Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Page Seventeen. This is a true account of the life of Pagen Dehana.
E verything’s foggy when I open my eyes, but I can make out dark green trees—towering familiar trees high above me. The leaves are turning brilliant shades of red and orange, some of them even falling from the branches into the wind as I watch. The air isn’t warm, but it isn’t cold either, and I am fine under what must be at least three blankets. The blankets are wrapped tightly around my back, and I search around for the source of the noise of many people talking and whispering to themselves. I also hear the sound of fire crackling nearby and something flapping in the breeze, maybe clothes on a line. High in the trees is a cover of fabric, blocking out the heavy rays of sunlight. I stretch out my body, like testing it for injuries, but I don’t feel anything but a deep ache everywhere. Until I move my head and wince at the non-physical pain that slams into my mind.
Hair strokes my arm, and I look over to see blonde hair and a curious, innocent face watching me as she lies on my arm. “Hettie,” I whisper.
Her returning grin could light up the world. “You’re awake! Uncle Ziven said you’d wake up soon, but I was getting really worried. It’s been three weeks!” She hugs me under the quilt, and I hug her right back, breathing in her scent. We lie like that for a long moment, a moment of comfort I needed.
“Three weeks?” My voice cracks. Did she say I’ve been asleep for three weeks? That’s a long time after the fight with the king and the war. Did we win? I assume so if I’m lying here, happy and alive.
“Yeah, three entire weeks.” She nods against my chest. “But uncle Ziven was so sure you’d be okay. Anyway, my uncle’s never wrong. At least, that’s what he says.”
“It’s best not to tell him that, or he might never stop mentioning his all-knowing knowledge,” I tease, and she giggles. I sense him nearby, coming closer, and I can’t wait to see him. Her giggle stops, and she looks up at me. “I don’t remember having a mother, but I think you’re the closest I’ve ever got. I want to honour my mother’s memory, but I want you as more than my aunt and Ziven, my uncle. I’ve been really thinking we are one family, and I’m yours.” She looks so nervous, and it breaks my heart that she is worried at all. “I mean, you can tell me no. But I love you and you’re like a mum to me.”
“You can call me whatever name you like, and I will be your family forever, Hettie. I’ve looked at you like a daughter for a long time, too.” I stroke her hair. “And you’re so much more than just a niece to Ziven, too. We will always be together, and I want to raise you as mine.”
She bursts into tears, and I hold her, crying too. Both of us are a mess within seconds, and I let myself be, let myself enjoy this little girl whose life I have been blessed to be part of. When we have calmed down, she lies back and looks up. “One question. Why are we outside?” I ask.
“Well, the mountain place…it changed.” She shrugs a shoulder. “The dragons made it clear that they didn’t want us there anymore—not now that the war’s over. We had to come out to the forest to be safe.” She lowers her voice. “I secretly love it outside because I can see the sky and feel the wind again. I don’t want to spend another second trapped again. I like running free.”
“I like that too,” I whisper, yawning. I don’t know how, but I fall back asleep. When I wake again, Hettie is gone. Instead, thick arms are wrapped around my waist, holding me from behind, and it is night again. I must have slept another day and night away. I glance ahead, seeing Hettie sleeping in a smaller bed next to this one, and I sigh, sinking back into him, and he hums, pressing a kiss to the side of my neck.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” he speaks directly into my mind. “I was getting worried, even when I felt you were fine.” I turn over to look up at him, stroking his face. “The war’s over, Story. The king’s dead—you know that. Everything’s over. We won.”
“Tell me everything,” I whisper. “What happened after I passed out?”
“I caught you just before the treeline. I think you’ve changed.” He runs a line down my arm, tracing the silvered marks there. “The power—it was a lot for you to use, to wield, and it knocked you out. This connection we have now, us together…I was sure that you would wake. I kept you with me, close by, along with all our family and friends.” I listen in silence as he continues. “The city fell, not without dragon and fae deaths, though. Daegan won and took over, executing the vampyres that were left alive. He’s called for the other vampyres in the south to bend to him or die. Niko came up with a better solution to those who did not want to join the dynasties. He and Catherine are going to rule in the islands to the south sea, where no one has lived in centuries, and welcome vampyres who will feed off animals there and fae who wish to join, not as slaves, but as free people. But Niko is loyal to Daegan, and we both agreed through letters that this is safe—at least for now. That’s all that matters as we rebuild, Story.”
