Chapter Nineteen
My mother blinked a few times, as though she was processing, or simply couldn’t see well. But within seconds, recognition flashed across her face.
“Dimitri,” she said, though it barely came out as a whisper, her voice hoarse from what I imagined was disuse. “My boy.”
I watched as her eyes filled with tears that threatened to spill over onto her cheeks. But there I stood, just barely inside of the space, rooted to the spot like a century-old tree.
“I—I thought for so long that you were dead,” I stammered, my voice cracking as I tried to wrap my head around this new reality.
For months before Father’s demise, he had danced around the idea of Mother still being alive—but he’d never provided a legitimate answer to any of my questions.
I’d begged and bartered, but Father loomed the possibility over my head the way you dangled a treat in front of a griffin—just out of reach.
I’d done the same to Aviva, right after our veltik khan. I’d had no proof about Mother then—I’d just wanted her to hurt the way I had.
As a child, I was told Mother had died in her sleep. Peaceful, but extremely sudden. It was said she’d gotten sick, and the illness had taken her out swiftly.
That was what I’d always been told, anyway.
The older I got, though, the less that explanation had made sense. But since there was not a single trace of any wrongdoing or proof of foul play, there was no way for me to disprove what Father had told me. So although it bothered me, I’d learned to live with it. To accept it as factual.
But in that moment, what I thought had been my reality shifted.
What else had Father lied about?
“Everybody believes that,” Mother responded softly.
My hands began to shake, and I couldn’t seem to stop the barrage of words flowing from my lips, my mind whirling.
“Father kept hinting at you being alive, but I’d thought he was bluffing just to get to me—I didn’t think until recently that he was serious.
But he wouldn’t have kept mentioning it unless there was some substance to it, so I kept digging.
When I found Father’s journal entry about prisoner fifty-one, I didn’t exactly know what to expect.
I just knew whoever was up here was special to him. ”
“Is that how you found me?” Mother asked, her voice still soft. Soothing, as I’d remembered it, despite the rasp in it.
I nodded.
“He’ll be furious when he finds out about this, Dimitri,” she said, concern etching itself onto her face.
My brow crinkled. She didn’t know Father was…
“Father is… he’s…” I stuttered, trying to say the words aloud, and failing. My eyes watered, the reality of his absence hitting me full force in the presence of my mother. I’d been keeping myself busy for weeks, all so I wouldn’t have to face the fact that was now sitting like a lump in my throat.
Father may not have been everybody’s favorite, but he’d been a rock in my life. Something solid, something unyielding.
Until the very end.
“Oh, my son,” Mother said, her expression sullen—empathy and compassion radiating from her like the heat of an undying flame.
I listened to the alychite shackles and chains rattle as she slowly opened her arms towards me.
I didn’t know what to think at first. I wasn’t sure why Father had hidden her away, and the soldiers at the tower entrance had claimed she was dangerous.
But in the end, the fae before me was still my mother.
The same female I used to cry for as I fell asleep—after she’d died.
The one that used to sing to me when I was upset until I calmed down.
Somebody I didn’t realize I’d missed so intensely until that moment.
But there she was. Her arms were outstretched, ready to comfort me like she had all those years ago, despite her own current circumstances.
She was still exactly who I’d remembered her to be.
I wasn’t sure if I ran or flew, but within heartbeats I had closed the distance between us, sliding to my knees and throwing my arms around the female before me.
Her chains were longer than I’d thought, as she had no issues wrapping her arms around me in return and tucking me into her much smaller, thinner frame.
My chin rested on her shoulder, and I couldn’t ignore the way a few stray tears rolled down my face as I took comfort in my only parent that, as it had turned out, had not yet returned to the Stars.
“I missed you,” I said through clenched teeth—an effort being made to hold in the sobs I could feel threatening to escape my lips.
“I missed you, too, my Dimi,” Mother responded as she ran a hand up and down my back, right between my wings. A soothing motion she’d done many years ago—yet it felt so familiar then, it could’ve been as recent as yesterday.
Once I’d calmed down enough to think clearly again, I slowly released my hold on her and sat back, still very near to her, our knees almost touching. She watched my every move, her eyes sharp despite her time locked away. Her gaze was soft, though, as she waited for me to collect myself.
“How… How are you alive?” I finally asked, curiosity gnawing at me.
“What did your father tell you had happened when I disappeared?” she responded with a question of her own.
A crease appeared between my eyebrows at the response and her choice of wording, but I answered anyway.
“He said you’d gotten sick suddenly. That you got very bad, very quickly. And then one morning, he said you’d died in your sleep. That it was swift and peaceful, at least. We… never saw you again.”
Mother let out a breath that easily could’ve been a soft laugh. Almost like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest,” she responded.
“So… what actually happened?”
Mother sighed. “Your father had an opportunity to erase me, to remove me from the playing board—so he did.”
I tilted my head and asked, “But why?”
“Horace… He caught me and your sister, Aviva, practicing her zirilium.” Her eyes softened a degree at the mention of my twin, while mine felt as though they’d hardened.
“I’m sure you know by now that she was born with both Northern and Southern abilities—a gift from the Stars.
She got her Southern abilities from me, of course, as I’m also sure you’ve figured out.
