Epilogue
Sarah
Deacon had kindly loaned us Drift as a pilot for Allegiant for the journey to the temple. I smiled at my sisters in the café, as we flew over the forest to our destination. I had so much to tell them. So much to share.
I thought back to the chat I had with Deacon and Jac about this trip, and my smile widened when I thought about Deacon’s timid reaction to my sisters, which was adorable considering he was usually so confident.
When I had explained I wanted to take my sisters to the temple, he had suggested, “Perhaps it would be best for you to take them alone. Just you and your sisters. You have a lot to tell them, and I do not wish to distract them—"
“You’re skittish around them, aren’t you?” I asked him playfully.
He hesitated, then said, “Elizabeth is quite a serious person.”
I giggled at the uncertain look on his handsome face. “She scares you?”
“Scare is not the correct word, though it is not far off,” he admitted. “I want her to like me, but I am unsure how to go about it.”
Jac laughed at Deacon’s flustered attempt to figure out my oldest sister. “She does not warm up to strangers easily, right?”
“No,” I agreed. “And she is very protective of Jenny.”
“It will be a bonding experience for you three at the temple,” Deacon said, and brushed his lips lightly across mine. “Good luck. With…everything.”
Jac kissed me, too. “You can do this.”
He knew Deacon was not the only nervous one. I had much to tell my sisters about our paternity, and every thought of it made me wish I had an alternative. But I did not.
Now, as I looked at my sisters staring in awe out the window from where we were seated at a table in the cafe, I knew I couldn’t keep anything from them. Not anymore. No matter how tense I was about telling them the truth, it had to be discussed.
I cleared my throat and broke the quiet of the café with, “So, ghosts are real.”
Jenny laughed, but it died quickly when she realized I was not joking.
Elizabeth met my gaze from across the table, a haunted look in her own. “I am sorry, Sarah.”
Her apology surprised me. “What for?”
“All of this…if I had…” A thought seemed to traipse through her mind and stick there. “If I had been open to the idea of ghosts, then maybe Mom wouldn’t have put you in that institution.”
Yeah, that had definitely sucked, but I didn’t hold it against my sister. “How could that possibly be your fault, Liz?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Since I’m the oldest, Mom always listened to me when it came to the two of you. I was the one who pressured her to do it.” She began to cry, as regret overcame her. “I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
I took her hand in mine, and she gasped in surprise, hope shimmering in her eyes. “I’m not angry with you for it. You did what you thought was right. You saw your sister holding a letter opener at her throat and freaked out, so believe me, I get it. You didn’t see the ghost there, forcing me to hold it at my throat, you didn’t know it wasn’t me—"
“I did.”
Elizabeth and I jerked our heads to Jenny.
Quietly, she said, “I saw him. That’s how I knew where to shove you to get you away from him.”
My heart stopped in shock, then started back again at double pace. “You…you can see ghosts?”
She pulled in a deep breath and nodded. “I can.”
I stared at her for a long moment, trying to make sense of this new revelation. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
She shifted in her chair. “I’m younger than both of you, and I saw how upset it made Mom and Elizabeth,” Jenny said, her voice small. “I thought if I just ignored what I could see, then I wouldn’t upset them like you had. And when you were sent away for a year after what had happened…it didn’t exactly encourage me to ever tell anyone.”
A part of me was crushed. Seeing the ghosts on Earth, I had always felt so isolated. Even my family hadn’t been there for me. They had locked me away instead.
Emotion gathered in my throat and tears filled my eyes, then spilled over. “But, if you had told me, then I wouldn’t have felt so fucking alone.”
Jenny cried, too, her expression reflecting her own devastation. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I was too much of a coward, and I—"
“We worked together at the coffeeshop for years as adults, and you never breathed a word of it.” I choked on a sob. “How could you keep your mouth shut? Since when can you keep your mouth shut about anything?”
Jenny wrung her hands in her lap. “When you came back from the institution, you weren’t yourself. Like you were some shellshocked version of yourself. Always quiet. No light in your eyes anymore. You had stopped talking about the ghosts after you came back from the institute, so I thought they had been so horrible that you were afraid to talk about it again. I didn’t want to encourage it and make you go back there.”
She took a moment and chugged her water with herbs, then met my gaze again. “When you started talking about the ghosts again, I thought it would be for the best if I didn’t discuss it. In case someone tried to commit you again. I couldn’t…I couldn’t stand to be the reason you went back, Sarah.”
I sighed and wiped the moisture from my cheeks. “It was horrible there. I can understand why you were afraid—"
“I see them, too,” Elizabeth muttered.
“ The fuck ?” Jenny erupted.
All I could do was stare at Elizabeth. I lost every thought after she said those words.
