Chapter 16 #2
Nodding, I tried to hold back a wave of tears. It was something I already knew, but for a brief moment, I wanted to hope. Believe.
Andris and my father were as close as brothers.
My father had told me they could read each other from hundreds of feet away, know the other’s move without speaking.
It made them great partners in war. Andris was my father’s second on the battlefield.
My dad was passionate and would run toward danger in a blink, while Andris was a planner, followed the rules.
They had a perfect balance, saving each other’s lives countless times.
“She was supposed to be returned.” Andris’s gaze flicked to Warwick again angrily, stepping away from me. “She was supposed to stay in Leopold.”
“Don’t look at me. This girl can’t stay out of trouble.” Warwick moved in next to me, folding his arms. He towered over Andris.
“You were supposed to make sure. Protect her! After what you did . . .” Andris puffed up, his face turning red with fury, moving to Warwick. “Why did you bring her here?”
“I can’t force her to do anything.” Warwick challenged back.
“If you haven’t noticed, she’s got a mind of her own and a will more stubborn than anyone I’ve ever met.
” He stepped into Andris. “Plus, she doesn’t need anyone to protect her.
She’s stronger and a better fighter than most. She survived Halálház .
. . got through the Games, which is far more than anyone else in this room right now. ”
Andris took a breath, rubbing at his dark eyebrows. “This was not how this was meant to go.”
“Tell me about it.” Warwick snorted.
“Wait, what do you mean? What the fuck is going on?” My head snapped back and forth between the two, my heart speeding up.
Andris tilted his head at me, a deep sigh exhaling from his lungs. “First, tell me, why did you leave Leopold?”
I licked my lips nervously.
“It’s okay, Kovacs, you can tell him.” Warwick stood next to me.
Though his mouth did not move, a copy of him stood on the other side of me, growling in my ear.
It should have freaked me out, but strangely it didn’t.
I was growing used to it. It calmed me, as if we could have a private moment without anyone knowing whenever we needed one.
“I had to.” Swallowing, I looked up at Andris. “I was no longer safe there.”
“Why?”
“Because Istvan thought I was spying for Killian . . . and because . . . because . . .” I couldn’t say it out loud, the fear gutting my stomach.
Andris’s eyes rolled over me, his jaw twitching, a deep sigh coming from him. “Because he knows the truth about you . . .”
The truth about you.
The words poured over my skin, scorching my throat.
“Wha-what?” My voice came out in a breath of fear.
“Dragam.” Andris touched my arm. “There is so much to tell you . . . I just wish it wasn’t under these circumstances. This is not what your father wanted.”
At the mention of my father, tears filled my eyes, my lashes batting them away. “What didn’t he want? What does Istvan know?” I nipped my lip, daring to ask the question sitting on my chest for a while. “What is wrong with me?”
Andris peered around at the room at his guards. “Please go back to your stations.”
The blond polar bear twins, along with the other guards, nodded and quickly headed out as Andris steered me toward what looked like a bookcase. The shelf slid to the side, revealing a room behind, decorated with a desk, chairs, and a map of Budapest open on the surface of the desk.
“Please sit. Can I get you anything to drink? Some tea?” Andris walked around the desk, tapping at the walkie-talkie on his belt, ready to direct an order to someone. “We don’t have much here, but I can offer you at least a refreshment.”
I stared at him. A cup of tea was the last thing on my mind.
“I think we need something stronger for this conversation,” Warwick muttered, his palm touching my lower back, pushing me farther into the room, shutting the door/shelf behind us.
Andris bobbed his head, opened the desk drawer, and pulled out a bottle of Unicum.
My nose wrinkled automatically. It was a Hungarian staple—a liqueur with a bitter herbal taste I had yet to acquire a palate for.
It used to be typically drunk as a digestif and aperitif, but times and scarcity made it an any time liquor.
Anything to ease the starkness of reality.
Pulling three small glasses out from the same drawer, Andris poured the amber liquid and shoved two glasses toward us. Warwick drank his down.
“Sit.” Andris nodded to the seats, but I didn’t move, my body wound up tightly.
“Fuck the drink. Tell me what’s going on.” I folded my arms, frowning at him.
