Chapter 21 Callum #2
When he took another step closer to me, he rounded his shoulders and stiffened his spine, like he was about to unsheathe his blade and fight me right there before the Great Tree. “I’m not putting my daughter’s survival in the hands of a demon.”
“I’m not a demon.”
“Every god of the underworld is one.”
“I’m the one exception. Bahamut chose me as his successor.”
“And he was vile, so that must mean you’re vile.”
“Or just quiet and obedient and lifeless and fucking hopeless,” I said with bitter tears in my throat. “I understand she’s your daughter. I understand how you feel. But you need to understand, she’s my everything—”
“You don’t understand. You aren’t a father, so you could never understand.”
“I am a father.” My voice clipped at the end because it hurt to say those words.
Still killed me to think of my boys because my love remained eternal.
I still felt that love in my chest, still thought of them as the little boys who used to play with sticks and pretend they were swords, forever innocent in the joys of childhood.
I’d watched them grow into men, but I didn’t know them during that time, so I always pictured them in the way I saw them when I was last alive.
“I’m a father of two boys, Tiberius and Darius, and they’ve been dead hundreds of years now.
But I still mourn them.” I closed my eyes briefly and looked away from Talon, using all my strength to keep my eyes dry because I didn’t have time to share a tale I hadn’t even been brave enough to tell Lily.
“I understand the way you love her. I love Lily as the love of my life, the woman I want as my wife, the mother of my future children, the person whom I would sacrifice anything for without hesitation. But in a strange, inexplicable way, I love her the way you do too. I love her as her protector, as her guardian, as the person who would break all my oaths to keep her safe. When she succeeds, I feel the warmth of pride I used to feel when my boys mastered something I’d tried to teach them.
When she outsmarts her opponents and cuts down her enemies, I feel that joy again.
I have my reasons for disliking you, but make no mistake, I respect you as a father—because you’re a damn good one. ”
He took a step back and then another, staring at me in the glow of the fireflies, his anger sheathed but his stare focused.
“I don’t know how to convince you that my heart is true.
Riviana has vouched for my intentions toward Lily.
Your daughter loved me enough to do something absolutely stupid and reckless, and that isn’t enough either.
I lost my position as God of the Underworld because I betrayed my superiors to change the course of the history of this world to ensure that Lily prevailed.
What more can I do, Talon Rothschild? What more can I do to prove my love for your daughter is true? ”
He said nothing for a long time, continuing to stare at me like he didn’t know what to make of me. “What deal did you make with Bahamut?”
The one question I didn’t want to answer.
I trusted Lily with my whole heart, but I never had the strength to tell her, to relive that horrible tale that still traumatized me every time I thought about it.
But I couldn’t reject the question, not if I wanted to secure some sort of alliance with Talon.
“I will tell you, but I don’t want her to know. ”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to talk about, and I want her to hear it from me. She doesn’t know about my boys.”
The hostility didn’t come back into Talon’s gaze. For the first time, he seemed to actually be listening. “Then I will keep your secret.”
It would take so much strength for me to say the words, but at least it would put us one step forward.
“I was married, happily married. Young men my age wanted adventure on the seas or in the service of the military of the king. They wanted jewels and women, to see places far away. But our dream was to raise a family in the little house I built with my bare hands. We were fortunate to be blessed with Darius right away…and then Tiberius just sixteen months afterward. We decided we wanted to try for another, hopefully a daughter, but we didn’t get that chance. ”
Talon hadn’t blinked since I’d started to speak, listening to me with the intensity I’d seen him show when Lily spoke to him.
“I was away gathering firewood, and Tiberius got hurt in the middle of a storm, so Anya had to take him to the physician. Days in the snow had poisoned her lungs, and she got sick…and sicker. The doctor told me she couldn’t be saved, that there was no cure for the disease that consumed her lungs.
If watching my wife die slowly wasn’t horrible enough, carrying the guilt of her demise might have been worse.
Because if I had been there for my family, Tiberius might not have gotten hurt, or I would have taken him into the village myself.
She was petite and delicate, while I’d never been sick a day in my life, so I know I would have survived. ”
Talon was still absorbed in my tale, his eyes even showing a hint of sympathy.
“I did my best to make her comfortable. Tried to prepare the boys for the loss of their mother. I went into the village to buy some of her favorite things while my brother stayed with her. I bought some pain medicine from a witch, and that was when she told me about Bahamut.” The evil god who took far too much and paid far too little.
“I rode to the forest, and he told me I could save her life—in exchange for my soul. But part of the deal was…” I took a breath and looked away, feeling my eyes well with tears because the next part of the story was just too much.