She solemnly nodded, and when she spoke her words came out clipped and full of resentment. “I’m sorry. To both of you. I…I couldn’t tell anyone. I was the straight-A student, the one with all the scholarships, the one Mom counted on.” She lifted her chin willfully. “I worked two afterschool jobs, kept up with my extracurriculars, I was the model child. I couldn’t shake her faith in me. We could not afford for me to be different or unstable or unreliable. That was what you two got to be. Whimsical. Fun. Frivolous. Weird. Jenny, with the flowers in her hair. Sarah, with her outcast friends. I was not allowed. I have never been allowed. I am sorry, Sarah. I hated myself for sending you away. I still do. But I thought if I sent you away, then Mom might have a chance to get her shit together and be the grown-up for once.”
After hearing all that, I gaped at my sister. “What are you talking about?”
“She was always worried about you. About your visions , as she called them.” Elizabeth waved a hand in the air, and continued in that frank, blunt way of hers. “She worked at your school, so she could keep an eye on you. After school, I had to keep an eye on you, so she could work at her other jobs. When I couldn’t do it anymore because of my extracurriculars and my after school jobs, she was beside herself. That’s why the neighbors always checked in on you. She was constantly afraid that you might hurt yourself during one of your visions …so when we found you with the letter opener at your throat, it was her worst nightmare come true. That was why I wanted you in the institution. To give Mom a break.”
Her spite was like a tangible thing, tearing me apart inside. I could barely breathe as tears spilled down my face all over again. “You hated me that much?” I whispered.
“It wasn’t hate, Sarah. Never hate,” she said, her disgruntled tone softening a fraction. “I just needed Mom to have a chance to work on herself. You have no idea how scared she was for all those years. You were there at the institute for a month, before she realized she could do something other than be afraid all the time. That was when she started taking night classes and was able to work on her accounting degree. She even had a date.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt utterly raw, as did my heart. “I didn’t realize I was such a burden.”
“This is why I’ve never told you any of this,” she said. “I knew you would react this way. I’m not trying to make you feel like a burden. I’m just telling you how things were for the rest of us.”
“Mom had a date?” Jenny asked quietly.
Elizabeth shifted her gaze to our other sister. “Yes. One of the students in her class set her up and she felt awkward saying no, so she went. She said he was nothing compared to our father, so that was that.”
I sat in silence for a few minutes and tried to put everything together in my mind. It was difficult to hear that I had been so detrimental to my family’s well-being. I always wondered why Elizabeth had been so cold to me. And it wasn’t just me—it had been everyone in the family. As I came to that realization, so many things fell into place.
“You always felt like you had to be the responsible one, didn’t you, Liz? Like everything was on your shoulders.”
I caught a quick glimpse of something vulnerable in her expression before it was gone. “Yes.”
“And that’s why you’ve always been withdrawn and standoffish,” I said, a part of me aching for what my sister had gone through, too. “Always having to be the dependable, reliable one between all of us. The caretaker. You never had the chance to be a kid.”
Her eyes glimmered with tears for that lost childhood. “No. Not really.”
“And all that time, you saw the ghosts, too?” Jenny asked.
Elizabeth exhaled a deep breath, then nodded. “I thought I was crazy, at first. So, I didn’t say anything. Then when Sarah got older and started talking about them, and it freaked Mom out, so—"
“You kept your mouth shut,” I finished for her, as so much clicked into place. “You have always had to be the grown-up. I am so sorry for that, Liz.”
Her lips tightened and her eyes flickered between me and Jenny. “It wasn’t your fault. It was Mom’s.”
Jenny gasped. “You can’t mean that. She had never—"
“ Jen ,” I said firmly, cutting her off to get her attention. “You were always Mom’s favorite, and I don’t think you ever saw her as she truly was. I bet none of us really did. But she was doing what she thought was right when it came to Elizabeth, and it wasn’t right. Not if Elizabeth felt like she had to be the parent of all of us.”
Jenny frowned, which was strange to see. Even when she cried, our sister always looked like she was seconds away from trying to smile. “I guess that’s true.”
Elizabeth stared out the ship’s windows, her expression pained. “God, I wish I could talk to mom about all of this. Yell at her. Cry and make up with her. I just…I wish I had some kind of closure on it all, you know?”
“I do. I know it well.”
Despite the hurtful things Elizabeth had said, our conversation had been oddly cathartic, probably for all of us for different reasons. And now, at least, I had a better understanding of why my oldest sister was so uptight and rigid. She’d carried her resentment for a very long time.
I sniffled and used my sleeve to wipe my nose, since tissues weren’t a thing in Halla and what the heck was up with that?
When I saw we were landing near the temple, I felt a profound sense of relief for what lay ahead. Hopefully healing and that closure Elizabeth spoke about.
