boo fucking hoo.”
“Enough!” Mom snapped, rising to her feet and pacing back and forth. “This isn't helping anything.”
“What's to help, Diane? Huh? Why is she here? Why did you invite her into our home?”
“She's my daughter.”
Robert pushed off from the frame and stalked toward her, his thumbs cracking his finger at his sides as he leaned in toward her. I didn't need to know the answer as to whether violence had been her jailer, because I was getting a front row seat to the action. I only had to look at her shrinking into herself to know the answer for sure.
“You have a funny way of showing it. Keeping her in that hospital all that time, Diane? Cruel, don’t you think?”
“Fuck off. That was all you,” I answered for her, my face heating as the anger rose. “You enjoyed not having me around, asshole. She was saving me from you!” I moved to stand by Mom, hoping she would gain strength from me being there. “You're just a weak man, Robert. You're weak and bitter, and the only way you feel strong is to pick on someone smaller than yourself.”
I felt my mom's hand curl around mine and squeeze in warning. She knew I was goading him, and she knew how close Robert was to snapping, which made her terrified. There was nothing I'd said that wasn't been the truth, but to people like Robert Collier, the truth hurt. He didn't want to see himself like that. He had a false image of himself and he expected us all to see him that way, too. Not me, though. I wasn't ever going to pander to his insecurities. He was weak and ignorant, and he deserved to feel every ounce of that for what he'd done to my mom and me.
“What's the matter, Robert? Does the truth hurt?”
“Watch yourself, bastard child. You're in my house now.”
“The house you bought with my mother’s inheritance.”
“You insolent little bitch. After everything I did for you, this is how you talk to me.”
“Everything you did for me?” I repeated dubiously, stepping in front of my mom and staring him down. “How dare you make it sound like I owe you something for making my life miserable. You punished me for something I had no power over and you expect respect from me?”
“You know the truth, do you?” He growled, lifting an arm and waving dismissively. “I have every right in the world to treat you like the bastard you are. You know what men did in medieval times when their wives mysteriously had a bastard child? They drowned them, just like I should have done to you.”
My fingernails bit into my palms as they clenched. He was provoking me – I knew it from the pit of my stomach. I also knew that if I pushed any harder, I would go too far and be on the receiving end of his fist. It was in that moment that I realized why he'd never hit me as a child. He was worried my father would find out. That had to be the only reason, because he hated me far more than he hated my mother and he'd never so much as raised a finger to me in anger, no matter how angry I'd made him. He really was a coward.
“Come on now, Robert,” I said calmly, my voice dripping with sarcasm. I leaned forward, testing the limits of his restraint. “We both know why you didn't do that. You were afraid that someone who could defend themselves would come to my aid. I didn't realize it until I knew the truth, but now I see it. You're a coward. A yellow-bellied piece of chicken shit.”
My words had barely died when my whole world was filled with a blast of white and a tinny ringing sounded in my head. I could taste the rusty flavor of blood on my tongue as I stumbled, my hand coming to rest on my jaw where the white-hot pain was beginning to spread out to the rest of my head. I could hear my mom's voice through the buzzing but it took me blinking away the white spots to see what she was screaming about.
My eye opened and closed in disbelief as the second man knocked Robert Collier to the floor with ease. There was no pause to step back and assess the situation as his body followed, fists pummeling my stepfather in the midsection as my mom tried to make head or tail of what the hell was going on.
It took me a second to realize that if I didn't stop him, Damon would kill Robert without so much as blinking.
“Damon, no!”
I may have hated Robert Collier with every ounce of my being, but I couldn't let Damon kill him. He would have to live with Robert’s blood on his hands for the rest of his life. The event would be etched in our minds and Robert would win. He would always be a part of our lives and that wasn't what I wanted. It was my mother standing right beside me that had me shouting out, though. She had probably never loved him. She was trapped but she'd lived with him for over twenty-eight years. The last thing she needed was to see him dead and make a victim out of him.
Dropping my hand from my jaw, I slid closer as my plea fell on deaf ears. My hands grappled with Damon’s arms and for a brief second, I thought I was going to get punched again. Damon’s eyes were wild and glazed, his heaving breaths making his chest rise and fall as he sucked in oxygen. He stared right through me for a full minute before recognition finally filtered through, his eyes widening before he pulled me to him in an embrace.
“Are you okay?” he huffed, rising to his feet, holding me at arm’s length and examining my face with his fingers. He scanned the room briefly, always alert to the things that were going on around him.
“I'll live,” I answered, my brain finally engaging. “Where the hell did you come from? I left you arguing with Alexa.”
“We noticed you'd gone. She stayed to make sure you had a contact and I came looking for you. You're not supposed to disappear on your own, Cass.”
