Chapter 52 #2
“When my power to sow discord manifested… goddess, it startled me. It shattered me. Everything I knew became a lie, and all I loved felt as if it was suddenly gone… taken from me by a power I never knew I possessed.” He checked the tea, lifting the lid from the kettle, staring vacantly into it, his words hollow.
“I was scared… Scared of them. Scared of myself. Scared of what I made them do. Scared of how easy it was to turn them against each other. Scared of how I had stood there watching them butcher each other, and how I had laughed when they had screamed just as they had laughed at me.”
“Why did you not come back?” I whispered.
He shook his head, causing his wild black hair to fall to caress his forehead.
“I could not. I struggled with that power. For a time, it controlled me, and I relished the darkness and the sense of possessing the ultimate power. I hurt many with it, even when I did not mean to… and I did not trust myself to be around you and Vyr. I needed to know where it had come from, and I had needed to master it, and so I stayed away… eventually finding this tower, deep in the Wastes where my power was muted by the sands.”
“You didn’t stay here though,” Saphira said as she rubbed my thigh, her touch a comfort I badly needed.
“One day, during a storm, a male barged into this old, rotting tower,” he raised his hands and looked at the room we were in, “and we surprised each other. After a small scuffle, we called a truce, and he revealed himself to be one of the rogue princes of the Stygian Isles. We spoke while the storm raged, and he offered to help me.” He lifted the kettle from the stand and went to the sideboard, pouring the brew into three small cups.
“The princes helped me uncover the truth about my origins and trained me.”
Oberon set the kettle down, and picked up two of the cups, and handed one to Saphira, and then held one out to me.
I just stared at it.
“It is good for you.” He moved it closer to me.
I still did not take it.
Not even when a sad smile curled his lips and disappointment coloured his eyes.
Saphira took it instead, her answering smile one I could easily interpret—a request for him to be patient. She set it down on the floor beside her.
Oberon went to the last cup and picked it up, bringing it with him back to his armchair. He sank into the seat.
“When I felt more… whole… again, I travelled to the Shadow Court. I was going to tell you both I was still alive.” He sighed, his silver eyes softening as he gazed at me.
“You were both doing so well though. I saw how well you had taken care of the court, and how well you and Vyr were doing without me, and… I was afraid to disturb that. I was afraid of what you might think of me if you learned the truth. Yet I could not convince myself to walk away… I could not bring myself to leave the only family I had. I ended up befriending you instead, so I could keep an eye on you both… hoping that one day I would find the courage to tell you.”
“But you did not.” I stared him down, my side throbbing despite the healing magic and the herbal compress as my anger rose again, making my heart beat faster. “You did not tell us. You kept us in the dark for centuries. Centuries.”
Saphira’s hand came to rest on my thigh again.
Soft. Tender. Supportive. My beautiful little wolf.
I placed mine over it, trying to show her that I was fine and not angry enough that I would move from this spot, risking reopening my wounds.
I had much to do, and I could not afford a lengthy absence from the battlefield.
“You chased your vengeance instead, pretending to be our friend when what we needed was our brother!” I failed to keep the anger that burned inside me from my voice as I thought about Vyr, and how she had suffered, and how long I had spent trying to find a male who had been before me the whole time.
“I thought they were holding you prisoner. I thought they were torturing you. I led war parties into the Summer Court to take you back! I… I spent nights imagining how you were suffering and hating myself for not being able to save you.”
His face fell as he reached a hand out to me and I smacked it away, not interested in giving him what he wanted or accepting his comfort.
“Centuries, Taeodryn. Centuries seeing your face, recalling how you would laugh at everything I did, and how it would make me even more reckless because I wanted you to be proud of me. I wanted you to smile and see me… I wanted you to see me.” My voice cracked and he flinched.
“Centuries of hearing your desperate, terrified screams… of knowing I had failed you and was responsible for whatever horrors you had endured. But none of it mattered to you… because you were alive… right there in my court… at my side. Laughing. Smiling. While I searched for you. While I did everything to bring you back to us!”
Oberon looked at his cup.
