“I’m not sure where to begin,” I said, heart pounding as I took in each of their faces. They were all looking at me with such expectation, though Ozzie and Llyr seemed wary. Keagan feigned boredom with a glance at his fingernails despite how his aura quivered with curiosity.
“What’s the problem?” Rohan asked. “Can I help?”
“It’s you,” I said. He gave me a confused look. “No, I mean, you . . . and Keagan too . . . I only just met you, so I feel like I need to start at the beginning, but that’s a complicated story.”
“We aren’t infants,” Keagan snapped. “Just say what needs to be said.”
I pressed my lips together and glanced at Llyr, his olive skin, sculpted lips, and shining black hair already etched into my memory, though we’d only really known each other for one brief, amazing day. The story began with him in many ways, yet the angry knot in my gut made it difficult to dredge up those memories without recalling how he’d hurt me the day I’d left home.
“Deva—” Llyr began, starting to rise.
“No.” I held up my hand. “Stay where you are. This is hard enough as it is.” I closed my eyes again and took a deep breath.
“Llyr was with me almost from the beginning. I don’t think Ozzie even knows that about my history. You all know that I’m a hybrid, though, bred from all five higher races. Well, four plus humans, who have their own innate power, even if it isn’t something they can control.”
I opened my eyes to make sure they were listening. Rohan took a few steps into the living room, then moved to sit on the floor against Llyr’s chaise.
“We thought you looked human when you walked into the store,” he said. “But your aura was too unreadable for that to be true.”
“You said she was too beautiful to be human,” Keagan shot.
Rohan gave me a sheepish smile and shrugged. “It’s true.”
“I could have been human at one time, or maybe not. There’s no way to know for sure. What I do know is that my biological parents were human once. They were two of the oldest Elites, corrupted by our enemy and compelled to serve the Ultiori three thousand years ago. Hell, they were the Ultiori—Llyr already mentioned my father, who you all clearly know by reputation. Two of you know him personally.”
I met Llyr’s gaze and was surprised by his look of regret. But if he was truly sorry for what he’d said about me, why did he keep insisting on the lie?
I tore my gaze away and glanced between Rohan and Keagan. Rohan frowned and Keagan’s eyes narrowed as he shifted and crossed his arms.
“The stories are all true, so I’m sure if I said you don’t know Nikhil like I do, that wouldn’t change your opinions. If you want to run, be my guest.”
Keagan looked at Rohan, who shook his head and lightly pounded the side of his fist on his knee. “I’m not going anywhere. It isn’t like Nikhil’s still hunting us. He switched sides before the war started. Everyone knows he’s bound to a member of the Dragon Council now, and if Iszak and Lukas don’t see him as a threat, neither should we.”
It was odd to hear him refer to my stepmother in such generic terms. To me she was the caring, patient woman who was the perfect counterweight to my father’s severe, demanding presence. She could also destroy this entire room with a breath of her fire, but that was beside the point.
His familiarity with my two turul stepfathers should have been less of a surprise, since they were the original members of Fate’s Fools, though they had retired last year to raise a family with Belah and Nikhil.
Keagan’s gaze turned back to me, and though he looked troubled, he shook his head. “I’m waiting to hear the rest.”
I took a deep breath and dove back in. “My mother was the first female Elite, who was retired early on. That is to say, she was locked up and experimented on. If you ever heard the legends of the Twin Elites, she was one of them—Neela. While she was in captivity, the enemy forced her and Nikhil to . . . breed.”
I hated this part of the story, because despite knowing that my parents indeed had true affection for each other, they were not each other’s soul mates. But I also knew if they hadn’t had some love for one another at the time, I would have never existed. Humans didn’t require a bond with a soul mate to conceive a child, but the hybrid blood Nikhil and Neela carried still demanded a deeper bond than a forced mating would normally provide.