“I could never tell her what I’d done. I had to lie to her, tell her I was leaving her for another woman when my eyes had never strayed from her, not even once.
And I couldn’t tell my boys either. I had to let them think I abandoned them.
” The tears I tried to control started to burn the bottoms of my lids, nearly about to overflow.
“And when I told her this, that I’d met someone else and I would be abandoning her in her dying moments…
” I shook my head, not wanting to say the words. “She believed me.”
My eyes stayed on the grass as I felt my heart drown in my tears and then creep up my throat.
I could still picture her face after all this time, the hurt and the resignation.
“I’d been a committed husband and a loving father every day of our marriage, and without hesitation, she believed that I would do something so dishonorable like abandon my dying wife and my sons.
” The tears broke and dripped down my cheeks.
“She didn’t even fucking question it. After I’d built that house with my bare hands.
After I’d kissed her stomach every night during both of her pregnancies.
After I’d made love to her every night. After I’d raised our boys to be men since the moment they were born.
As if none of that had happened.” I studied the blades of grass, feeling Talon’s piercing gaze on my face, watching me cry.
I finally reached up and wiped them away from my cheeks.
“She remarried just a few months after I was gone…to my brother. They had a daughter together, a daughter I loved from afar like my own because she looked like both me and her mother. They lived a long life together, died within a year of each other, and never mentioned me once. My brother replaced me in every way. Even my sons called him Dad.” A right that should have only belonged to me, but I forfeited it.
“I asked Bahamut for mercy so many times. Begged him to release me. Begged him to allow me to at least tell my sons I didn’t abandon them by choice, asked over and over until they were old men reconciling their own deaths.
And his answer was always the same.” I finally found the strength to look at Talon again.
“And then Lily Rothschild set foot in my lands, and I felt power so strong, I assumed it was you.”
Despite the obvious emotion in his eyes from my story, I could see a tinge of pride.
“I swear on my honor in the presence of the Realm of Caelum that I loved her the moment I laid eyes on her.” I looked him in the eye as I declared my love for her, completely unashamed and indifferent to how he felt about it.
“Four hundred years of misery…and then she gave me a reason to live. The Barbarians overtook her ship and killed her crew, and I used every power at my disposal to get her out of there without even knowing her. I watched her cut down men thrice her size and outsmart opponents with more experience. I watched her look terror in the face without hesitation. I witnessed the most remarkable woman I’d ever seen—and I was lost.” I shook my head slightly at the memory.
“And I came to her, and I asked her to be mine for as long as she would have me. I thought I would never love again, let alone want a wife and more children, but I would consider myself the luckiest man in the world if I got to have that with Lily Rothschild. Another chance at happiness with the woman who…” I hesitated because it felt wrong to disrespect Anya, but she’d also disrespected me.
“With a woman I believe I was meant for all along.” I looked away from Talon across the clearing, watching the fireflies float in the dark and illuminate the brush and the canopies of the trees.
Listened to the quiet sounds of the forest, the life that continued on even after the sun had set.
Talon said nothing to my tale, probably because there was no good way to respond to it. And he was probably uncomfortable with the way I spoke about his daughter, the way I declared my love unapologetically. “I’m sorry about your wife.”
My eyes flicked back to his automatically.
“I was married before Calista, and I lost her too.”
I already knew this, already knew everything about Talon Rothschild, but I chose to accept his revelation like it was new. “I’m sorry.”
“And I had a daughter.” He hesitated, the thought of her still affecting him all this time later, and then cleared his throat. “It still haunts me to this day.”
“I understand.”
He looked away again, his thoughts becoming his own once more.
The divide between us didn’t shrink, but at least it stopped growing.
“My son came to me…and said he believed your love for Lily was real.”
I wouldn’t have expected Hawk to speak on my behalf, not when the only times I spoke to him were somewhat hostile. He’d just gotten his father back after a gruesome injury. Wouldn’t have expected him to risk pissing off his father at such a difficult time.
“So that’s Hawk, Riviana…and Lily.” His eyes turned back to me. “But there’s still a warning in my heart, an unease I can’t explain.” He studied me with his sharp gaze, like he could find the answer carved into the flesh of my cheek.
Guilt flooded my body like a dam had been broken.
Most of his assumptions about me were wrong, but his intuition still felt the error I had made.
“Your suspicions are warranted, Talon. If Lily were my daughter, I wouldn’t trust me either.
But there is one thing you can trust about me, and it’s this—that I will not stop until I get her back.
That I’m your ally in this endeavor. That I deserve to be down there because I made that choice with a clear mind, but Lily Rothschild doesn’t.
If I make it to the underworld but I can’t leave with her, then I’ll stay behind with her.
Because I’d rather live in the dark with her than live a mortal life without her. ”