I raised my eyebrows and stepped back from him, immediately missing the warmth of his hands on my arms. As glad as I was that he'd gotten here in time, I was pissed off that they seemed to think I needed a babysitter everywhere I went.
“I can look after myself.”
“Cass, you're a princess with a prophecy.” He rubbed his jaw, looking down at Robert with distaste. “My job is to protect you.”
That stung. It didn't matter that I was mad as hell at him, that undercurrent of wanting him was always with me. I couldn't ever seem to switch it off, while he didn't seem interested in me at all, at least not beyond being a part of his job description.
“Well, if you'd taught me how to defend myself, this wouldn't have been an issue,” I said petulantly, ignoring the roll of his eyes. “I'm sure I could have handled it.”
My eventually went unsaid.
Whatever his response had been, and I was pretty sure it would have pissed me off, he never got to agitate me wit
h it. Robert groaned at his feet, rolling onto his back as his hand went to his nose.
“Who the fuck are you and why are you in my goddamn house?”
Damon's eyes flickered to the man at his feet and swung his body around, bending at the waist as he stared him down. “I am the Princess' guard, and you made a big mistake in raising a hand to her in anger. The punishment for that is death.”
“You're not in your world now, buddy.” Robert growled, swiping one of his bear paws at Damon. It was a mistake he realized he’d made too late. Damon's foot was on Robert’s throat before he'd managed to raise it an inch off the ground.
“Be careful what you wish for old man. I will have no problem taking you there so you can sit in our dungeons until we deem the time right for a trial. You will find that the people are very unforgiving when it comes to animals like you taking liberties with their monarchy. They may even forget to feed you.”
Robert's eyes went wide in horror. His knowledge of the other dimension didn’t surprise me; Mom had alluded to the fact that she’d confessed all to him, but the thought of going to the other dimension obviously terrified him. I could see it in the dilation of his pupils. As his dark eyes finally took Damon in and I watched as he shrunk farther away from him. He knew he'd been beaten and that he had no chance of winning against a man with almost twice his size in muscle mass.
“Take her and get out.” He growled around the obstruction against his throat.
Damon's disdainful laughter was almost cruel. It was unlike him to sound that cold, but he was protecting me. It may have been wrong to feel the way I did about that, but my body wasn't listening to reason.
“We shall leave when we're good and ready to, and not a moment before.”
“Mom, go pack your things.” I knew a cue when I saw one. Turning my head to glance at her, I waited for the words to register. Her confusion was immediate.
“Cass, I–”
“Do you really want to stay with him?” I asked, meeting Robert's eyes as they narrowed at me. I mirrored his look, wishing I had the ability to cut him with my hatred.
“I... Well...” She looked between the three of us. “No. No, I don’t,” she answered quickly before she dashed out of the room, ignoring the man at Damon’s feet, who had the audacity to look shocked at her eagerness.
“You ungrateful bitch. I gave you everything I had and you treat me like this? You're a–”
Once again, his sentence was cut off, but not by Damon. This time it was me. My foot acting on a whim of its own as it planted itself in his pudgy stomach, knocking the wind from him. I tried not to react to the pain as it flared from the instep of my foot and channeled up my legs and spine, where it became a dull aching in my head. I'd kicked him hard enough to do damage to myself but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing that.
“Don't you dare talk to her like that. All you've done for her is make her life miserable. You've made all our lives miserable for too long. No more. You hear me, Robert? Never again.”
“I would listen to the lady.” Damon sneered, leaning down again. “I'm at her beck and call, so I'd think twice about upsetting her.”
“Fuck all of you,” Robert pushed out defiantly, glaring at me with the hatred I’d grown accustomed to over the years.
I didn't need to give a command of any kind; Damon was accommodating enough to hit him once more, knocking him out cold. The adrenaline running through my body seemed to sputter and die as the threat finally disappeared. Taking a step back, and feeling the couch hit my knees, I fell onto it and dropped my head into my hands.
“Cass?” Damon was on his knees in front of me before I'd managed to sort through my emotions. The pains in my jaw and leg had started to throb, and my heart was working hard in my chest as I struggled to take a deep breath.
All this time he'd been hitting my mom because he didn't dare hit me. He'd known all along that one mark of anger on display would cost him his life. How long had she silently dealt with this? Had it been our whole lives? It couldn't have been. Steven would have noticed and flipped his lid. Robert may have doted on him, but he'd had no respect for his father. It must have started after he'd moved out, which was still far too long for Mom to have lived like that.
“Hey,” Damon said, his thumb brushing tears from my cheeks then tilting my head, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Talk to me.”
“I... You... He... I never knew. Then... I mean, why?”