That was the secret ingredient the Ultiori’s leader found with the two of them. None of the products of the rapes the Ultiori forced their captives to carry out produced offspring that made it to term. But add a little love to the mix, and Meri had a viable specimen to continue her experiments on: me.
I pushed on, wanting to get this part over with. “I was conceived and removed from Neela’s womb the very second I took root. It was the worst day of my life.” I paused, chilled by the memory of that loneliness. “And yes, I do remember it vividly. I had no concept of time yet. Everything was in abstract. The process was an eternity of pain and loss and cold and dark.
“I did have one companion, though he was only with me briefly because his power couldn’t extend much farther than the anchor he had to my mother. Once her essence faded from my being, so did his presence.”
“Zorion,” Ozzie murmured. I lifted my gaze to his and nodded.
“Zorion was my mother’s soul mate, chosen for her by Fate. He was locked away in a stone prison, hibernating, but somehow he’d found a way to be with her in spirit throughout the ordeal. He stayed with me at the start, my Papa Z.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the memory. Zorion was one of the few men I called “Father” who didn’t try to control my life.
“The enemy—you all probably know her as Meri, or the Lamia—stripped me from the safety of my mother’s womb and put me into a sterile tank inside a lab. At the time, I only knew darkness, but eventually I became aware of having company. Along with regular infusions of higher races blood, I was given five sources of sustenance, and along with those came five voices that kept me company during those months while I grew. Five satyrs whose blood sustained me.”
I glanced at Llyr, and my chest ached with a combination of affection and hurt. “One of them was Llyr Xanthos, who I didn’t formally meet until my birthday three weeks ago. And who is now tasked with . . . what? Being my babysitter? Taking me home to my ridiculously overprotective father?”
I scowled at him hard and he turned away. The bastard couldn’t look me in the eye.
“Anyway, I kind of lost time in that fucking tank. I remember being aware of pledging my loyalty to the Dionarchs as a new Thiasoi soldier while simultaneously watching the Ultiori slaughter my kind and take me and my brothers hostage. But I know that was never me. That was one of them.”
“That was all of us,” Llyr said, voice low and icy. A chill passed down my spine as the old memory slithered back in, potent enough that I felt I was back there in that tank and sharing it with Llyr again.
I met his gaze and for just a moment forgot what an ass he’d been to me. I may have only spent a few months in that tank, but he’d been trapped in a similar one, though much larger, for several centuries. I gave him a silent nod of acknowledgment before pressing on.
“But their blood made me strong, and more ready than I should have been to emerge into the world. I think it at least helped prepare me for what happened next.
“For that second relocation, I didn’t have Zorion’s velvet darkness to shield me from the cold. I lost the constant infusion of magic from Llyr and the other satyr too. But what I gained was a mother once more. I . . .”
I bit my lip, involuntarily tearing up at the first truly good memory during the entire ordeal.
Meri had taken me from the tank where I’d grown for several months, still a tiny fetus subsisting on satyr blood. I hadn’t understood it at the time, but found out after the fact that she had planned to take me to the nymphaea’s sacred home, the Haven, where she could expose me to the infinitely powerful Source and complete my transf
ormation into the creature she wished me to become.
Taking a deep breath, I continued. “Meri had captured Vrishti Rainsong. And while Vrishti was mid-estrous, she drifted me into her womb. For the first time since I’d become aware, I knew was safe and loved, and that I had nothing to fear. Not until I was born, anyway.”
The frowns on Rohan and Keagan’s faces told me they were starting to put together a few pieces about my unusual nature, but I wasn’t ready to address those questions. I plowed on.
“I don’t remember any of what happened outside that safe place. Now I know that the war in the Haven had begun, and that some of my parents were already in the Haven fighting and the rest would arrive before long. And I know that my ursa grandmother, the former Summer Shaman, nearly sacrificed her life to make sure Vrishti and I survived.
