Chapter Twenty-Four
Neith
C learly, this is not what the castle wants, and I am again surprised when the floorboards under my feet lift slightly and tip me forward.
I grin, “Alright, alright. I’m going jeez, impatient much.”
I get the feeling that if it could, it would have flipped me off then, and that makes my smile widen even more. When I get to the landing of the fourth floor that I had no idea existed, it’s evident that no one has been up here for a while because there’s a layer of dust on everything. The ceilings are still high, and the furnishings still look expensive. They’re all covered in a layer of dust. I follow the glow that the castle is providing me with, to the only painting that is up here, instantly all breath leaves me.
That’s Pete.
As in Pete from the bar in the tiny town that I lived in, the one that no supernaturals lived in and the Pete that I was one hundred percent certain wasn’t a supernatural. I never sensed even a whiff of power from him, and he never let on either.
The same Pete who sold me my little house.
Compared to the slightly scruffy, bearded man that sits propping up the bar on most of my shifts, this version of Pete is well groomed, standing tall, has a fucking crown on his head, and giant black wings protruding from his back. Wings that look strangely familiar. He has his arm around a beautiful woman, she’s tiny compared to him, and has her silver hair braided back out of her face, a crown perched on her head, more delicate than the one that Pete is wearing. Whereas Pete’s wings are black, and leathery, kind of like a bat. The queen’s wings are pure white and covered in feathers, each feather is tipped in silver to match her hair, and they almost shimmer with a pearlescent sheen. They are absolutely stunning.
The longer I stare at her, the more certain I am that I know her.
Suddenly, it clicks.
She’s the Queen of Trieneliea. I remember her from the vision I had in Ireland, although she didn’t have her wings out then. I recognize his wings from the vision though, because he is the fucking king that always had his back to us, and now I’m wondering if there was a reason for it.
Fuck, I thought I saw Pete in the ballroom.
What the fuck.
Pete is the King of Trieneliea? What the fuck is he doing in the Earth Realm?
“You look a lot like her,” someone says from behind me, making me jump. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
I smile as I turn to look at the woman standing next to me, she’s dressed similarly to Mabel but looks younger.
“Don’t worry about it, I didn’t realize that anyone was up here,” I reply.
She grins, “I’m not supposed to be. I'm Ribbit, don’t ask. It’s a nickname that’s stuck, and I don’t seem to be able to get rid of it.”
I chuckle, “I like it. It’s unique and better than a lot of nicknames out there, I’m Neith.”
I hold out my hand for her to take, and she looks surprised before amusement flashes through them; she reaches out and grasps my hand, and that look of amusement turns to shock as her fingers wrap around mine.
“Huh,” she says, looking at our hands in confusion.
“What?” I ask. “Oh shit, do you not shake hands here? Was that offensive? Fuck I’m really sorry if it was.” My eyes widen, “Wait, did I just propose to you or something like that?”
She lets go of my hand and bursts out laughing, “No, no, you didn’t do any of that, don’t worry.”
“Well thank fuck for that, I mean, I’ve kind of got my hands full of romantic interests at the moment, adding another is not something I think I can handle. Not that I think I can handle what I’ve currently got. Not that I’ve really technically got them.” I slap my hand over my mouth as her laughter echoes around the hallway, mumbling from behind my hand, I apologize, “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she turns back to face the painting.
I do the same, studying their features and just as fascinated with them as I was a moment ago.
After a moment, she speaks again, “She was the last of her kind.”
“Who were they?” I ask because I need someone else to confirm what I suspect. Just because it seems so completely crazy.
She looks at me, slightly confused, but replies, “The King and Queen of Trieneliea.”
Holy shit.
She said it, I’m not going crazy. Pete really is the King of Trieneliea and is somehow in the Earth Realm. I’m going to go into depth about what that means later, and hopefully with the guys, but for now, I want to know about the beautiful woman that he called his queen.
“What was she?” I ask.
“She was an angel,” the woman tells me with a soft smile.
Time stands still.
No way, no fucking way that can’t mean what I think it means, surely? The more I think about it though the more the pieces fall into place.
An angel was on the list of extinct supernatural creatures that Sully gave us. We discarded the idea pretty swiftly because it seemed too fantastical. Sully knows them. We know that from the vision. Wynonna was the one who did the silencing spell, and she was very good friends with the Queen. Calia and Eamon, Evander’s parents, know them, they were friends with them. Like all of the other people that have been looking out for me from the sidelines.