“You already know all the answers to that,” he said gently, pushing my hair back behind my ear. “There's nothing you could have done if she hid it from you, and you can’t blame yourself for any of this.”
“I was born.”
“And I refuse to let you feel guilty about that.” He met my eyes and held them, and for a moment I thought I saw something there – something deeper than this bickering friendship we'd managed to create. Then it was gone, his eyes diverting to the floor as his hand squeezed my knee and lingered there.
“Cassandra,” my mom said, dropping her bags by her feet. “This was my doing. If I could go back and do it all again, I would because it gave me you. The only thing I would ever change would be staying with him for so long. I should have trusted my instincts back then. He was full of empty threats, but it was a different time, and in my mind, he had every right to take you two and run. I let myself believe he would do it because I knew he loved Steven.”
“And now he has none of you,” Damon said quietly. “I can't promise his safety. If anyone finds out about what he did to you or Cass, the king will demand his execution.”
“Then it's best we not say anything,” Mom spoke firmly.
“Mom.”
“No arguments.”
“I'm not lying to the King of Mortisali.” I still couldn’t bring myself to call him my father. It was something that I had to adapt to – something that would hopefully come after I’d spent more time with him.
“I’m afraid I’m in agreement with Cass,” Damon said respectfully.
“Then don't say anything at all. Now come on, let's go before he wakes up.” She picked up her keys and headed to the door, stopping as Damon coughed to hide his laughter. “What?”
“I'll take your bags, Mrs. Collier. You think you can remember how to translocate?”
“Translocate? To Mortisali?”
I reached out and touched her back gently. “No, Mom, to Connecticut.”
She gave me a small smile, her eyes diverting to the kitchen. “Like riding a bike, I'm sure.”
Shooting Damon a skeptical look, I nodded in agreement. No point in shaking her nerves now. I just had to make sure I went last so I could follow her. This was going to be interesting.
Adjustments
You'd have thought after ten years of no visits, and a lifetime of being held at an arm’s distance, I would have been happy to spend time with my mother. There was a huge part of me that was overjoyed to finally have the opportunity to get to know her, but there also seemed to be a large part of her that was making up for the years we missed together, the years of antagonism between us.
I hadn't been back to see the king since I'd fled from Mortisali weeks earlier. Part of it was due to my embarrassment at my own selfish behavior, and the rest was due, in large part, to my mother's guilt trips. She made me feel as though going to see him would be choosing his side, which wasn't the case at all. Sure, I wanted to get to know the guy – he was my father after all – but she was convinced that it was a way to replace her, as my mother. It was ludicrous; the two roles were completely different and always had been. Unfortunately, her arguments did nothing but eat at me. It irritated me that she’d been okay with Robert treating me like a leper, and yet had a big issue with Kyros wanting to treat me like a daughter. My mother, however, couldn’t seem to make the distinction, so I kept my mouth shut for the most part.
There were odd occasions when my anger surpassed her guilt, and the two of us would engage in verbal confrontations that were almost the te
enage rite of passage that I'd missed out on. We threw names at one another, pointing out flaws, and then, inevitably, I would remind her how the past came about and she would walk away, giving me the silent treatment I really didn't really think I deserved.
Through all of this, my friends and grandmother watched before backing away and hiding from the loud fallout, which consisted of growls and proclamations of hatred before the doors were slammed. Acantha would normally come to me first. My apologies were always swept away, and she would continually explain the arguments and confrontations were an adjustment period. Some of the stories she shared about my mother’s teenage years eased the guilt I was feeling, but never for long.
I was more than ready to have this adjustment period over and out of the way. It was affecting my training with Damon, and for me that was unacceptable. He was already doing it under duress. The last thing he needed was another excuse to try to talk me out of it. The bruising on my face was healing quickly, but my foot was taking its time and was only at the point where the dull throbbing had eased and I no longer had the excuse that it was aching to fall back on when I got too tired.
I threw all of my concentration into my training, continuing long after Damon had left and most of the residents at the farmhouse had gone to bed. Getting it perfected was up to me and I was determined to be faster at retaining the knowledge than I had been with the translocation. I wanted to kick ass, even if I didn’t have to. Those prolonged sessions were also a fabulous distraction from my mom most of the time, and they helped get the aggression out. I just had to focus more and make the training about learning, not a means to an end to get rid of the anger that rattled me.
“That's right. That was perfect,” Damon said gently, moving around the empty barn. He'd wanted us to train in the palace, but I was yet to cross back over into that dimension. “Again.”
Pushing up onto my toes, I closed my eyes and concentrated as he'd taught me. My ears focused on the silence of the room, listening for the smallest disturbance to tell me where he was. You'd have thought after years of not seeing him and just hearing him move about the other dimension, I would have been better at it than I was.