“All I remember was the moment the Summer Spirit took up residence in Mama Vrishti’s body while I was in her womb. I’d already been filled with nymphaea blood, then baptized in my mother’s fertile power, but the Summer Spirit’s magic exposed me to a greater possibility. You should understand this.” I glanced at Keagan, who gave me a slow nod.
The ursa’s voice was a low, smooth rumble like warm syrup when he spoke. “The Summer Spirit is known to encourage the ripening of living things, just as the Autumn Spirit reaps what abundance has been produced. But you would have been a tiny thing. How did you survive that much power?”
“I don’t know. Nobody does. But my cousin Calder likes to speculate that Meri probably exposed me to every ounce of immortal blood she had access to, once she was confident I would survive. The blood protected me from the power, possibly even enhanced its effects. Meri intended me to be her vessel, once I was strong enough. She just didn’t count on Vrishti’s maternal instincts kicking in before she could extract me from her womb and complete the process.”
Keagan snorted. “You don’t fuck with mama bears.”
“No,” I said, filled with mirth at the unexpected image of my sweet, shy mother—the youngest of the three—going ballistic in her bear form just to protect an unborn child she’d had forced upon her. “She escaped and made it back to the Sanctuary. But that’s where it starts to get weird, at least for me.
“Vrishti and her mates . . . Papa Neph and Papa Aodh . . . cast a spell to create a temporal bubble around the Rainsong Lodge to give them time to find a way to open a portal in the barrier and bring in reinforcements. I remember how much power simply creating that barrier took, but I also remember that the process linked me to that bubble. My growth was tied to the power of that barrier, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that Meri kept attacking it to try to get to me.
“And every time she did, time sped up for me. Within a few hours, I had grown too much to remain inside my mother’s womb. Once I was born, it took only a few more hours before I could walk and talk . . .” I regarded Ozzie warmly. “. . . and sing.”
“I remember every second,” Ozzie said, his voice filled with all the affection I remembered and missed. “You were not what any of us expected. I can’t help but see that child still.”
Something in his tone made me pause. Was he apologizing?
“I’m not a child now. Even then I didn’t feel like it. All I knew was that I was finally free to use my voice after being trapped in silence and darkness for so long, and thanks to you, I had a wonderful outlet for it. Your songs got me through the worst of the pain whenever that barrier was attacked and another growth spurt hit.
“It all happened within the span of a day. All that pain was just another extension of Meri’s cruelty, stripping me from my mother, from the sustenance of Llyr and his brothers, and then fighting to get to me so hard I was forced to grow up within a few hours. But in the end, it made sense. I believe this was where I was meant to be, and I’m finally starting to learn who I was meant to be.”
The corners of Ozzie’s mouth turned down and his blue eyes grew cold. “There is no meaning to this. Fate does not have a plan for you, I promise.”
I closed my eyes and groaned. “So everyone keeps telling me. Yet no one seems to be able to produce any proof. All I have is this unbearable certainty that I can do more if only I could understand how to unlock all my powers.
“I have all this understanding.” I tapped my temple. “Not just from scouring the Sanctuary’s libraries and reading every damn book they have, but also from the certainty that imbued all that blood that sustained me before I was born. There has to be more for me, and if Fate didn’t have a plan, then I’m damn well going to come up with my own.”
“That isn’t how it works!” Ozzie shot to his feet and strode over, towering above me with a scowl. Lightning flashed in his eyes as lovely and dangerous as a summer storm. “You don’t just get to decide to do whatever the fuck you want. Fate gets pissed when you do that, and you don’t fuck with Fate!”
“Fate doesn’t even know I exist, according to you! I have no soul, in case you forgot. Fate only cares about people who do.”
“You have—” he began, raising his hands and clenching them into fists. Then his face reddened and he threw up his hands. “Gah! You are infuriating!”
He dropped his hands and swept around me, stomping out the door. By the time I turned to watch him go, all I saw was a pile of empty clothes and the silhouette of a big falcon arcing up over the bluffs.
“So . . . he knew you when you were a kid,” Rohan said. “Which was how long ago, exactly?”