“That’s true.” I touch his chest, looking at him, enjoying every second of the slowness of the time we get together right now. His gaze flickers over me. “You…you’ve taken vampyres into your dynasty?”
“A good four hundred of them now and many more fae who clearly love their vampyre masters and don’t want to be apart from them. I’ve claimed my parents’ lands, and this is our home now.”
“These lands are our home,” I murmur.
“I want to rebuild with you,” he softly suggests.
It isn’t hard to tell him what I imagined for us, what I’ve always wished to call home. I’ve dreamt of us, of any future we could have, a million times, and it seems almost unreal to imagine we could have it all. “I want to live by the sea. I want to hear waves crash in the morning as we wake up together, and I want a library with moons hanging from the ceiling.”
His lips twitch into a smile. “A library?”
I nod. “Many levels. Many books. Even if I have to write them all myself.”
He smiles at me—smiles so bright, so pure. “I will design and build it.”
“I’m still mad at you.” I glower at him. “No more secrets and self-sacrificing bullshit. It makes having a future with you a little difficult.”
“We can do the mad, burning, passionate sex where you forgive me later.” He grips my hips, and heat pours through me for a second. His lips are soft as they brush mine. “But right now, I just want to stare at you. Just see you. Alive. Happy.” He exhales. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us, but with you, I know it’s possible. Anything is.” The future. It was once a fleeting dream of something unreal, and now it’s not. “To make something…to build you a home by the sea. For Hettie too. She can have it one day when we are gone together, when she is queen.”
“Not just Hettie,” I murmur, my heart pounding.
I take his hand and press it against my stomach. He frowns in confusion. “What?”
“The deities told me that I’m pregnant.” His entire body stills. “And I believe them because it’s true. Unbelievable and magical, but true. A miracle.” I take a breath, still trying to process it myself, and his shock is mirroring mine. “I don’t know or understand how this miracle has happened. I’m still in shock, but…it’s true. I know it’s true.”
He stares at me for so long I wonder if he is even breathing. “You’re pregnant.” A slow exhale fills the space between our bodies. “I thought you smelled slightly different, but…” His fingers press gently against my stomach, reverent. “You’re carrying my child.”
If I thought he was happy before, it’s nothing compared to the smile he gives me now. He pulls me to him and kisses me deeply. “Storm.” He groans. “You have given me everything I could have ever wanted.”
I smile as brightly as I can at him, just so I don’t cry all over him in bliss. We lie together for hours, not talking. We don’t need to talk—just holding each other until sleep pulls us under, is enough. When morning comes, I wake to find Calix standing over us, and he is grinning at us. He winks at me before putting on a pretend mad expression. “My mate is injured, and she said there is no excuse for lying in bed.” He crosses his arms. “You might be the king, but you don’t get the same excuse. Get up.”
Ziven groans and shifts beside me. “Remind me to kick his ass later for being a dick.”
Calix kicks his foot. Hard. Ziven glares at his best friend. “Your majesty, get your royal ass up, because there’s a fuck-ton of fae who want to swear allegiance to your pretty face, and you’re lying in bed.”
Ziven snarls. It’s playful though, and I chuckle low. “Did you just kick your king?”
Calix kicks him again, and I can just tell he enjoyed doing it. “We can train first. If you want to try to teach me why kicking you is bad?”
I roll my eyes as Ziven grins and stretches before sitting up. “I’m going to enjoy handing you your ass for breakfast.” Ziven kisses me and climbs up to his feet.
My mother walks past them, shaking her head as she watches the two of them with me while they are wrestling.
“That’s not very king-like either,” she murmurs, amused.
“They’re so big on training,” I muse. I love to see Ziven so laid back.
“Do they do that a lot?” my mum questions. “The fighting?”
