Chapter 27 RUMI
RUMI
My father stands by the window when I enter, his back to me.
The chamber is small but comfortable, carved from the mountain itself, with essence-lights casting warm shadows across stone walls.
The familiar wing structure is folded against his back, the same golden aura I carry but threaded with something darker.
Not vampire red like I expected from Ambrose's research, but those same black threads that have been growing in my own power.
A century. It's been nearly a hundred years since I've seen him, and I was an infant then. I don't remember him at all. Don't remember being held by him, fed by him, loved by him. All I have are questions and hurt and a desperate hope that the answers won't make things worse.
But something in me recognizes him immediately. Family. Blood. The demigod who gave up everything to keep me alive.
"Rumi." He turns slowly, and I see his face for the first time.
Golden eyes exactly like mine, bright with unshed tears.
Strong features that I inherited, the same jaw and cheekbones I see in the mirror every day.
And tears streaming down his cheeks, tracking silver lines through skin that looks weathered by grief rather than age.
"My son. You're so... you're everything your mother hoped you'd be. "
A hundred years of walls come crashing down.
All the anger I've been carrying, all the hurt from thinking I'd been abandoned, all the loneliness of growing up without family, wondering what was wrong with me that my own father didn't want me.
It doesn't dissolve, not completely, but it cracks. Shifts. Makes room for something else.
"You stayed away," I manage, my voice breaking on the words. "For a hundred years, you stayed away. Why? Why didn't you come for me? Why didn't you at least let me know you were alive?"
"Because Dmitri would have killed you if I didn't." Dante's voice cracks, heavy with two decades of suppressed grief.
"When your mother died, when the Council murdered her for daring to bear a demigod child, Dmitri gave me a choice.
Disappear completely, never interfere with your life in any way, or watch him eliminate you the way he eliminated her. "
He moves closer, slowly, carefully, like he's approaching a wounded animal that might bolt at any sudden movement.
"I chose your survival. I gave you to the academy with forged papers claiming you were just a strong air elemental with some unusual manifestations.
I stayed away even when I wanted to hold you, teach you, be your father.
Because if Dmitri suspected I was interfering, if he thought for one moment that I was trying to influence your development, you'd die. Just like your mother died."
The truth resonates through my divine balance. Not just surface truth, but the deep resonance of someone speaking their absolute reality. The sacrifice he made. The pain it cost him. The century of watching from a distance, seeing me struggle and suffer and grow, never able to reach out.
"I'm so angry at you," I whisper, because I need him to know. Need him to understand that his choice, however necessary, left scars. "For leaving. For not fighting. For letting me grow up thinking I was abandoned, thinking there was something wrong with me that made my own father not want me."
"I know." Dante stops a few feet away, giving me space, respecting my boundaries even as his eyes plead for forgiveness.
"You have every right to be angry. I was a coward in many ways.
I should have found another way, should have fought harder, should have built alliances and challenged Dmitri directly instead of hiding in the shadows while you suffered. "
"But you also saved my life." The words hurt to say, scraping against the anger I've been nurturing for so long.
But they're true, and I can’t deny the truth.
"If you'd fought Dmitri then, when he had the full Council behind him, you would have lost. And I would have died.
You chose the only option that kept me alive. "
We stand there in silence for a long moment. The essence-lights flicker, casting dancing shadows across the walls. Harlow and Ambrose wait in the corridor. I can sense them through the stone, their concern a steady pulse.
Then Dante speaks again, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Your mother. She knew what would happen.
Knew that having you would make us targets, would put everything we'd built at risk.
The Council had been eliminating demigods for three hundred years by then, ever since Dmitri convinced them that divine bloodlines were too dangerous to allow. But she chose to have you anyway."
"Why?" I need to know. Need to understand the woman who sacrificed herself so I could exist.
"Because she believed the world needed divine balance.
" Dante's expression softens with memory and grief so intertwined I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
"Needed someone who could harmonize the chaos Dmitri had created with his seven-element system.
She believed Mother Nature herself had blessed our union, had chosen us specifically to bring a new demigod into the world. "
He sits down on the edge of the bed, gesturing for me to join him. I hesitate for a moment, then move to sit beside him. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel his power resonating with mine.
"Tell me about her," I say. "Everything. I need to know who she was."
Dante's golden eyes grow distant, looking at memories I can't see.
"She was magnificent. A minor goddess of harmony, sent to the mortal realm to learn and grow and eventually return to the divine plane with new wisdom.
She wasn't supposed to fall in love with anyone here, certainly not with another demigod hiding from Dmitri's purges.
We were impossible. Divine harmony and divine balance, two aspects of the same fundamental force.
But somehow we found each other, and somehow it worked. "
He pauses, a smile ghosting across his features despite the tears still tracking down his cheeks. "She could harmonize any essence naturally, make opposing forces work together instead of destroying each other. Sound familiar?"
My divine balance nature. I inherited it from her. All these years, I thought my power was random, a mutation, something broken that made me different from everyone else. But it was a gift. Her gift to me.
"When she found out she was pregnant, terror and joy fought for dominance.
" Dante continues, his voice growing stronger as he loses himself in the story.
"Demigods weren't supposed to exist anymore.
Dmitri had made sure of that three hundred years ago, hunting down every divine bloodline, eliminating anyone who might challenge the system he was building.
But she believed you were meant to be. That Mother Nature had chosen us specifically to bring balance back to the world. "
Tears are streaming down my face now, and I don't bother wiping them away. The black threads pulse with the intensity of my emotions, but they don't feel threatening anymore. They feel like part of me. Part of my heritage.
"How did she die?"
Dante's expression darkens, grief giving way to old rage that burns beneath his calm exterior.
"The Council came. Dmitri led them personally, said a demigod child was too dangerous to allow, that you had to be eliminated before you could manifest your power.
Your mother tried to fight, tried to use her harmony to turn them against each other.
But she was one goddess against Dmitri and his entire inner circle. "
His voice breaks, cracking on words he's probably never spoken aloud.
"She died buying me time to get you out.
Held them off for almost ten minutes while I ran with you in my arms, hiding us both with every divine trick I knew.
Her last words were to tell you, if I ever got the chance, that you were loved.
That you were wanted. That you were never a mistake, no matter what anyone told you. "
I'm sobbing now, full body shaking with grief for a mother I never knew, for a woman who died so I could live, who used her last breath to send me a message of love.
Dante moves closer, his arm wrapping around my shoulders, and I let him.
Let myself be held by my father for the first time in a hundred years while we cry together.
Father and son, mourning the woman who connected us.
Eventually, the tears slow. My power settles back toward balance, the black threads calming as my emotions stabilize.
We sit there in silence, and I realize something has shifted between us.
The anger isn't gone. A century of hurt can't be erased in one conversation.
But it's softer now. Manageable. Mixed with understanding and the beginning of forgiveness.
"The black threads," I say finally, gesturing at my own aura where the dark strands are visible even without divine sight. "You have them too. What are they?"
Dante looks at his own essence, at the matching threads woven through his golden light.
"It's part of our heritage. Divine balance isn't just about harmony.
It's about holding opposing forces together, including light and darkness, creation and destruction.
The threads are the darkness we carry so others don't have to.
They're not corruption, Rumi. They're purpose. "
Relief floods through me so intensely I nearly start crying again. I've been so afraid of those threads, worried they meant I was becoming something dangerous, something that would hurt my mates. But they're just part of what I am. Part of what my father gave me.