“So, why did you want us to come to this place, anyway?” Jenny asked, already bouncing back from our emotional discussion. “I mean, it’s not that I’m not interested—I want to learn everything there is to know about everything on this planet—but why here, specifically? You seemed to think it was a big deal.”
The ship parked, and I stood up and smiled at my sisters. “Come with me. Both of you. You’ll see.”
I led them into the temple, and they gaped at everything I had marveled at when I had first come there.
“It feels ancient in here,” Jenny said, her eyes wide as she glanced around the stone structure. “Like when I went to the Mayan temples in Mexico.”
“This one was actually built recently-ish,” I said, carefully leading the way down to the altar since the steps were Ladrian sized. “But I think it’s the relics in the walls that make it feel that way.”
“What’s this?” Elizabeth asked with a frown, as she pointed to the top of the altar. Then, she reached down toward the table. “Why does it look like liquid—"
“Don’t touch that!” I said in a panic, causing Elizabeth to jerk her hand back. “Not just yet. Since you’re both conduits, I’m not sure what would happen. But I want you two to stand over there while I…show you something.”
They shrugged and stood where I told them, a few feet away. Then, I closed my eyes and put my hands into the cold black liquid. It poured halfway up my arms, while I called to our mother in my mind.
At first, I smelled her cheap vanilla shampoo. It always smelled more like cookies than actual vanilla. I saw her in my mind. The way she walked. Her brown hair, so much like my own. I felt her presence, but before I could open my eyes to look, my sisters gasped loudly. Then, I opened them and smiled.
Mom. Smiling back at me.
“Say hi, Mom.” I tipped my head toward her other two daughters.
Her wispy image turned and her breath caught when she saw Elizabeth and Jenny there with me. “Oh my god.”
My siblings cried and shook wordlessly. Mom moved to hug them but paused. Ghosts could not touch the living without a lot of effort, and since she had come all the way from Earth, she was spent.
But I wasn’t, and right now, I was the one giving her strength. “Go ahead and try,” I encouraged her.
She wrapped my sisters in her arms as they wept together. Eventually and without breaking the hug, Mom asked, “How?”
“Me,” I said with a smile. “I’ve gotten some upgrades since you saw me last.”
Once Elizabeth and Jenny had finally settled down, she came to me and hugged me, too. I cried and tried to keep my shit together, and my hands in the liquid. “If I try to hug you back, Mom, it might break the connection, and we have so much to tell you before we sever our link.”
“I understand,” she said. “I’m just so happy to see all three of you together.”
When she released me, the four of us had a very long talk. Elizabeth was able to get the closure she needed, and their conversation ended with Mom weeping and telling her she knew she’d leaned too hard on her for all those years, but she hadn’t known how not to. They both understood where the other was coming from, and my older sister smiled in a way I had never seen her smile. Unburdened and content.
Mom cried when my sisters admitted to seeing the ghosts, too. She had never suspected it of them. She confessed to checking in on us since her death, and she was glad that I was flourishing on Halla, because I was never good at living on Earth.
She declared, “You have too much of your father in you.”
I laughed, because now I knew who my true father was. “Yeah, probably.” Then I took a deep fortifying breath and said, “Jenny and Elizabeth need to know about that, too, and I haven’t told them.”
“Oh.” She stared down at her clasped hands for a moment, before glancing back at my sisters a bit nervously. “Well, I guess since you’re on Halla, you know some things already. But if Sarah hasn’t told you—"
“Is our father Ladrian?” Jenny asked.
I was shocked she had guessed it, but Elizabeth laughed like our sister had just told a joke, until she saw my serious expression. Then she held a hand to her mouth and gasped, her eyes huge. “No…that’s not…that’s not possible. Right, Mom?”
But Mom said, “Jenny is right, Lizzy. You all three are half-Ladrian.”
Elizabeth went silent, her expression stunned.
Mother went on. “Your father is Volatile Bateen—"
Jenny stiffened at the name, considering the horror stories she’d already heard about Justice Bateen. “We’re related to the asshole on Orhon?”
“Yes,” I said. “Our father, Volatile, is his brother.”
A thoughtful look passed over Jenny’s features. “Which makes Silence our cousin?”
“Yes,” I confirmed.
Confusion marred Elizabeth’s brows. “But why don’t we look Ladrian?”
“That’s not how it works,” I explained, having learned the answer to that question during my time on the planet. “According to everyone I’ve spoken with on the subject, our genetics don’t mix all that well, so babies come out looking like their mom, because that’s who they are exposed to longest.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth went back to being quiet, and I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. Good or bad, she was lost in her thoughts.
Jenny clasped her hands to her chest, her eyes bright and happy. “So, we have way more family than we ever dreamed of?”
I nodded, and I couldn’t ask for a better segue for the news I needed to share with all of them. “And we’re about to have more.”
