Chapter 61
Sage
M y mother always had a calm, flowing way about her, much like a gently rolling tide, smooth and rhythmic.
She loved to laugh, and when she did, it was infectious.
Soon, you’d find yourself laughing too. Her smile was bright—so bright, it could light up the dark.
That was why she’d been given her name. Luna.
When I was a little girl, I would sit on the floor in front of my mother as she brushed the knots from my hair.
As she did that, she’d tell me stories. Sometimes, they were funny ones, and we’d laugh and laugh and laugh, no matter how many times I had heard them before.
Other times, she would tell me fables, full of warnings.
There was one in particular she didn’t tell it often, but when she did, it always stuck with me for a while.
It was of a girl whose family had left their war-torn country in hopes of finding a better life.
While the girl went down to the river to bathe, she caught the eyes of a giant wolf who stood downstream.
Frightened, she waited to see what the wolf would do, worrying it had come to devour her, but the wolf simply sat there, watching her.
For the next three weeks, as the family continued their travels, the wolf would appear to the girl every so often, to the point she started to trust it.
One day, she was walking through the woods, searching for food, and she heard the roar of a bear.
It emerged from the trees, and then it charged at her.
She started to run but tripped and fell.
Seconds before the bear’s massive mouth nearly clamped down on her, the wolf showed up, growling and snarling as he flew into the bear’s side, knocking it away from her.
It was a bloody battle between the two animals, but ultimately, the wolf won, and the bear ran off into the trees.
The wolf approached the girl. “You saved my life,” the girl said to it.
She opened her arms to give the animal a hug, but its maw found her throat, and it snapped her neck.
Then, the wolf ate her. He wasn’t her savior—he had just been protecting his food source all along.
Initially, the girl’s instinct had been not to trust the wolf, but with time, as it appeared to her over and over again, she’d let her guard down—something which ultimately led to her demise.
I realized now I was no different from the girl—in place of a wolf, though, it was a dragon.
And instead of my life, it was my heart I had given to him.
During the months we’d spent together, locked away from the world, I’d fallen deeply for the male who’d told me his name was Von, and I’d thought he had fallen for me.
We vowed we would be together. On the day that I planned to give myself to him, a bird passed through the barrier at the top, flying out of it.
It didn’t ripple or wave like it had done before, and we realized the barrier that had kept us in was gone.
Von flew us out of there. When we reached the top, he said he needed to get back to the emperor, to speak with him, to tell him he would take me as his wife. Then, he would return for me.
But he never did.
He never came back.
And I never saw him again . . . until today.
I could have done so much worse to him than just tossing my wine in his face, however wonderfully cathartic it felt. My only regrets was not grabbing a wine jug and dumping the entire thing on his head instead.
As the spectators cheered outside, Empress Avena strode in front of me, her too-pretty face twisted in anger as she snarled, “Explain everything. Now.”
I dabbed at my tears, wiping them from my face. “Fine, but can we speak somewhere else?”
“Very well.” Her light wrapped around us both.
We returned to the Celestial Opal Palace, and there, I told her what she wanted to know, although I left a few parts out.
Wolves came in many different forms.
Later that night, I felt exhausted, my body emotionally spent. All thanks to the bastard who had played my heart like a fiddle and then tossed it into the flames like it meant nothing to him, letting it burn to ash.
I laid on the soft, luxurious bed in the grand chambers I stayed in, an arm draped across my face, covering my eyes.
Despite everything, the empress was still hopeful that I’d be able to charm Nockrythiam again.
It was as if she had completely missed the part about me saying that he’d promised to come back for me, but he hadn’t.
The empress seemed quite intelligent, so I couldn’t possibly understand where her blind faith was coming from.
I couldn’t shake the feeling she knew something I didn’t, but what could it be?
What was I missing?
Knuckles rasped against the door.
I jerked upright and looked out the window, clocking the position of the moon. It was late, well past midnight.
I grabbed my robe off the chair and put it on as I walked over to the door and cracked it open.
A dark, brooding god stood on the other side, dressed like a regal mercenary.
Leather pants wrapped around his muscular thighs, cut off by knee-high leather boots—sleek and polished, forged for combat.
The neckline of his tunic was cut to a low V, granting view to the swell of thick, hard muscles waiting beneath.
A cloak, pinned to his shoulders, swayed gently behind him, as if it needed to move in order to handle the immense power he exuded.
Black eyes burned like coals as they lowered to mine.
“Open the door, Little Mortal,” Nockrythiam said from the other side.
I knew what I was supposed to do—the empress had made the role I was to play in this little charade loud and clear. But what I was supposed to do and what I wanted to do were two very different things, and damn it all, I was stubborn. I couldn’t stand the sight of the bastard.
“Go away,” I snarled, muscles firing as I tossed the door back—
Whack!
In a blur of tanned skin and silver rings, his hand slammed against the door, stopping it before it had a chance to latch. He shoved it open, and I stepped back.
Lungs heaving, my pupils turned into daggers as I stared at him. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Coming to collect you,” he said, shadows pooling around him, seeping down to the floor.
Somehow, he seemed even bigger than I remembered, his towering build even more imposing.
He moved with confidence. Purpose. Like some ancient predator on the prowl.
A merciless, unyielding black dragon coming to retrieve his treasure.
“It’s a little late for that,” I hissed at him with the veracity of all my angry foremothers who had been left with a broken heart because of a man.
“I needed time to think,” he said, his voice hitting that rich, deep timbre.
I could still remember the way his chest had rumbled when he spoke, when I’d laid my head against him each night as he ran his fingers through my hair and told me about his past, about the battles he’d fought, the armies he’d led, the things he had done for the emperor.
