“What do you mean?” Bri asked. “I just found out about my abilities. I don’t even know what they are. Jonah somehow made them latent when I was a child.”
“Did he now?” Rowan mused, regarding her with approval. “Clever.”
“Where is my father? Is he alive too?” Bri asked abruptly, dreading the answer.
“We don’t have time for this.” Celeste pulled Bri to her feet.
“I need to know.” Bri insisted.
Rowan dropped her gaze to the ground. “I resisted Anton as long as I could. I refused. I fought him. For months, I thought Eric was already dead. One day Anton brought your father to me. He’d been beaten, tortured, starved, but he was alive.”
Her voice turned hoarse, still raw with grief. “As we looked into each other’s eyes, Anton killed your father right in front of me.” Her words rang hollow, cold, and emotionless. “He broke me in that moment, Bri. He told me he’d find you next, torture you in front of me.” She swallowed hard. “So I did what he demanded of me.”
Bri’s chest was suddenly too tight, her throat scorched. A sob escaped, and then another.
“We can get you out of here,” Celeste urged. “Jonah’s coming. He’ll bring in the full Circle if he needs to. We’ll find a way out, Rowan.”
Rowan smiled sadly and shook her head. “Anton is too strong. I’ve been in Jonah’s territory for the last twenty years, and he had no idea. My own father, my former Commander, and he couldn’t find me. He won’t be able to find either of you.”
There was an odd ringing in Bri’s ears as grief turned to confusion, followed by that sharp stab of betrayal she was becoming all too familiar with. Father? She held on to the hope she hadn’t heard right.
Bri turned on Celeste, who cringed.
I might really go crazy right here on this damned cave floor.
“What is it?” Concern sharpened Rowan’s tone.
“Jonah is your father?” It was a question. A statement.
And the truth stared at Bri like a tarnished penny.
“He never told you?” Rowan edged closer, hand outstretched, yet stopped herself from touching. “I’m not surprised.”
Bri whirled to Celeste. “You knew?”
Celeste nodded and her lips parted as if to speak, but Bri paced away from them. “Wow. Okay.”
Jonah was her grandfather, a blood relative, and he’d never told her. His blood ran in her veins. He’d taken away her power, denied her the knowledge of the other part of herself, and hid her from the world and her own history. And Mack . . . he’d known too and had never said a word.
Suddenly Celeste stood before her, blocking her angry strides, holding her shoulders. “Bri, you’ve got to put that aside for now and focus.”
“Give her a minute,” Rowan interjected.
“We don’t have a minute.”
Rowan sighed. “I had hoped he would protect her, but I can’t believe he didn’t tell her.”
“Really?” Celeste drawled with a raised eyebrow.
Rowan lifted a tired shoulder, defeat in her posture.
“Bri.” Celeste dragged her attention away from their mother. “You have Quytel blood running in your veins, and we’ll need you with us if we’re going to make it out of here.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Bri echoed.
This wasn’t the time for a meltdown. My grandfather. And I have a sister. And my mother’s alive, the instrument of a madman. Bri fought off a wave of hysteria. She needed to pull herself together, hold her heart together. Maybe she’d never be okay, but she’d have to fall apart later when they were all safe.
“I’m okay.” Although her voice shook, unconvincing to her own ears.
The only thing untainted and clean was Cole. Yet as doubt assailed her, a flash of confusion hit her low in the stomach. Had they fallen in love because of what her mother had done? No. She protested the thought. No, it wasn’t that. Not for her. She’d started falling for him from the first moment she saw him.
She had to be sure.
“I need to know. Did you . . . did Cole and I fall in love because of the compulsion?” she asked in a rush.
An indulgent smile curved her mother’s lips. “I did plant a compulsion in him to find you and protect you. I linked the threads of his energy to yours so he could. He’s not Quytel, which I thought would be safer for you because Anton wouldn’t see him as a real threat.”
Bri opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Celeste. “This is all very touching, but we need to focus on getting out of here.”
Her mother’s eyes dulled; pain etched into the lines of her face. “If Anton is in control of me, I can’t stop him. I’ve never been able to.”
The finality in her mother’s voice filled Bri with an unbearable sadness. “No.” She would not lose her mother, not again, and not to a crazy mage bent on destroying them. “We’ll find a way. We will.”
“You have to believe we can help you,” Celeste pleaded. “Tell us everything you can about him.”
Rowan gripped her hands together, gathering her thoughts. “Someone figured out a way to track what we were doing. Taking souls, life, power from anyone I could connect with.” Sharp pain crossed her features, and she pinned Celeste with a hard stare. “Be careful if he ever gets his hands on you.”
Her fingers trembled; she clenched them harder. “I would try to leave clues behind, marks of where I had been, a trace here and there, if I was sure he wouldn’t find out. Anton has become more relaxed with me this past year. Someone found those clues, and this man, Cole . . . They found her too soon. He touched the body and connected with me inadvertently. I didn’t have time to think of much.”
“When you said, ‘Find her, save her,’ what did you mean? She was the key?” Celeste asked, shifting the conversation.
“Yes,” Rowan sighed with a touch of longing.