But despite Horace’s infatuation with me, he wanted his children to be like him—not tainted by my bloodline’s zirilium.
When he found me practicing with Aviva that day, well, things got out of hand. ”
I watched as she rolled up her tattered shirt sleeve to reveal two child-sized handprints scarred onto her upper arm.
The skin was warped and discolored; scars like that, which obviously hadn’t healed properly, were either extremely bad wounds or weren’t treated afterwards the way they should’ve been.
Or both in this case, if I were to guess.
I couldn’t stop the slight grimace that flickered over my features.
“Your sister didn’t mean to. She thought she was helping.
It was the first time she’d accessed her fire zirilium—and I discovered the hard way that her fire burned so hot it was blue.
But the pain was too much, and I passed out.
When I woke again, I was here, in this tower. And I’ve been here ever since.”
I’d already known Aviva possessed abilities from the North and the South, but that was a relatively recent discovery.
On the other hand, I’d guessed that our mother wasn’t Northern for most of my life—though I kept those thoughts to myself, so as to not upset Father.
She didn’t have wings, and her coloring was all wrong for a Northerner.
Once I’d noticed those qualities about her, I couldn’t unsee them.
I couldn’t unsee how Southern she looked in my foggy memories.
My own abilities were also a recent discovery, though, as well.
I wonder…
“Did you know that I also had taken after you? That I, too, possessed Southern zirilium?” I asked tentatively.
Her lips tilted up in a small smile, then she nodded.
“You hadn’t displayed any solid evidence of it yet the last time I saw you, but I felt the shift in you.
Aviva had been a very early bloomer, but it didn’t surprise me when I realized you would be, too,” she noted.
“You must be a master of your craft by now. Which abilities were gifted to you?”
I pressed my lips together tightly, the tips of my ears burning with shame.
She was right—I should have mastered my abilities before now.
Yet I hadn’t even known about them until a handful of weeks ago.
Another thing Father had managed to hide from me.
“What is it?” she prodded gently.
“Father… He had me drink these elixirs every day, without fail, that seemed to hide my abilities—even from myself. I started taking them right after you… disappeared. I guess my zirilium hadn’t surfaced just yet.
I don’t know if Father knew they’d have surfaced soon, or if it was just a precaution.
It wasn’t until the past couple months that I realized the elixir hadn’t just been for me—Aviva had taken them too, and it had done more than just hide abilities.
It seemed to erase any trace of Southern from her, too.
I didn’t even remember she had two different colored eyes until after she left,” I explained.
I wasn’t sure how Father had managed to terrify both me and my twin into never telling the other about our individual elixirs. Though, I did know that Hugo had been a part of it; he’d always created the elixirs, and he was there to provide them when Father couldn’t be.
At that, Mother’s eyebrows shot up.
“Your twin left?” she asked, drawing her brows together.
“Well, kind of,” I said hesitantly. Then I simply dove in headfirst.
I shot right into a detailed explanation of everything that had led to me finding Mother here.
How Father had arranged for Aviva to go to the South, how she’d left me and her best friend, Aurora, behind, and how it turned out months later that it had all been a setup.
How Father marched over the border with as many troops as he could muster up and how we were ambushed before we could make it to Cairnyl.
Leaving a select few details out, I carried on to explain the veltik khan Aviva and I had fought—and how it had ended with Father’s death instead of one of ours.
I briefly summarized how the past month and a half since that battle had been—how I’d ascended the throne and how I’d found Father’s journal, which had led me to the tower we then sat in.
After my explanation tampered off, we sat in a still silence for a few heartbeats. Then Mother let out a shaky breath.
“I’m so sorry you’ve gone through so much, and I wasn’t there.” She looked down before carrying on. “But… he’s truly gone?” she asked quietly.
Slowly, I nodded, unable to utter the words aloud once again.
A sort of relief seemed to flood her gaze, though she tried to hide it—along with another emotion I couldn’t seem to place.
It was like a spark had re-entered her eyes, one that hadn’t been there before.
I didn’t quite understand, but maybe I didn’t know the full story just yet.
If Father had taken away my abilities just to force me to fit into his mold better, what had he done to my mother in their time together?
“You said you hadn’t been able to access your zirilium until recently?” she questioned.
Shifting, I struggled not to turn tail and run out the door, but I still nodded.
“If you ever would like some help, I’d be happy to help train you, Dimi. It’d be my honor to do my best to pick up where I left off in your life all those years ago.”
She reached out then, gently grasping one of my hands in both of hers.
The contact seemed to ease my anxieties. That was until she looked down at our joined hands.
Clocking the dried blood remaining under my fingernails, she stilled. Even her breathing seemed to cease as her eyes locked onto the crusted blood on my hand.
Once I realized what she was looking at, I ripped my hand from hers and swiftly got to my feet. Before I knew it, I was across the space from her, my back against the door.
“Dimitri,” she breathed, her gaze on my face, searching and trying to read me—the way only Aviva had ever been able to.
My breathing sped up as guilt and anxiety overpowered any amount of comfort or relief I had felt before in the arms of my mother.
Without another word, I slipped out of the ornate door and locked it behind me, the sound echoing in my ears.
I would lock her away the same way I locked up the anxiety and guilt of what I’d done—at least until I figured out what to do next.