“Yeah.” I grin. “It’s better when they are shirtless.”
She laughs and gestures for me to move up so she can sit next to me.
“Have you seen Avaluna? Is she recovering well?” Ziven didn’t know when I asked him earlier.
“She is not far from you and asks about you, too. I’ll take you to see her if you wish. But first, I have something for you.” I watch as she reaches into a satchel, pulling out a green book. It’s old—extremely weathered. “I went to the breeding camps with some of the others,” she explains. “I wanted to look for survivors, but also…I went back to our old home. There was something there—something really important that I wanted to give you.”
She presses the book into my hands, and I run my fingers over the cracked leather, feeling the weight of it. “What is it about?”
“This is your father’s family diary.” Her voice is thick. “It holds generations of dedication to the deities. It’s how I knew about them, about everything—including you. About the rebellion he started.” I swallow hard, my fingers curling over the edges of the book. “There are a lot of empty pages after it.” She clears her throat. “You should write in it if you want to. Your story would be interesting—worth adding.”
I blink, looking up at her. “Thank you, I will treasure this. Why did you call me Story?” I ask. “I mean, of all the names in the world…why that?”
She takes a slow breath. “My mother…” she starts, and her voice wavers. She looks away for a moment before continuing. “My mother was never in my life for more than a minute. She died in childbirth, giving birth to me. I was her sixth child. I don’t know if I ever told you that, but I was. She was from the breeding camps too, and there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t wish I knew what she was like—what she looked like.” Her eyes grow distant. “My siblings and I lived together,” she murmurs. “My eldest sister looked after all of us, but she was only twelve—twelve years old, looking after all those children, including a baby, when my mother died. It changed her.” Sadness lingers in her every word. I don’t move. I barely breathe. “When she was eighteen, she was sent to a new breeding camp with us, and it was the one you and I lived in,” she explains. “She got sick—not from pregnancy, just…so sick. She’d spent so many years taking care of all of us. We all got sick and there was no help. No medicine to help the fevers.” Her sharp inhale echoes in the air. “They all died, and I remember it. It is my first memory. A part of me went with them, too.”
My heart clenches. “I’m sorry.”
She carries on like she can’t stop or she might never be able to tell me it all. “I became a breeder, just like my mother, like my sibling…what they probably all would have turned out to be.” I shake my head in disgust of those camps. “I had no life. Nothing. Nothing good anyway. Nothing worth living for. No family. I was empty of anything. Empty of a story that could live on beyond my mortal years.” She lifts her head, and for the first time, I see the light in her eyes—the warmth of something more. “Then I met your father,” she whispers, and she smiles like she is seeing him in my face. “It felt like everything began with him—like the first page of a book was turned.” She swallows. “And then, when we had you…it wasn’t just like turning a book page. It was like exploding straight into a story that grabbed my heart. Made my blood flow. Made my soul feel alive.” Tears burn my eyes. “And I knew,” she finishes. “That first moment I held you, I knew you were a special beginning of a story.”
“I really love you for telling me this, even when I can see it hurts,” I admit.
She presses my hands around the book I have. “That’s why you have this name,” she finishes. I exhale shakily, looking down at the worn leather. “Read the book,” she says. “Recover. And I’ll get you some food.” She winks. “In your condition, you definitely need to eat.”
I blink up at her. “How did you?—”
She laughs. “I was in a breeding camp for nearly all of my life. Pregnancy was a common thing, and I know all the signs. I’ve known for weeks.” I gape at her. “I was just waiting for you to catch up, find out, and tell me.” Then her face softens. “And then…my grandbaby will need food.”
I watch her go, warmth filling my chest. Of course she would know. The joy in her eyes—the future she sees with us is worth every fight I had. Ziven, my mother, Hettie and our dynasty. My family.
I sit back, exhaling, and turn the first page of the book my father wrote in. The book my grandfather wrote in, and my great-grandmother before him.
A story of fae who were brought into a world forgotten.
And as I begin to read about a rebellion, I see that it didn’t fail like my father thought. It just began and lived through me.