A strange pulse in the air, like a thick warm breeze, formed. Bri scanned the chamber that had become her mother’s prison. She eyed Celeste, her attention completely focused on their mother.
“Did you feel that?” She pushed the thought at Celeste.
Celeste ignored her. “This is important, Rowan.”
“It is,” she agreed, slumping against the cave wall a safe distance from them. “More than you could ever know.”
“Then tell us.” Anguish swirled in the bright blue depths of Celeste’s eyes.
She gestured helplessly. “A very long time before I met your father, Bri, I fell in love with a man named David, a human with no psychic abilities. I was only about twenty-five at the time. So young. I had just started my training, and my father was proud that I had followed him in the noble Quytel tradition. I had the marker in my blood and strong abilities. He was the Commander of the Circle by then. I went to him and told him I didn’t want to do it anymore . . . I wanted to settle down with David and have a family. Jonah would have none of it. I was his only child, destined to carry on his precious Quytel legacy and wouldn’t allow me to be divested of my Warrior status. He wouldn’t take my request to the full Circle of Commanders as was my right.”
She rested her head against the wall. Tears rimmed her eyelids and slid down her cheeks, dropping stains on the beautiful blue silk of her robes.
“I defied him, continued to be with David anyway. I got pregnant. I was happy, so sure Jonah would change his mind if he knew he had a grandchild.” Pushing away from the wall, she stared at them with haunted eyes. “David died before the baby was born. He got sick and never recovered. Jonah didn’t help him, and I didn’t ask him to. It was long ago now, but at the time I was devastated. I had no one, except Mack and Jonah, and Mack would never go against something his Commander and friend ordered.”
Rowan held her arms out, curled as if she cradled a baby. Her expression sh
ifted to one of such anguished longing, Bri’s heart ached, and she had to turn away.
“I had the baby. I had her for one day before he took her from me. That was the arrangement. Jonah told me I was destined for greatness as a Warrior, and a child could never be with me on the path. One day.” She held up her index finger. “And she was gone. He found her another home, a family. One I wasn’t allowed to know about. He was strong, Bri. He still is. I couldn’t resist him or his power. I didn’t fight him for her the way I should have, and I’ve never regretted anything more.”
Bri sucked in a breath and waited. Rowan had to be talking about Celeste—her other daughter. Celeste’s body had gone completely rigid, fists in tight balls at her sides, her eyes glued to Rowan’s face. A strong gust might blow her to pieces and scatter her to the wind.
“That is who I spoke of, Celeste. Sometimes she comes to me like a dream, although she is likely long dead. I believe if she lived, she may hold the key to stopping Anton.”
“How?” Celeste bit out harshly.
Rowan stared at them with dull eyes, pain easy to read in their depths. “When I knew I couldn’t keep her, I gave her a part of my soul and my power. I knew Jonah would hide her from me so I couldn’t find her, but I had hoped that I could always find a part of myself which would lead me back to her. I was wrong.”
“She’s not,” Celeste choked out.
Rowan looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Your other daughter is not long-dead.” Celeste’s voice cracked on the last word.
Rowan became a blur of movement, suddenly standing nose-to-nose with Celeste, a hair’s breadth away from touching her. The cave pulsed like a living creature, crystals along the walls flickering in response to her distress.
“Rowan, stop!” Celeste retreated, scanning the chamber.
Then she locked her worried eyes on Bri. “She’s grown incredibly strong since we trained together. Watch out. She’s unstable.”
“Tell her!” Bri shot back.
Rowan mirrored Celeste’s movements in a macabre dance, hovering a couple of inches off the ground. “You cannot keep this information from me. I know we’ve disagreed about a lot of things over the years, but you must tell me.” Her body vibrated with power, pulsing in rhythm with the energy of the cave.
“Celeste! You have to tell her right now.”
Celeste stopped. “Do you not see the answer in front of you?”
Rowan stilled, a statue hanging in space. The cave flickered, and then plunged into darkness.
The ground moved beneath Bri’s feet, and she lost her bearings. Flashes of intensely bright light illuminated every corner a second later. Burying her eyes in the crook of her elbow, she waited as long, oppressive moments passed.
She lowered her arm cautiously. Rowan and Celeste stared at each other, neither blinking, barely breathing. Rowan brought one hand to her mouth and the other to her heart as a great sob wracked her body.
Celeste stood motionless, angry tears sliding down her ashen cheeks. “The mother who raised me told me the truth on her deathbed . . . she was not my biological mother.”
“How could I not have known?” Rowan’s voice shook as she spoke, wonder warring with fury in her expression. “How did you know?”
Celeste took a step back, wiping at her tears, clearly irritated. “I listened and put the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Rowan’s eyes narrowed to a glare. “No.” She tapped a long index finger relentlessly on her thigh. “No, it doesn’t make sense. I would have known.”
Bri stared between the two women, caught in one of the most heart wrenching moments she could have imagined. She cleared her throat, but neither looked at her.
“Jonah. He could have . . .” Bri started.
Rowan tossed up a hand to stop her, a near-hysterical laugh escaping.
