Chapter 33 #2
We’d had no pictures of him. Uncle Will never kept any around and I half suspected he’d banished them to the Abyss along with Livvy’s journal. Yet here Baronne Alderidge stood, solid and as real as he’d ever been.
Stunned, I thrust out a hand for a shake to accompany the introduction. “Hi. I’m, ah, I’m Tavi.” I swallowed. “Your daughter.”
What did you say to a man you’d never really known?
I only knew he was the shifter side of me. The man related to my uncle. The one who put us on this current trajectory.
Baronne gripped my hand in his warm palm. “I already know you. Very well, in fact.”
He tugged me close and wrapped me in a hug scented with fur and sunlight. My arms lifted automatically to return it, and the longer he held me, the harder he squeezed, the less I wanted to let go. Ever.
Air snagged below my sternum. When he pulled back, his eyes adopted a yellow hue as they took me in, lit with gratitude and…an apology.
“Wait. You—” A memory superimposed over his face, the youthful lift of his cheekbones and hazel eyes. “I know you?”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you on the field. I did my best. Apparently Dorian’s soldiers carry arrows spelled against direwolves,” Baronne said.
He broke the hug to scruff his hands along his neck and up behind his ears.
Exactly where I used to scruff them.
A sob clenched my throat. “Noren?”
Baronne glanced over my head at Livvy. “It means noble. She did a great job giving me a name.”
I didn’t need to look to know Livvy rolled her eyes. “I know, darling. I was there.”
Noren was my father. Baronne was Noren. My direwolf, my companion—
He clenched me tight through my sobs and this time I didn’t hold back, clinging to him with a desperation I’d never felt before.
“I died a long time ago,” he soothed. “I came through the Summerlands and was given a choice. To be reincarnated knowing I could find you again and help you. Or to wait.”
He’d chosen a life of pain. For me. To find me.
“I was living in the wild when Claribel trapped me and brought me into the Unseelie camp. The way they treat their direwolves is a mockery to anything good.” His voice reflected his bitterness. “But I recognized you as soon as I saw you. And I rebelled when Claribel tried to use me against you.”
“I broke you.” I had to correct him. “I used my cognitive manipulation to change your mind. I hurt you too.”
His massive palm caressed the back of my head. “Honey, you can’t break someone who is loyal to you. You released me. It has been my honor to protect you since then.”
I believe in the old legends of reincarnation for those with shifter blood. Something greater is waiting for me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to you someday. I’ll try to let you know it’s me.
Onyx had made that declaration. And it turned out he was right.
I stayed under the safety of Baronne’s arm and blinked at the flood of people in the camp. “If reincarnation is real, then why are all these people still here? Why haven’t you all moved on to the next life?”
Livvy nudged us with her fingertips and Baronne led us into the tent.
The interior of the tent wasn’t familiar to me, but Livvy and Baronne moved fluidly through the space, dancing around each other to stoke a fire. Was it theirs once? Had they lived in a place like this before me? Made it into their sanctuary?
They’d both waited years to find their way back to each other. My parents were here. We were together.
Baronne urged me over to a comfortable seat beside the fire but I resisted. “You haven’t answered my question. If you can reincarnate, then why are you still here?”
“We can’t access the walled city,” he explained. “We’re locked out and the gate is shut.”
“What do you mean, you can’t get into the walled city?” I asked. “I still don’t get it.”
“The only way to move on, either through reincarnation or to the next stage, is to visit the temple at the heart of the city. It goes by no name. All souls find their way to the temple when they’re ready.”
“So someone shut the gate?”
Livvy filled the kettle with a wave of her hand before setting it on a hook above the fire, primitive but effective. “The Aether guide the souls to the temple to ease their transition. But we haven’t seen them since our arrival.”
“We had a Fae guide, the same as you had,” Baronne added. “I arrived at the dolmen before your mother did. We walked into the Summerlands together.”
“Whatever happened to the Aether, you were right, Tavi.” Livvy rested her hand on his shoulder with fondness I’d never seen. “You are needed here. This is the final piece, the last element necessary for the wheel of fate to turn again. You have to help the Aether.”
She broke away to retrieve the kettle and soon pressed a steaming cup of lavender and bergamot tea into my trembling hands.
“I have no idea what to do.”
“You’ve been extraordinary in helping the other races of Faerie,” Baronne assured me. “You’ll find a way.”
“You are seriously overestimating my abilities—” I broke off.
What did I call him now? Noren? Dad?
“We’ve both seen your abilities. Not to mention that you take after me.” Baronne’s chest puffed out. “Whatever my brother did in raising you, he did it right. The Alderidge genes are strong.”
Livvy elbowed him. “Her magic came from me, pal. Never forget who went to great lengths and five months of morning sickness with this one.”
“Hey, I went to great lengths to find you pickles and peanut butter in Faerie. You wanted all those mortal snacks when we were literally on the run from the king’s guards.”
They bickered playfully back and forth, a different type of dance. My gaze bounded between my parents and landed somewhere in the solace and crackle of flames.
Realization clacked like marbles in my head.
This was what we could have been if fate hadn’t had different plans for us or if Faerie had decided on any other shifter child to carry out her prophecy. The words came to me again, from the book where I’d first read them:
At croaching light of black moon morn
A shifter child shall be born.
An innocent and pure of heart
born to rip the Fae apart.
Born to rip the Fae apart
A wicked end, downfall’s start,
And falling into endless night,
Shall bathe the blood with sweet delight.
And as the light of day is done
The fearsome battle shall be won
For those who claim the heart of Fae
To mend and shape, no more to slay.
The shadows done, the feud descend.
No more to sunder. Done and end.
The shifter child half and whole
Tis she unites the factions old.
Tis she unites the factions old,
Tis she who rules.
All hail
Her soul.
I shivered.
“You’re mad at me because I wouldn’t let you crush my fingers to dust when you were in labor for fourteen hours,” Baronne added. “I pulled free and you’ve never forgiven me for it.”
“I’m mad because I had to wait for an eclipse to give birth and you were crying like a pup.” Livvy, proud of herself despite the non-broken appendages, placed her hands on her hips.
It was such a Coral gesture I chuckled, sipping my tea.
Baronne grabbed Livvy mid-argument and kissed her. His fingers threaded through her hair to hold her close as her protests fell away. Both smiled through the embrace.
I set the tea aside, elbows on my knees, and watched Livvy tease a slap against his chest. “Not in front of the child,” she stage-whispered.
Eclipse or not, pure heart or not, I absorbed their dynamic and held it close. I may not get another chance to see them together. I’d have to deal with the Aether and their walled city soon. For now, I basked in this moment until more tears threatened.
“What do you want for dinner, Tavi? We can make anything we want. It’s one of the benefits of being dead. No more trips to the grocery store.” Baronne winked. “Your mother always loved Aldis.”
“I loved the people in Aldis, not the store. You have it wrong,” Livvy corrected, then muttered, “As usual.”
* * *
Hours passed, and without sun or moon to tell the time, each precious second bled into the next. I might have stayed there forever, lost in this gift, if our dessert hadn’t been interrupted.
“I heard we have a new arrival. Mind if I steal her away?”
The male voice brushed my nerves in velvet before an aquiline nose peeked into the room, a familiar face at our tableside.
And I broke.