Chapter 22 Callum
CALLUM
We left Riviana Star and found the dragons waiting for us at the edge of the forest.
Two days and two nights had passed, and I felt my mind deteriorating.
I hadn’t slept in four hundred years, so I forgot that I needed it.
But now my body demanded it, even though Lily’s soul was in peril.
My mind filled with so much haziness, simple thoughts seemed to elude me.
It was akin to looking through the smoke of a fire and trying to see the other side.
But I didn’t dare voice my needs, not when we raced time.
Talon seemed to have a conversation with the dragons because they stood together, exchanging long looks before they turned away.
It was strange to watch them interact, to witness a conversation but not hear it.
To know they were discussing me but I couldn’t eavesdrop like I could on Lily’s conversations.
Talon eventually turned back to me. “Khazmuda insists that we rest. Neither of us has slept in days.”
I wanted to dismiss the suggestion, but I was so exhausted, my face felt like it might fall off. I used to dread the endless days that blurred together in the underworld, but now I missed when I was able to go on forever. “We’re useless to Lily if we’re weak.”
“Then we’ll rest for a few hours and then return to the dead island.”
“We shouldn’t return until we have a plan. Otherwise, Leviathan will grow suspicious.”
Talon removed his tent and bedroll from his pack before he kneeled down and got to work.
It was still dark, sometime after midnight, hours before sunrise. It’d been hundreds of years since I’d built a tent, but when I pulled out the pack Talon supplied for me, I quickly pieced it together like the memory had never left me.
The dragons built a fire in the center of camp and kept watch so we could rest.
I moved to my bedroll in the tent and lay there, my mind about to shut off from exhaustion, but the guilt kept me awake. In the underworld, she couldn’t sleep. There was no respite from the constant chaos. And here I was, my eyes almost too heavy to keep open.
The fatigue took over, and I slipped under the haze…and drifted away.
“Dad.”
I turned to the line of trees where the forest began and saw Tiberius standing there, my youngest boy, a small bow slung over his shoulder, one I’d made for his birthday. With midnight-black hair and skin as fair as sand, he looked at me impatiently.
“Dad, come on. The deer will get away.” He turned and beelined into the forest.
I took off after him, sprinting at full speed like there was a chance my six-year-old boy would get away. But when I entered the forest, he wasn’t there. I sprinted down the path and saw him as a dot in the shadow of the trees, but no matter how hard I pushed myself, I couldn’t catch up to my son.
I eventually came to a stop, physically exhausted and unable to breathe.
“Dad.”
I didn’t recognize the voice. It was much older than Tiberius’s was, and it belonged to a man.
I slowly turned around to see Darius standing there, a handsome young man, maybe seventeen or eighteen. He had my dark hair and eyes, looking more like me as a man than he did as a boy.
“Dad, the deer have been gone a long time. They left this forest many years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed it.”
“Dad.”
I heard another voice behind me, different from the other two I’d heard, but this time, I knew what to expect. I slowly turned around and looked at Tiberius again, but he was older than his brother now, holding a little girl who seemed to be three or four in one of his arms, her hair auburn.
I recognized her from my visits, my first granddaughter. “She’s beautiful.”
“I’ll teach her to hunt for deer,” Tiberius said. “Whenever they come back.”
“If they come back,” Darius said from behind me.
The setting suddenly changed, and I was outside my old home, the little house I’d built in a rush when we found out Anya was pregnant. The gate that hung on the fence was crooked and about to fall off because I’d always been too busy to fix it. Smoke came out of the chimney like someone was home.
The front door suddenly opened, and Anya emerged, a one-year-old girl on her hip, a daughter who looked like us both, even though she wasn’t mine.
Anya’s eyes were unkind as she looked at me, like I was a stranger who had trespassed on her property.
“You shouldn’t be here. You’re a liar. You’re a traitor. ”
I finally had my chance to defend my character, but instead, I just let my eyes fill with tears that didn’t fall.
She gave one final look of loathing before she turned back toward the house and stepped inside. She kicked the door shut hard with her foot. Smoke continued to rise from the chimney in the living room.
“It’s okay, Callum.”
I paused when I heard her voice, a voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“Let them rest.”