“So forgive me if I want to know what vengeance kept you from telling me the truth. What vengeance led you to lie to your siblings… to let your sister believe you were dead and mourn you and let your brother chase your ghost, haunted by how he had failed you. I want to know.” I shoved to my feet, gritting my teeth as my side blazed and shadows blanketed the room.
Oberon pushed to his feet too, sweeping a hand through the air to sever my shadows, cleaving a space in the darkness so I could see him, his face a dark mask.
“I did it to protect you. It was safer if he thought I was dead and that you knew nothing about me beyond the fact I had been the firstborn of our parents.”
“Who?” I growled and then it hit me and my voice softened.
“Elduin. I was right. Elduin is your father. That is the reason he hunts you. That is the reason he allied with Sylvan of the Summer Court and gave the Summer King reason to attack Belkarthen. You are the reason they died. Do you know that? Our parents died because Elduin wanted you dead.”
“I know,” he whispered. “It is something I have lived with for what feels like an eternity. I know they died because of me, and I have come to terms with that, and I am only glad that neither you nor Jenavyr had been harmed too.”
“Why?” I croaked. “How?”
I could not gather the words for the questions I wanted to ask as I looked at him.
My brother.
He came to me and pressed a hand to my shoulder, and I allowed it this time, because I needed to know he was real, not imagined. My brother.
“I need revenge, Kael. I need to finish this and then I will be your brother again, I swear it. But he must pay. He has to pay for what he did to her.”
I stilled right down to my breathing as I realised who this ‘her’ was.
“Our mother,” I whispered.
He nodded, his gaze lowering to my chest before it bravely rose to meet mine again. “The night before her binding ceremony to Father, when many of the courts were gathered at Belkarthen for the celebrations, Elduin found his way to her chambers and forced himself upon her.”
Cold seeped into every fibre of my being as those words struck me, each a quiet thunderclap that roused something dark and malevolent in my heart, something that seethed and roiled.
Shadows pooled and writhed beneath my feet, restless with a need to strike.
“Did Father know?” I said, my voice dangerously calm, as cold as a blade.
Oberon nodded. “According to one prince, who was there for the celebration and who had spies in the court for a long time afterward, Father knew what had happened to her. He believed Elduin sought to separate them for some reason, believing Mother unworthy of him, and he had despoiled her in the belief it would prevent the wedding.”
The ground beneath me trembled as I thought about that, how he had violated my mother in an attempt to separate them, breaking the goddess only knew how many sacred laws of our breed.
“Why was it not made public?” I growled as I thought about Elduin and how he had been allowed to rule as high king when he had done something so wholly despicable, something no king of any court would tolerate.
Oberon’s look said it all.
To protect our mother. To keep any king who was not brave enough to turn against the high king and rebuke him for his crimes from speaking foul things about her, turning her from victim into something else, placing blame and shame upon her shoulders.
“He killed her to silence her, and he hoped to kill you for the same reason, so this would never get out. Well, I am not going to allow him to get away with it.” I curled my hands into tight fists, relishing the bite of my claws into my palms.
Oberon growled, “This is my vengeance, brother. Do not think to take it from me.”
Darkness flickered in his eyes as a portion of my shadows went to him, curling around his hands and snaking up his arms.
I wanted to fight him on it, wanted to take this burning need to make Elduin pay for what he had done to our parents and use it to bend Oberon to my will, but I drew down a deep breath instead, my mind churning over everything I had learned, shifting pieces of it around until I had something I could use.
A plan.
“So much pain could have been avoided had you told me,” I muttered. “I would not have gone into the Summer Court to make them—”
“We both know that is a lie,” he interjected. “Vengeance seems to easily sink her claws into the males of our family. Had you known I was alive, you still would have wanted the Summer King to die for what he had done to our parents. Your need to make that court bleed would not have changed.”
I could not dispute that.
“But I would not have allowed Saphira to head into that court in search of you. I would not have been wounded, and she would not have accidentally given me my vengeance that now binds me to my agreement with Elduin.” I reached for Saphira’s hand, needing the contact between us, and felt steadier as she slipped her hand into mine.
Oberon’s expression grew grave as he looked between us. “What did you do?”