I also can’t deny that what the woman said was right. I do look like her. She has dark green eyes, exactly like one of mine, and when I glance at Pete or the King, I realize that his eye color is exactly the same as my blue eye. Why have I never noticed that before?
I literally have an eye from each of them.
Then there’s Pete himself, he has always looked out for me, helping me to buy my little house, giving me strange cryptic warnings here and there, but if I’m right, then why did he leave me with Calia and Eamon? Why didn’t he raise me? Why isn’t she here too? Also, they didn’t come over forty years ago, and I’m not forty years old, so how am I in the Earth Realm? Hell, how is he? Does that mean that I spent some of my life in Trieneliea? I know why I wouldn’t remember it. I don’t remember anything before I arrived at Calia and Eamon’s place. The first thing that I remember is waking up on a couch and Van leaning over me with a giant smile on his face.
I have a thousand questions.
The first one is whether they are even my parents.
“Yes,” the voices shock me so severely by answering my silent question that I squeak.
The sound makes the poor woman look at me like I’m one shoe short of a pair. I don’t think that’s the saying, but at this point, I’m beyond caring and questioning fucking everything.
The woman raises her eyebrow slightly and then says, “I’m sorry to interrupt. I’ll leave you to it. I have chores that I should probably be getting on with anyway.”
I want to apologize for my weird behavior, but my mouth won’t open and I just stay staring at the painting. She obviously decides that she’s not going to wait for the weirdo that she found in the hallway to reply because she quickly leaves.
I wonder if there will be a betting pool between the people who work here now on whether I will survive or not. To be honest, there probably already is, I am after all human.
It's not the thing to be focusing on right now.
The voices are murmuring again, and back to normal, but I know that they were the ones who said yes, it was as if a lot of voices were saying the word at the same time, not a single voice, and my voices weren’t there, they weren’t murmuring.
I know that it is incredibly unlikely, but I have to know if they will reply again, and this time, give me a definitive answer. Looking either way down the hallway to check that I’m alone so I don’t appear to be even more crazy than I have already looked, I decide that it isn’t quite enough.
I whisper very quietly to the castle, “Are we alone on this floor now?”
Honestly, I have no idea if the castle works the same way that the house does, but I figure that in this situation, it’s worth a shot. The floor under my feet flares to life with the same glow that led me here, and I roll my eyes at myself. How the hell did I think that the castle was going to answer that question? It’s not like it can use words to tell me, and I didn’t exactly qualify the question by saying that it should glow if there was, so that was on me.
“Alright, let’s try this again,” I say, making sure that I am still quiet. “Light up if there is someone on this floor.” The floor stays dull. “Okay, can you buzz if someone is coming? Light up if you can.” The floor lights up, and I smile, “Thank you. Okay, let’s do this.” I take a deep breath and focus on the voices as I stare up at the painting. “Are the people in the painting in front of me, the King and Queen of Trieneliea, my parents?”
“Yes, they are,” the voices reply immediately, and then go back to their murmuring as if they haven’t just shocked the shit out of me.
“Right,” I say out loud because, quite frankly, I am at a complete loss as to how to respond otherwise.
The voices just answered me twice!
I have always referred to them as the voices, but thanks to Sully, I know that they are actually the voices of the dead, thousands of dead. I don’t specifically know the ins and outs of it; I didn’t exactly get the chance to look into it properly, so I don’t know why I’m hearing thousands of dead and where they’re from? I mean, aren’t they enjoying their afterlife?
Huh. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before now, but really that’s something that I am just going to have to add to the list of shit that I have to research when we get home.
My eyebrows rise, well actually, I guess the voices are something that I have inherited from my mother, who is the Queen of Trieneliea and a fucking angel.
That’s insane.
Holy fuck, that means I’m an angel.
I actually laugh out loud at that thought. I am by no means an angel in the traditional human sense of the word, not even vaguely close. However, I remember what she was like in the vision, she was strong and incredibly loyal to her people, she was fighting on the front lines with them. That makes me smile, and a sense of pride fills me. There are worse people to be my parents.
Holy shit, my parents.
I don’t know what to do or how to feel. Frustratingly enough, I can’t go and immediately question Pete, I’m at the Choosing, which means I have to get through the next week before I can even think about going to find him and hoping that he is still in town and will talk to me. I frown, I don’t know why he wouldn’t talk to me, but now that is definitely something that I’m worrying about.
I’ve got to tell the guys.