The good and the bad. Throughout it all, I had still fallen for him.
“What?” I asked, my feet drawing me back as he approached, keeping the distance between us. It wasn’t because I feared him; it was because I feared what he would do to my heart if I let him get too close.
“I planned to return to you, but when I came back here to speak to the emperor about my intentions, he told me something—a truth I could feel with every fiber of my being, and it made me hesitant.”
“Well, whatever it was, I hope it was worth losing me.” My back landed against the wall. I looked from side to side, deciding where to dart to next, but Nockrythiam was quick, killing the space between us.
“If I have truly lost you, then why does your heart quicken as I draw closer to you? Just as it did when we were trapped together for all those months,” he pressed, his hand clasping my chin, lifting my face to his.
“And do not lie to me and say it is because you fear me. We both know that isn’t true. ”
Venom seeped onto my tongue. I wanted to spit it at him. To yell at him. To scream. To tear my chest open and show him what he’d done to my heart. I wanted to show him all the pieces I’d had to glue together after he’d shattered it apart.
But . . . I could not.
Because even though he had hurt me in the end, the good memories overpowered the bad.
There had been a time when I wanted him more than anything.
In truth?
I still did.
Damn it all, I was the stupid girl from the fable, and I was destined to be devoured by the dragon standing before me. So what was the point in fighting it anymore?
“Tell me then,” I stated, the anger in my voice slowly beginning to fade. “Tell me what it was that the emperor told you that made you decide not to return to me.”
“He told me who you really are. He told me of the threats that would come your way should the empress ever discover the truth. I never gave up on you. I just needed time to figure out how I was going to protect you, and I knew that bringing you to this castle was the last place you should be. But somehow, the empress discovered what you are to me, and she brought you here, which forced my hand.”
“You are telling me a lot of things but giving me very little context.” I shook my head, trying to make sense of a puzzle I had only been given a few pieces to.
“I’ll tell you everything,” he promised me. “But first, there is someone waiting to speak with you.”
“Where are we?” I asked a short while later as we stepped into a tower, completely open all they way up to the ceiling.
Twisting vines, tall trees, and lush green plants grew around us, painting the towering structure in the colors of life.
Birds cooed softly from their resting places.
A monarch butterfly floated past me, before it settled on a blooming daisy.
“The Creator’s Tower,” Nockrythiam replied, his hand in mine as he walked us forward. He guided the wispy branches of a willow tree to the side, and we stepped through them. Under the canopy of the breathtaking tree, sitting in front of a desk carved from wood, was Emperor Alaric.
Swiftly, I bowed my head.
His laughter was soft and pleasant and heartwarming as it reached my ears. The chair lurched behind him as he stood and walked over to us. Gently, he clasped my shoulders. “You do not need to bow to me.”
Looking up, I asked him, “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“No.” He paused, his eyes meeting mine. “You are my daughter, which means you bow to no one.”
Daughter? No. That couldn’t be.
Herulf was my father.
“Sorry. You must be mistaken,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief, but my words were clipped short as his eyes flashed white, and suddenly, I was seeing through them—from the day my soul rose from his anvil, to the day he saw my mother dancing in the moonlight, to the day I drew my very first breath, my mother taking me in her arms, crying tears of joy and everything that followed.
Then came a memory of when he had appeared to me as a deer with a white marking on its neck, racing through the forest, drawing me toward—
I gasped, realization dawning. “You were the reason we were trapped in that hole, weren’t you? You were the deer! Leading me toward it.”
“I was,” he answered, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“Why?”
“I wanted you two to have that time together, away from prying eyes,” he answered, his voice kind. “Away from everything and everyone. Away from her.”
“You know, most parents arrange courting sessions for their children. They don’t trap them in a hole in the ground for months on end with a dragon.” I didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm in my tone.
The emperor chuckled, the sound like rolling thunder. “Sure, sure, that’s what mortal parents do, but you see, I am not a mortal, and you, my darling daughter, are half of me.”
“It just occurred to me what you meant when you said you were sending me to find a princess,” Nockrythiam stated, his endlessly black eyes sliding to mine.
“Alas, you found her.” The emperor smiled, and it was more sublime than a dawning sun.
Gently, he took my hand and Nockrythiam’s, joining them together.
We both peered down, then up at one another.
Emperor Alaric’s voice was deep and resonant as he said, “She is your bonded, as you are his. Two halves of a circle, but together, you are complete. Without one, there cannot be another. Yin and yang. Black and white. Creator and Ender. Life and Death.”
When I awoke that morning, I had much to think about. My dreams had gone on and on and on, revealing almost everything from that day forth with blurring speed.
It was like I had opened a book to my past life, the pages empty at first, but as I flipped through them, all the words started to appear until the chapters of my story were nearly all there, right before me.
Or at least, most of them were. The chapters at the very end were still missing, those pages blank. A mystery.
That day, when the emperor revealed he was my father, he also told me he knew the empress was plotting something.
I told him why she had brought me here and said that perhaps I could try to get closer to her and gain her trust then share the information with him and Nockrythiam.
At first, neither of them wanted me to do it, worried about my safety, but with a great deal of persistence, I convinced them both.
I also made my father promise me he would protect my clan and my family, which he agreed to do.
So, over the next so many months, that’s exactly what I did.
I fed everything she told me to them.
Knowing how things turned out, I realized my efforts had been in vain—the empress had won the War of the Creators anyway. Which made me wonder about the information she had given me—had it been . . . wrong?
A sickening feeling washed over me as I heard a voice from the past—my voice—answer the question—
Yes.