Andris shot back his drink in one gulp, his face puckering for a moment before he sat down in the office chair.
“When I left, you were just a young girl . . . now look at you. All grown up.”
“Uncle Andris . . .” I warned, my patience thin.
He took another drink, letting out a breath.
“You know you were born in . . . unusual times.” Andris’s dark brown eyes met mine. His mother had been Armenian, while his father was French, giving him such contrasting but striking features.
“Yes, but it doesn’t tell me how you are still alive, how you two know each other.” I motioned between him and Warwick. “And what you seem to know about me.”
Andris chuckled softly. “Patience was never one of your strengths. The same as your father. Jump in and go. You wanted to know everything, do everything yourself, even as a baby.”
“Andris.” My teeth gritted.
He breathed out slowly. “Losing your mother, raising a baby, and still in charge of protecting Leopold, your father didn’t notice anything was unusual until you were much older.
I think you were four or five when you climbed up on a banister in HDF and fell off.
” The memory was so distant and hazy; it felt as if I heard the story, not actually experienced it.
“God, blood was everywhere. We were sure you were dead. But you popped right up, wanting to climb back again.”
“You know the patience you were speaking of?” I grumbled. The sensation of Warwick brushed my back like a calming balm while his form leaned against the wall several feet away from me. My eyes darted to him, glaring. His lips lifted in a grin.
“You fell farther than two stories, dragam, onto a marble floor.” He clasped his hands. “When your father rushed you to the clinic, they checked you out, gave you one stitch, and let you go.”
“So? I was lucky.”
“It was then we started to notice little things. Other kids would get hurt and take weeks to heal, yet you did in just a few days.”
My mind flashed to how many times I had been beaten and then taken to the HDF clinic after training, and after a couple of hours, I headed back for more, feeling fine.
“The healing around them appears to be at least three years old. Much longer than her time away.” Dr. Karl’s words flared back through my mind.
“So I heal fast.” I folded my arms, glancing off to the side.
“You have never been sick. Have you?” Andris asked. “Caden got colds, flu, chickenpox, pink eye . . . and you got nothing. He almost died of scarlet fever. Do you remember? Very contagious. While you never even got the sniffles.”
“I have a strong immune system.” According to Dr. Karl, I had off the charts, abnormally strong immunity.
“I recall a time I was playing with you, and you moved so quickly I didn’t even see it . . . even though you stood right in front of me.”
I swallowed, my throat closing in on me.
“Only three people know this story, and two of them are dead.” Andris took another drink. “Do you remember our cat?”
“Aggie.” I had loved that sweet, old cat.
“You found it dead in the garden. You were so distraught.” He rubbed at his head. “If I wasn’t standing there, if your father hadn’t seen it also, I would have thought it was a trick of my brain.”
I sucked in. The memory was spotty and muddled. I had only been six, but I was sure the cat was still alive when I found it. It died on my lap.
“You were sobbing and went to pet it.” Andris shook his head. “The cat came back to life.”
“What?” I stepped back, feeling the wall press into my spine.
“It climbed in your lap and meowed. You were so scared you jerked your hand away. It instantly went limp. Dead.”
“Maybe it wasn’t dead before,” I whispered.
“Rigor mortis had already set in.” Andris sat back. “Believe me, we tried to come up with every excuse possible. But that moment set your father on a trek, a quest for answers.”
“Answers?”
“Answers to what you were.”
“So, what are you saying? I’m fae?” I let my fear slide off my tongue, my chest clamping down in terror.
“You’re not fae.” Warwick shook his head, his forehead rumpling, his eyes digging in as if he were trying to see past my shell, poke in and find a reason.
“How do you know?”
“Your parents were both human and mortal,” Andris replied.
“You knew my mother?”
“Met her once.” He nodded. “Eabha was stunning.” My mother’s name drove into my chest, hearing the lyrical AY-va sing from his lips.
My father used it so little, always saying your mother, I almost forgot she was a person, with a name.
A woman with hopes and dreams. Not some fairytale I made up in my head.
“Your father was devastated when he returned from the war to find she had died the night of the Fae War. Between your birth and the magic from the Otherworld crashing into Earth, her body couldn’t take it . . . He never even got to say goodbye.”