“Why not?” Bri pressed. “He hid my powers from me all these years. Anton is powerful enough to hide you from him . . . It’s not impossible to imagine.”
She had their attention now and tried not to squirm under the pressure of their combined hope that they hadn’t been betrayed, yet again, by Jonah.
Rowan’s shoulders slumped as if another part of her spirit had been drained away. “Stupid,” she rasped softly, facing her daughter. “You knew and you never said anything. We fought together, trained together. You challenged me all the time . . .” Suddenly she grabbed her stomach, doubling over.
Bri and Celeste exchanged a worried look.
“Are you okay?” Bri managed a cautious step in her direction.
Rowan straightened and stood at full height, robes swirling around her ankles, silver hair a heavy veil around her. Her gaze locked on the high ceiling, she started to laugh, softly at first and then with an edge.
Bri cringed at the sound.
“I don’t have much time. Anton is coming,” she intoned, a strange gleam in her eyes.
“How can we stop him?” Bri fought down panic. “What can Celeste do to help you?”
“Clever girl.” Her mother’s voice changed; it now rang with a hard, mechanical tone. “Your sister is not the only key to his destruction or his ultimate power and ability to destroy the Quytel. Without them, the balance of power in this world will shift.”
The eerie mechanical voice sent shivers down Bri’s spine. Clearly their mother had been taken over by another.
Then Bri gaped as her sister assumed a fighting stance, arms out to her sides . . .
Ready.
Chapter 28
Cole paced back and forth in the living room of the one-story log cabin. The open floor plan helped, but between the Warriors and his team, there was barely any place to sit, let alone space to think. Psychic energy crowded the air.
They had wasted too much precious time with Dean and Jay, going over surveillance footage and the intricate maps they’d generated of a network of caves far below the mountain’s surface. Given the freedom, he could have told them exactly where Bri was. His body, hell, his entire being was a compass, programmed for only one purpose.
He needed to shift and allow the animal full reign to track. Bri was close; he could feel her fear and a variety of other overwhelming emotions, including pain. If it didn’t stop, he’d very likely go insane.
“I don’t want any of you blazing in there to save the day,” Jonah repeated, his eyes resting on Cole with a subtle lift of an eyebrow.
Had Jonah not magically secured the door, Cole would’ve been long gone. The brush of Jonah’s power slid through him, momentarily calming the beast. He hadn’t realized he’d been snarling and growling.
“What we face will be dangerous to each of you in ways you cannot imagine, especially if you’re captured.” Jonah addressed the full group, including Cole’s team and his Warriors.
“Cole, your team should stay here. I would ask you to stay, but we need your compulsion to help us find Bri.”
“I wouldn’t have stayed anyway,” he growled.
“I would have expected no less from the man claiming to be in love with Bri,” Jonah agreed, turning to the rest of the group. “Anton must be stopped. We have only begun to see the destruction he and Rowan are capable of. They have already thrown the earth off its energetic axis. I’m not only talking about the deaths of a few psychics and unstable latents, but cataclysmic events could follow if this continues.”
He turned his attention to Mack, perhaps for support or validation of decisions made, a kinship with someone who knew the whole story. For a moment Cole thought he saw a vulnerability, incongruent with the man’s power and presence.
“When Bri was a child I suspected, hoped, Rowan still lived. I searched everywhere but found no evidence of her. What I still don’t know with enough certainty is whether or not she’s being used
or has been corrupted herself. When Rowan disappeared, we were not on speaking terms.” Jonah paused, and Cole tried not to flinch under the man’s scrutiny. “What you do not know is that Rowan is my daughter.”
Cole’s ears buzzed for a moment, not sure he’d heard correctly. “You’re Bri’s grandfather?”
The Commander nodded.
Cole scanned the Warriors in the room, and by their somber expressions, he could tell they all knew. Scraping his hand through his hair in agitation, Cole glared at Mack. “How could you not tell her?”
“You might be surprised what you would do for your children.” Jonah’s quiet tone held more than a little threat.
How many more betrayals would Bri experience at the hands of this man? “This whole time, she grew up thinking you were some distant cousin of her mother’s?”
Mali folded her arms over her chest with a scowl of disapproval, shooting daggers at Jonah. Ash edged closer to her and Cole wasn’t sure she even noticed, but he certainly picked up on the Warrior’s protective posture as she silently challenged Jonah’s decision.
“When Rowan was young, I forced her to remain a Warrior when her heart would have had her follow a different path.” Jonah’s attempt at explaining revealed no discernible shame or contrition. “When Rowan met Bri’s father and got pregnant centuries later, she was independent enough to cut me out of her life when I once again disapproved. She requested divestiture. She wanted to be finally done with her life as a Quytel and choose a human existence, to age and die with her human husband. I hesitated and gave her an ultimatum, one I thought she could not act on. I was wrong, and she left. Six years later, she and her husband disappeared, leaving Bri behind.” He stopped and regarded each of his Warriors in turn.
Cole’s heart ached for Bri. He wanted to hold her close, hear her anger; soothe her heartbreak. The compulsion thumped a sympathetic, discordant beat in his core.
Circle of Dreams (The Quytel Series Book 1) Page 27