Chapter 9 #2
“Hundreds of years went by, and nothing happened other than a trail of dead children. So many generations had passed that the insurgents eventually fissured and formed two new groups. The first were zealots from Eversong who’d never wavered from their belief.
They rebranded themselves as the Disciples of the Reunification.
The second group, which became the Champions of Truth and Light, or Truthers, mostly made up of Skyfire rebels, believed the first group was keeping secrets from the rest of them.
They believed the child had already been born, and the program was trying to gain an advantage by consolidating power.
After a spy network failed, they decided the only way to infiltrate this ‘cabal of liars’ was war, which went on for years and decimated the population.
But the Disciples won, and the program continued.
“But the Disciples had been lying their asses off, the entire time, working with yet another covert group from Duskmaw and Ashwind, who had secretly joined the Disciples years before. The silver tongues had seen a future where reunification would lead to total annihilation of all the curias, which is essentially what the original guy who created this mess had said. No one had ever listened to their caution in the past, so they did what they could on their own to stop it. They managed the breeding program just well enough to maintain credibility, modifying the line slightly to keep it from succeeding. Skyfire never gave up trying to prove it, but they didn’t have the strength of force that the Disciples did.
“About a hundred years ago, Skyfire took a risk and appealed to some Rivenholde nobles to join the Truthers and find out what was really going on.
They agreed the Disciples would only reveal the truth if forced, so they kidnapped important children from Eversong, Duskmaw, and Ashwind—children of their leaders, of prominent families.
This would be like... like imagine the children of every steward, every lord, and the king himself taken.
This was a pretty incendiary move, a declaration of war on another level.
“It was a punishment to their parents, a lure. Open your doors, prove we’re wrong, and we’ll release your children.
If they complied, everyone would know the truth.
If they refused, it would be another kind of truth, wouldn’t it?
So everyone waited to see how the test would end.
Would the Disciples put power above their own children?
In the end, that was exactly what they did.
They abandoned their children and refused to comply.
“From then on, the curias were split down hard lines. Eversong, Duskmaw, and Ashwind in the Disciples, Skyfire and Rivenholde in the Truthers. Rosedown and Grymwood stayed neutral, which I guess is what they’ve always done.”
Jesstin’s hands were a whorl of nervous energy as they supported his retelling. The entire time he’d been talking, he kept his focus trained just beyond her, like he was speaking to someone else.
“But Skyfire has the blood magic, right? And without the meddling from the Disciples, the Truthers were in full control of the process. They started a new breeding program with the offspring of the nobles, who were just sitting there anyway, and realized it didn’t take thousands of years to mix and match bloodlines.
The pretors and curatrices who lost their children made more to replace them, but their lines thinned after such a loss, and over the next hundred years, even more were taken and brought into the program.
Among them... you, Gen.” Jesstin paused. “And Taven.”
Elloven’s resentment had never edged so close to the surface.
Esme had known all of this. There was no other reason for her to abduct the children otherwise.
Elloven had a right to know how close she’d come to being “bred” with other children, and she certainly should have been told about it before returning to the place responsible.
Laxius had had a clean opportunity to offer Elloven a full confession and had instead been egregiously evasive.
Shioven didn’t escape her frustration either.
Maybe this “curse” was real, maybe it wasn’t, but if Elloven were a mother, no magic existed that could keep her away from her child.
She was an orphan, and now she knew she always had been. It was another wound she and Jesstin shared.
“And you weren’t taken by the Truthers, Elloven.
Estelar sent soldiers to Duskmaw to bring his brother’s children home and then handed you over himself, because by then he was the pretor of not just Rivenholde but the entire Truther movement.
He spared Acheron because he wasn’t a candidate for the program.
Estelar is the one who had Shioven killed.
Where was Laxius, you might be wondering? I have no satisfying answer.”
Elloven didn’t know what to think. The Cry of the Ancestors had been a lie too.