I licked my bottom lip, peering at the ground, the guilt of her death on my conscience. I understood his subtle meaning; if she had been secretly fae, she wouldn’t have died in childbirth or from the magic. Humans succumbed to that.
“Then there is no way I could have brought the cat back to life.” I could hear the hope in my voice, the need to counter the sickening squeeze deep in my soul.
“As far as I know, only necromancers can raise the dead.” Warwick’s focus trailed up and down me. “You are not that.”
A picture I saw once of a necromancer scared the crap out of me. Skin and bones, hooded in robes, ghostly looking monsters.
They were the origin of the image of death with a scythe.
“What about a natural obscurer? Isn’t Queen Kennedy rumored to be one . . . that she can raise the dead?”
“You’d have to be a Druid.” Uncle Andris shook his head. “A very powerful one.”
Right.
A natural obscurer came from the most dominant Druid line.
Their mothers purposely worked with black magic while pregnant, wanting the power to seep into the unborn child.
And yet, it was still a long shot the baby would become one.
The leader of the Unified Nations was exceptional and queen for a reason.
Her roots came from the most top-tier Druid.
“Then what am I?”
“We don’t know.” A pained expression settled on Andris’s face.
“At least, I don’t think your father ever learned.
He grew more and more withdrawn. Slipping out, leaving for days.
He stopped telling me anything, saying it was for Rita’s and my protection.
If Istvan found out what he knew . . .” Andris choked over the last few words.
“All he made me promise was to keep you safe. Make sure Istvan never learned what we suspected.”
“By putting him as my guardian?” I tossed my arms out.
“I was supposed to be your guardian.” Andris tipped his head. “But it could not be. I talked your father into making Istvan your caretaker.”
“Why? Then I’d be right under Istvan’s nose.”
“Exactly.” Andris’s gaze snapped to mine.
“Keep your enemies so close they become family,” Warwick stated, nodding in understanding. “Blind them to suspicion.”
“It worked too.” Andris folded his hand on his lap. “For the last five years, you have been hidden right in the open. Your father and I knew that the closer you were to the Markos family, the safer you were. Until . . .” He shook his head at me.
Until I landed my ass in Halálház.
“Baszd meg.” I swiped the liquor off the table and slammed it back, the pungent taste burning my throat. I banged the glass back down on the table and glared at Andris. He filled all three cups without hesitation, watching me down the second.
“You have grown up so much, Brexley. The pictures of you don’t do you justice.”
“Pictures of me?” I tapped my glass for another. I hated the taste of Unicum, but the burn grounded me. “You’ve been watching me this whole time?”
“Of course.”
“You owe me answers. What is this place? Why are you hiding here, and why did you fake your own death? Also, how do you know each other?” I motioned between the two men.
“My ‘death’ was necessary. I knew too much . . . had seen too much. I could no longer carry out Markos’s orders.
It was only me who was supposed to die the night of that battle, slip away into the night.
Your father would have never left you. Ever.
But things went wrong. I don’t even know what exactly; everything was going to plan.
But we got separated. It was too late by the time I found him.
” Grief flashed over Andris’s face. “I failed him . . .”
My head bowed, clearing my throat. “Why was your death necessary?”
“We’ll get to that.” Andris stood up, finishing his second drink. “As for this place, it is one of the hideouts for the Resistance . . .”
“Resistance?” My mouth parted in shock, another puzzle piece clicking in. I knew of only one Resistance party in this area. “Y-you’re part of Sarkis’s Army?”
“Dragam.” He smirked, his arms behind his back. “I am Sarkis.”
I blinked at him. “Oh, my gods . . .”
It was like I was hit with a bat, and memories and pieces all fell into place. The stuffed puppy he had given me was named Sarkis. It didn’t click until now. The signs were right under my nose.
Sarkis was an Armenian word meaning protector, shepherd.
He had named his army the same as the toy that kept me feeling safe and protected as a child when they left on missions, like a clue.
I may have stopped cuddling with the toy so long ago I had almost forgotten him, but my shepherd never stopped protecting, guiding, and watching over me.