I start to walk away and then hesitate. My life is so weird that I really wouldn’t be surprised if, by the time I have gone and got the guys, the painting has disappeared or something. I almost face-palm myself when I realize that I have a phone on me, you know, one that can take photographs. Pulling it out, I make sure that I take several photographs of the painting just in case, and I even check them to ensure that they are in my gallery and that they aren’t blacked out or something weird.
I know that the guys would believe me regardless of whether I had photographic evidence or not, they’re going to have to when it comes to the voices confirming my suspicion, but I need them to see it for my sake. They can’t even identify Pete since they’ve never met him. Although Griff, River, and Ransom were all in the same room as him, I doubt that they paid him any attention. He was always very good at disappearing into the background.
Once I’m sure that I’ve got the pictures, I say aloud, “Okay, Castle, I know we’ve just met, but I’m already pretty fond of you. Could you please light up if you will stay here and keep an eye on the painting for me so I can bring the guys up to see it?” The stones around the painting glow, and I smile, “Thank you.”
I need to be quick, I have no idea how long I have been up here, but I’m sure that I’m nearing the hour deadline that I self-imposed, and the guys are most likely already starting to worry about where I am. Not only that, but food was mentioned, and although I’m hungry, I’m not going to be able to eat until I have shown the guys this, but I don’t want to piss off the people that work here on day one by being late to dinner.
I can’t just tell them in the common area, just in case we are being listened to and because I’m sure that the other team is most likely here by now, too, and I absolutely do not want them to know that I am the daughter of the King and Queen of Trieneliea.
I stop halfway down the stairs. That thought is kind of terrifying and not one that I’m quite ready to deal with yet, so after I have told the guys, I’m going to have to put it on the back burner until after the Choosing. Not only can I not do anything about it until I am out of the Choosing anyway, but my focus needs to be on the Choosing, you know, so I don’t die.
It would not be good to die and then come back to life in front of hundreds of thousands of supernaturals, actually more than that since it's broadcast in all of the realms. I wonder if my mom could do the same thing?
I practically run through the castle to get to the foyer where we came in and then quickly push my way through the doors.
“Neith, there you are. We were just about to come looking for you,” Doc says as he spots me first.
“Sorry, sorry,” I reply as I take a fleeting glance around the room, just long enough to note that no one else is in there. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” River asks, bouncing up to my side with a smile.
“Just follow,” I reply, as I spin on my heel and head back out of the door that I just came through.
“Are you okay?” Van asks as they all do as I’ve asked and follow me.
I nod, “Well physically I am, mentally and emotionally that’s another thing entirely.”
“That wasn’t a confusing answer at all,” Raiden teases and I stick my tongue out at him.
“Is the other team here?” I ask as we head up the stairs to the third floor.
Reed nods, “Yeah, they arrived just after we all got down to the common room. Coen was the only one who didn’t look terrified, he just looked pissed.”
I smirk, “Yeah, that makes sense to be honest. He’s almost as bad as I am at being told what to do.”
“We know,” River chuckles.
“You know it’s still weird to me that we knew the real him at the same time,” Ransom says, shaking his head slightly.
I nod, “I know what you mean. The plan is to help him while we’re here, but we need to try to figure out how we’re going to do that.”
“I think our first step is just to observe, and while I absolutely fucking hate it because of the potential danger it puts you in, you are the best person to do that and get close enough to figure out how they are controlling Coen,” Griff replies.
I nod, “I have to be close to them anyway. I may as well use it to my advantage.”
“Agreed,” Doc says, although he doesn’t look too happy either.
“Neith,” Raiden starts as I lead them to the double doors that lead up to the fourth floor, “where are you taking us?”
“I need to show you something,” I reply, my thoughts moving back to the task at hand and nerves fluttering to life in my belly.
The guys fall silent as they hear the nerves or urgency in my tone and jog up the stairs behind me. As I get to the hallway, the breath that I have been holding releases when I see that the painting is still there.
“Wow, it’s dusty up here,” River says as he does the most adorable sneeze that I have ever fucking heard.
“What do you want us to see?” Van asks.
I point at the painting, “Tell me what you see.”
They all walk further down the hallway and then stop and turn to look at it. My heart is in my throat, I don’t know why I’m so nervous, but I really am.
“She looks like you,” Griff says quietly, surprise in his voice.
“I recognize him,” Doc says suddenly as he gets closer to the painting and squints at Pete.
I smile, “They’re the King and Queen of Trieneliea.”