“The Disciples eventually scried something worrying. They saw a little girl in the Truthers’ camp who would almost undoubtedly produce the child prophesied over two thousand years ago.
There were four little boys in that camp who had equal odds of being the right mate for her.
They couldn’t risk Skyfire or Rivenholde realizing how close they’d come, so they kept the information to their innermost circle.
But it got out. The Truthers were ecstatic.
They decided this little girl...” His nose flared.
“That you would breed with all four, to leave nothing to chance. They wouldn’t wait a day longer than they had to.
From the time you were around seven or eight, daily reports were made on whether you’d had your first moon flow.
Some in Skyfire even tried to come up with a means of escalating the process.
Thank the Guardians they never found one. ”
Jesstin climbed from the bed and went to the table. He pressed his palms to the edges and bent over it before pouring some cider.
“Drink,” he said and handed a mug to her.
Elloven accepted her cider in shaking hands. Jesstin wrapped them in his until she was steady again. She mouthed a thank-you.
Instead of returning to the bed, he grabbed a chair from the table and sat backward, with his arms folded over the back.
“The Disciples couldn’t wait. They had to either intervene or accept their entire people were damned.
They decided to make one concerted attempt to get the sequestered children out of the Truther camp.
Not just you and the four boys, but the ones being held for ransom too.
Esmeray was a part of the group who went.
And this time, the coup was successful. They got you and Taven out safely and managed to grab some of the other children, including Gennady, on their way out, but they couldn’t save them all.
Esmeray took you and Gen home with her. A widowed man from Ashwind took Taven.
I don’t know what happened to the others.
But they all swore an oath that you and the four boys should never meet, never know about one another, which meant leaving the curias and their families behind.
Esmeray went to the Easterlands, where she met Wilder Hawthorne, who was willing to claim her children as his own, and they became your family.
“You were so traumatized that your memory of your time in the camp was fragmented and unreliable, but then it started to return, which terrified Esme. On the other end of the kingdom, Taven’s adoptive father died, and Taven was lured by what he thought was his clairsight to Nightwood, to you, and Esme’s fears were suddenly a lot more rational.
She got an unexpected visit from one of the elders of Eversong, who told her they had scried many futures where a child of yours and Taven’s would be responsible for ushering in the events that eventually ended their world.
It was recommended Esme... smother you and Taven in your sleep, and though she promised to follow through, to appease them, she couldn’t bring herself to harm either of you.
“But she took their prophetic message seriously. She left with you and sought out Curia Rosedown for guidance. They refused to get involved in the ancient war but offered another solution. They could construct a ward over you, to keep Taven from getting you with child, and wipe your memories of that visit, of the camp, all of it, but the cost...” Jesstin’s right hand tightened to a fist. “All powerful solace magic has a cost, and the cost was your suffering. You’d never give birth to the world-ender, but you’d endure years of unspeakable horrors to satisfy the balance due. ”
Elloven could no longer keep her promise. “Esme is the reason for Castien... for Fab—”
“I have to believe she thought she was doing the right thing, but for whom? I don’t know.
I just don’t know.” Each word came faster and faster.
“I don’t know, but when we escape this place, you can never, ever go back to Rivenholde or the Seven Sisters.
You have to promise...” His fingers raked his throat.
“Jesstin?”
Jesstin dropped onto the bed and bent over. He waved her away, but she wasn’t going anywhere.
She crawled beside him. “You can’t take this on your shoulders and make it yours, simply because...”
When he finally looked up, his mouth was turned down in defeat. “Because why, Elloven? Because I’m so in love with you, I can’t tell up from down anymore?” He slapped his face to his palms. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Elloven stared at her hands, buzzing like the rest of her. If she were alive, if she’d had her magic, the whole room would match what was happening inside of her. That he loved her seemed obvious in some ways but impossible in others. “Are you? Really?”
After a pause, he nodded.
“Then say it again, but don’t apologize.”
“I can’t,” he croaked.