I didn’t turn to look at her right away, afraid to meet her gaze.
“Callum.”
Her hypnotic voice was impossible to ignore forever, not when it was both strong and serene, not when it made my heart dance in the gentlest way. I turned away from my home and locked eyes with her.
She stood in a black dress with one strap over her shoulder, a high slit up the opposite leg, her hair down and gently moving in the breeze that came through the valley. A vision, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and she looked at me with only love.
Then she moved her hand to her stomach, and that was the moment I realized how her body had changed.
That she glowed in the most beautiful light.
“Never forget the past, but don’t live in it, Callum Riverside.”
I stepped toward her, the beautiful flower that I’d nurtured in my garden, the only one I watered and cared for. All the others had died and turned to weeds because nothing mattered except for this single pink rose.
I drew close then placed my hand on her round belly, feeling the life we’d created together.
Her hand moved over mine, her touch as warm as her gaze.
My hand went to her cheek, tucking the loose hair away, and I looked into the green eyes of the woman I loved with all my heart.
She knew I didn’t abandon her. She believed in me—always.
I never told her how I’d become a servant of the underworld, but she believed in my goodness anyway.
Her faith in me was so ironclad that she even took my place in the underworld just for the chance we might be together.
And with that thought, the scene changed.
Instead of touching her soft cheek, I felt the hard exoskeleton of an eight-foot demon who opened his mouth and showed all of his teeth before he laughed at me. Laughed like a scream, the flames visible inside his throat.
I jerked awake in my tent, but I still saw Levithan there with me, looming over me and taunting me.
Drenched in a cold sweat and panting breathlessly, I kicked out of the bedroll then crawled to the entrance, making it out of the small tent and stumbling to the ground, desperate to get away from the confined space that made me suffocate.
The fire was nearly out, and the sky had shifted from black to a dark blue, dawn in the near distance.
I finally came to a stop in the grass, continuing to gasp for the air that wouldn’t reach my lungs, one knee against the ground while the other was propped up.
My arm rested there, and I stared at the ground as I tried to dispel the vision that still haunted me.
I heard the sound of Talon’s tent a moment later as he climbed out. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him approach my side, probably alerted to my behavior by the dragons. He slowly approached but didn’t invade my space.
“I haven’t dreamed in four hundred years.
” My eyes were on the dying fire, remembering Lily’s beautiful face…
before she turned into a monster. I could feel the tears in my lids before they pooled and flowed down my cheeks.
I’d seen my sons for the first time in many long years.
Saw my wife despise me despite all the time that had passed.
She still felt no forgiveness toward me.
Talon didn’t come any closer to me. “Was it a nightmare?”
“A dream and a nightmare. I saw my wife and kids…and I saw Lily.”
He turned quiet.
“I’m alright. You can go back to your tent.
” I got to my feet and approached the fire as I wiped my tears away, keeping my back turned to him.
I wasn’t sure why I did it, but I grabbed several more logs and added them to the fire, just for something to do.
The fire rekindled, and the flames started to grow.
Talon hesitated behind me for a long time before he joined me at the fire, taking a seat on one of the logs, shirtless with the platinum shiny on his shoulder.
I sat there and felt my body slowly return to calm, let the adrenaline pump out of my system.
“I still dream about Lena, even though I never saw her.”
My eyes flicked to his.
“I want to tell you that it gets better, but it never really does.” He stared at the fire, his elbows resting on his knees.
“It’s different with Vivian because she gave me her blessing to be with Calista, so she feels more like a friend now.
Our time together was very brief, and I’ve been with Calista for almost thirty years now. ”
“She gave you her blessing?”
He nodded. “Riviana gave me the chance to speak with her.”
My eyes shifted back to the flames, a heaviness growing in my heart.
“I’m really fortunate that I got another chance to be a father with Lily.
I’ve always been hard on her, always suffocated her with my constant presence, always expected the world out of her…
paranoid that I’ll lose her.” He stared down at his hands as he rubbed them together. “And that ended up happening anyway.”
“We’ll get her back, Talon.”
He gave a slight nod. “Lily doesn’t know I was married before. Doesn’t know I had a daughter. I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself.”