Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Joy
Footsteps crunched slowly through the underbrush, approaching my hiding spot with deliberate care.
My heart threatened to jump out of my chest, hammering so violently I was certain whoever was out there could hear it.
Terror flooded my veins like ice water as I whirled around, pressing my aching back against the rough oak bark.
Was it Ari? Had he tracked me through the portal, crossing into this world to finish what the queen had started? Or worse—had the queen herself come through, sword in hand and murder blazing in those cold silver eyes?
My shadows stirred restlessly around my trembling fingers, ready to defend me even though I was exhausted and hurt. I wouldn't go down without a fight. Not after everything I'd survived to get here.
A dark-haired man stepped into the moonlight filtering through the Spanish moss, and I tensed to strike. Crap, I recognized him! He was the man in the mirror. The man the queen told me was my father.
Hope flickered in my chest—fragile and desperate—but anger rose with it, hot and sharp. Where had he been? Why now? A lifetime of abandonment, and he shows up in the middle of a war.
He immediately held up his hands in a gesture of peace, palms open and empty of weapons. "Don't be afraid. I'm Morden Grimshaw. I'm an Unseelie—one of Keir's men."
My blood ran cold at the name Keir. Every wall slammed back up.
My shadows stirred instinctively, responding to my suspicion.
Brynn's words echoed in my mind—Keir had helped Cormac kill her parents—I couldn’t shake the feeling that Keir was working with Ari, feeding him information, playing both sides. And this man claimed to be one of his.
If he was in league with Keir, I shouldn’t trust him. My shadows tightened around my fingers, ready to strike. "Stay back. If you're with Keir, then you're working with Ari."
Confusion flickered across his face, and something else—pain, maybe regret. "No. You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly." I took a step back, wincing as my injuries protested, stabbing pain lancing through my back. "Keir was Cormac's High Chancellor and he forced a child to watch her parents be murdered. He's the one that used his magic to control the vines. He's a traitor."
Morden looked stricken, his face paling in the moonlight as if I'd physically struck him. His hands dropped slightly, and I saw genuine pain flicker across his features. "Joy, please listen. Whatever you think you know about Keir, you're wrong. He's not the enemy."
"That's not what I was told in the Elder Dimension." I glared at him, my shadows circling around my fingers in warning. "I know the truth about him. You've all been playing us, lying to Angelo Santi, to Enzo. Everyone."
He stopped moving completely and stared at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable, as if he was seeing past my words to something deeper. His jaw worked silently for a moment before he spoke. "You’ve been talking to Brynn Whitveil, haven't you?"
How did he know? "It doesn't matter who told me."
"Actually it does,” he said. “Keir Rankin tried to counsel Cormac not to murder her parents, but he wouldn't listen. That's why Keir deserted him after the war. Cormac was a monster."
His certainty made me hesitate, doubt creeping in where there had been only conviction moments before.
I looked around for Enzo, but he was in the middle of the battle somewhere. I should have drawn on my shadows like he asked. “How do you know this?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his calloused fingers rasping against stubble. The gesture was so familiar it made something in my chest ache, though I couldn't say why. "Tell me, in the Elder Dimension, did they talk about the Unseelie who could control shadows?"
Suspicion churned in my gut like a snake. Why would he ask that unless... My pulse quickened with a mixture of hope and wariness.
Come to me, shadows.
I held my palms down toward the ground, drawing on the nearby shadows that pooled beneath the ancient oaks. They responded immediately, eager and familiar, wrapping around my legs like loyal pets. "They said there were very few."
“Yes, that’s true.” He held out his palm.
I eyed it warily.
Shadows swirled around him exactly like they did with me—the same fluid grace, the same dark elegance, the same fundamental connection I'd thought was mine alone. Then they jetted over to me in thick streams, moving with purpose and power.
I stepped back instinctively, my heart hammering with alarm. I held my own shadows up like a shield to push him away, creating a barrier between us. But his shadows didn't attack—instead, something warm and almost gentle slipped under the cursed silver bracelets still locked around my wrists.
Red sparks flew up around my wrists like angry fireflies, crackling and hissing.
The bracelets suddenly pinched tighter, the metal constricting, trying to crush my bones.
I cried out as white-hot pain built up around my wrists, the enchanted silver fighting against the shadow magic with vicious intensity.
"Break them now." Morden's voice exploded through the grove like a bomb going off, commanding and absolute.
The combined force of our shadows intensified, pulling at the bracelets with relentless strength.
My knees buckled under the assault of pain and power, and I sank to the muddy ground.
Tears streamed down my face as I felt the cursed metal straining, groaning, being forced wider against its dark enchantments.
The shadows pulled harder, widening the bracelets millimeter by agonizing millimeter.
I gritted my teeth against the searing pain and worked my middle finger free, then my index finger, feeling the blessed relief as each digit escaped its prison.
Finally, with a last desperate tug, my thumbs slipped through.
The bracelets clattered to the ground, and suddenly I could breathe again. Magic flooded back through me like a dam breaking, wild and overwhelming after being bound for so long.
I looked up at Morden through tear-blurred vision and saw him watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read—pride mixed with profound sadness.
"How did you do this?" I stared down at the broken bracelets lying in the mud, still smoking slightly from the magical assault.
I rubbed my freed wrists, feeling the raw, abraded skin beneath.
"I've tried and tried and couldn't break through the bracelets.
Brynn's blood loosened them, but I could never fully break the enchantment. "
He studied me with those dark eyes that were becoming increasingly familiar.
"I've perfected my skills over centuries.
I've been wielding shadow magic for a long, long time.
This power is passed down from generation to generation, through bloodlines.
Not every single offspring possesses this gift.