“How do you mean?” Mom asked.
I gave them all a sheepish smile. “I’m pregnant.”
Elizabeth broke her silence to exclaim, “ What! ”
Jenny beamed. “Oh my god, I’m going to be an aunt!” She tried to strangle me with an excited bear hug after that, while I did my best not to lose our connection with our mother.
Mom joined her, wrapping me in a warm, diaphanous embrace. I stared at Elizabeth over her shoulder, and when my grinning big sister finally joined the group, clasping us tight in acceptance, I started to cry. Unable to keep my hands on the alter, I hugged them back. Then, I realized what I had done.
But Mom was still there. I stepped back and looked at her in shock. “You’re still here.”
She appeared just as surprised. “You don’t need to keep the connection with the altar?”
“I…I guess not.” I laughed and shook my head. “I had no idea.”
She smiled so sweetly and gave me a hug, just the two of us. She whispered in my ear, “I’m so happy for you. For all of you.” We cried for a long time together, until I had no more tears to cry.
Eventually, though, she started to fade. “I think my time here is running out for now.”
We gave her one last hug and swore to come back to the temple soon. She promised the same and left. The three of us were quiet, as we entered Allegiant together a short while later.
I had only one more question for my sisters. “What’s next for you two?”
“Can I stay here?” Jenny asked immediately, which didn’t surprise me in the least, given her zest for adventure. “I mean, with you for a while. I don’t want to crowd you and the guys, but I’d like to explore Halla and Orhon and meet our father. What’s he like?”
“I haven’t met him yet,” I admitted, as we all settled at a table in the café, preparing for take-off.
Elizabeth asked, “Why not?”
“Politics, mostly,” I replied honestly. “We’re still not sure if Volatile is still siding with Justice or not, and until we find out for sure, we’re all kinds of scared about me meeting him. But I want to. With you two, if you want to meet him, too.”
To my surprise, Elizabeth nodded. “If he’s not like Justice, then yes. If he is, I don’t want anything to do with him.”
Jenny said, “Same here.”
I reached across the table and clasped one of their hands in each of mine, so we were all connected. “And you’re both welcome to stay on Halla, by the way,” I said. “I would love to have you here.”
“This place is crazy.” Elizabeth shook her head. “And more than that, I have responsibilities on Earth, people who depend on me at the hospital. I can’t just disappear. Hell, I don’t even know how long I’ve been gone. You’ve been gone for over a year, by the way.”
“Oh wow.” I tried to process that bit of news. “For me here, it’s been just a couple of months.”
“But I want to come back,” Elizabeth quickly added. “I want to be back for the birth of my niece or nephew. Maybe I can schedule some time off…you’ll have to let me know when you’re getting close. How far along are you?”
“Ode says I’m around six weeks. But that’s six weeks Ladrian time, and I have no idea how to expect my due date.”
“Are you…” Elizabeth paused, her eyes searching mine. “Are you sure you want this? This life, these people? Your role as queen? You’ve never even run a dinner party, much less a city.”
I laughed, because what she said was true. But I’d found my purpose here, and there was no way I’d ever leave Deacon and Jac. “More than I’ve been sure of anything else in my life, Liz. This is what I am meant to be doing with my life. I know it.”
She smiled and that look of contentment came over her again. “Then I couldn’t be happier for you.”
“Thank you.” I exhaled a deep breath, finally relaxed now that everything was out in the open. “I guess tomorrow Tiger can take you back to Earth, before he gets started on his scouting mission on Orhon.”
“He’s hot ,” Jenny blatantly said. “Is he single?”
I laughed at Jenny’s too enthusiastic expression. “Yes, he’s single. And from what I’ve been told, he has never been with anyone, so maybe just let him be?”
Jenny braced her elbow on the table and propped her chin in her hand. “What do you mean by that?”
Elizabeth smirked. “You know exactly what she means by that.”
“I’ll be gentle with him,” Jenny said, a shameless grin curving her lips.
We both laughed, and Liz rolled her eyes. “You don’t know how to be gentle.”
Jenny punched her arm, and the two of them teased each other, like when we were kids, bickering back and forth.
As they chattered, I smiled and sighed, thinking of the future in my belly. I didn’t know what was ahead of us, but whatever it was, I knew I was prepared to handle anything this planet tossed my way.
The broken parts of me had been mended, and there was no going back to an ordinary life. I would love and live and forge ahead, wholeheartedly, with Deacon and Jac by my side.
There was no other place I wanted to be.
I hope you enjoyed the first Trilogy in the Planet Orhon series. Up next is the second trilogy featuring Sarah’s sister, Jenny, who finds herself the sacrifice for Illiapol! Trust me, you don’t want to miss her adventurous story with her two very sexy alien men in Taking Jenny !