19
Deva
“How old were you when you went into hibernation?” I asked. I was deflecting, but I wanted to make sure the guys had a valid frame of reference before they drew any conclusions.
“Twenty-two. But that was over five centuries ago.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Exactly how much maturing did you do in those five centuries?”
Keagan snorted. “Mature is the last word I’d use for Rohan. He’s five hundred going on twelve.”
“I’m still older than you, dickhead,” Rohan shot back, tossing a singed throw pillow at him.
I glanced at Llyr, who still regarded me in silence. His aura was as clear and placid as a still pool, and my heart thudded at the sight of his soul. The egg-shaped ball of light pulsed with its own power, faint tendrils floating out of it like veins of light.
It reminded me of that first look I’d had of my parents’ souls, shortly after I discovered I could see them, and how the magic flowed between them, the tendrils connecting and twining. The permanence of that connection was apparent from the way the thread remained, faint yet visible, even when they weren’t near each other—two souls linked, or in most cases, several souls joined in a perfect, beautiful knot of threads. It was yet another reminder of what I could never have.
And what I might deprive someone else of if I let them love me.
I tamped down that ache. There was more at stake than my own juvenile wish for a soul mate I could never have. Hundreds of other souls were at risk if I didn’t figure out how to stop these attacks.
“My point is that your age is not a reflection of your maturity. The eternity I spent steeped in ancient satyr blood only lasted five months, yet I experienced lifetimes.”
“And yet you barely know how to make a sandwich,” Keagan said, giving me a wry look.
I huffed. “I didn’t exactly inherit a lot of practical knowledge in that tank, but what I did inherit was an ability to learn quickly. You only have to explain something to me once. That’s what makes my nature so frustrating to me—I know what I am capable of. I know how to shift, breathe fire, heal wounds, drift thousands of miles away, or even directly into any of the higher realms; I just don’t have the power to do those things.
Rohan frowned, and I sensed his gears turning, but before he could say anything, Keagan had done the math.
“You’re only a year old.” He tilted his head as his gaze slipped down my body and back up, lingering on my breasts still threatening to explode out of the bodice
of my borrowed dress.
“Bullshit,” Rohan said. “You were in a temporal bubble. You aged there.”
“The bubble was designed to slow time, not speed it up. Yes, I did age there, but it happened almost instantaneously. And very painfully, I might add.”
Rohan frowned. “You’re saying you were born on the Equinox—the day of the war in the Haven—just last year? Should we not have . . .” He shot a terrified look at Keagan. “Dude . . . what happened yesterday . . .”
Keagan shrugged. “That was between consenting adults, as far as I’m concerned. And a dragon.”
His gaze remained fixed on my face so intently my skin prickled. “You weren’t a virgin,” he added.
Llyr crossed his arms and frowned. I narrowed my eyes at him, but sensed no inclination that he’d changed his opinion on our last encounter.
“Why do you keep looking at him?” Keagan asked. “What does he have to do with any of this?”
“One of my overprotective fathers tasked Llyr with being my bodyguard. He did his job, but he also . . . ah . . . assisted me when I helped complete the ritual three weeks ago. The one we carried out to contact the bloodline.”
“Assisted.” Keagan’s lips curled in a salacious smile. “So you two fucked. Why do you look so pissed about it, man? She’s part dragon. That’s how they work.”
“Not pissed about the sex,” Llyr said. “She seems to believe I was her first, when I guarantee that’s not true.”
A knot of pain and anger burned in my gut. The bastard still insisted I was lying. “Well, I guarantee I’d remember being fucked if it had happened. Stop lying about it!”
“Am I lying, sweetness? Really?” He spread his arms, his tight t-shirt leaving nothing of his physique to the imagination. “Take a good, long look at my soul, since you can see it. Tell me if there’s any ounce of untruth within me. I don’t give a fuck that someone touched you first—I really don’t—but I would have known if you’d come to me untouched.
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