" He paused, and the way he emphasized 'every single' made my stomach flip.
"It skips around, appears unexpectedly, chooses who it will. "
The hair on the back of my neck stood up as understanding began to creep in like cold fingers walking up my spine. Goosebumps rippled down my arms in waves, and suddenly the humidity turned impossibly cold against my skin.
"My son..." His broad shoulders hunched as if holding an unbearable weight.
I could see them shaking slightly. He stood there for a long moment, staring into the darkness beyond the trees as if trying not to completely fall apart.
When he cleared his throat, the sound was rough and painful.
"My son had the gift of communicating with animals.
He was able to train the harpies—creatures that no one else could reach. They loved him."
Had. Past tense. The word was broken as if he had lost something precious.
The other man in the mirror? My brother? Was that who he was talking about?
He turned back and knelt down in the mud beside me, lowering himself until we were eye to eye. This was too intense—too close, too much—and I edged away, not sure how I felt about any of this.
But his grief was etched into every line of his face, the silver threading through his dark hair that matched mine exactly. Tears glistened in his eyes, unshed but threatening to spill over. His pain touched me, in ways I didn’t think possible. Despite the anger and questions—we were connected.
"But my daughter possesses this gift." His hand reached out, trembling, hovering near my cheek but not quite touching, as if he was afraid I'd disappear if he made contact. "She's powerful—so incredibly powerful—but she doesn't know just how powerful she is yet."
The world seemed to tilt sideways as everything the queen had told me, everything I hadn't wanted to believe, crystallized into undeniable truth.
“The queen showed me images in the mirror…” I couldn't finish the sentence. My throat closed up completely, and tears began streaming down my face. "You and another man…she said you were my father and the other man was my brother.”
“It’s true. Before you ask, I didn't abandon you.
" His words came out in a rush, as if he'd been holding them back for twenty-five years and couldn't contain them anymore.
He gripped my shoulders gently, his calloused hands warm through the thin gauze of my dress.
“Your mother wanted you to be raised in the human world, where you'd be safe. She loved two men—Louis DuPont and me."
Pain flickered across his face, broken and unhealed even after all these years.
"Ours was an intense love, a forbidden love that defied every rule and boundary between our worlds.
But she chose to stay in yours, and she never wanted you to know about this one.
She was trying to protect you from the darkness, from the danger, from people like the queen who would use you for your power. "
Every hair on my body stood on edge, my skin prickling with electricity that had nothing to do with magic.
The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe, and I gasped for oxygen that wouldn't come.
This was real. This was happening. The man kneeling before me really was my father—the Unseelie who'd given me this power, who'd left before I was born, who I'd wondered about for weeks ever since learning Louis DuPont wasn’t my real father.
"But your brother and I kept tabs on you.
" Tears finally spilled over, running down his weathered cheeks unchecked.
"Made sure you were safe from a distance.
Tried to keep the evil away from you, even when you didn't know we existed.
" His grip on my shoulders tightened almost painfully.
I winced as the movement pulled at the wounds on my back.
“We lost you the same day Enzo did. The night of that terrible explosion at Crimson Stakes.”
A sob broke from his chest, and his head bowed as if the weight of his grief was too much to hold upright.
"Joy, I'm so sorry. We tried to find you, searched everywhere, but you just..
.vanished. And Nyx—" He tripped over Nyx’s name.
"My son, your brother, he never stopped looking for you. Tonight he died, protecting Enzo.”
“Enzo?”
A brother. I'd had a brother who'd watched over me, who'd died without ever meeting me, who'd spent his life trying to keep me safe and made the ultimate sacrifice to save the man I love.
“How?” My own tears were falling now, hot and fast, blurring my vision until Morden's face swam before me.
“Gunnar was possessed and would have killed Enzo, but Nyx attacked him…” He wiped tears away from his face. “He knew how much you loved him…”
My throat closed up. How many more people would I lose? All because of our enemies.
“I’m sorry." Morden pulled me into his arms, and I didn't resist. I gasped as pain flared across my shredded back, but I collapsed against his chest and sobbed—for the father I'd never known, for the brother I'd never met, for the family that had been stolen from me before I even knew it existed. "I'm so sorry, Joy. I failed you both."
His arms tightened around me as his own body shook with grief, and we knelt there in the mud beneath the ancient oaks, two strangers bound by blood and loss, mourning a brother and son neither of us could save.
"How touching. A father and daughter reunited." The queen stepped into the grove of oak trees, her boots silent on the moss-covered ground. Fury burned through my chest. She’d stolen everything from me—and now she wanted to taint this too?
A contingent of soldiers flanked her on either side, their weapons drawn and gleaming with an unnatural silver light. She bent gracefully and picked up the discarded bracelets from the mud, turning them over in her hands. "Now I'll have two slaves instead of one."
"Run, Joy!" Morden's shadows exploded outward, reaching for the queen.
But the soldiers moved with practiced precision.
Two of them lunged forward, pressing enchanted blades against our throats before Morden's shadows could strike.
The moment the cold metal touched my skin, ice flooded through my veins.
My shadows recoiled violently, retreating as if burned by the sword.
I gasped, trying to summon them back, but it was like grasping at smoke. The power now cowered beyond my reach, suppressed by whatever dark enchantment ran through the blade.
Morden's face contorted with strain as his own shadows faltered and died. "Enchanted steel," he spat. "Forged specifically to bind shadow magic."
The queen's smile widened with cruel satisfaction.
"Did you think I wouldn't prepare for your particular gifts?
I've been hunting shadow-wielders for decades.
" She gestured, and more soldiers stepped forward, forcing us to our knees in the mud.
"Now, be good children and stay still while I wait for my allies to bring me the Anchoring Obsidian stone.”