Chapter 6 Sylas Morgrave
~Sylas Morgrave~
He wasn’t ready.
He hadn’t been prepared.
For any of this.
And he shouldn’t fucking have to be.
I didn’t want this!
I didn’t fucking want this for him!
I tugged at my hair as I paced my research lab, the one in our home, Glacialis Arx.
Things were supposed to be better for our son than they had been for us.
“I know what it’s like to be desperate to protect a supremely powerful child who you fear the world won’t take well to.”
“Yeah, Ariana went through a lot where that’s concerned.”
“You will do better for your child. Each new generation is granted that chance.”
When Ryker had spoken those words to me twenty-one years ago, I’d believed I could actually bring that about, that the four of us could as parents.
But we hadn’t.
We fucking hadn’t.
Today had been proof enough of that, hadn’t it?
Our son was in pieces.
Fuck. The way he’d looked at me, so fucking broken, when he’d choked out those words about the world not wanting him.
That wasn’t it. It wasn’t the actual truth. It was far more complex.
But that thing… that True Celestial nightmare who’d taken him had whispered a toxic version of that in his ear.
I ground my jaw. I couldn’t allow my rage whenever I thought about Ruxnoth to infect me right now. Winter’s loves would be here soon. People he cared about. The last thing I wanted to do was to scare them away. They were a comfort to him, and I wanted them here when he woke up.
Cassius had even sent Lazriel over to Loxley Academy to retrieve them.
It had enabled Lazriel to use his vampire speed to expel some of his rage and upset on the way.
Remnant was there watching over Evira and Zayn—and containing the volatile information of today’s events from being spoken about or revealed to anyone on that campus inadvertently.
Something we absolutely could not have. Even though I’d recognized their care for Winter and their understanding of the situation, when people were upset and panicked, they didn’t always react in ways that were safe or quiet.
Vaxan had followed shortly after Lazriel. I’d needed him to act as a stabilizing force to my son’s other two loves before they arrived. It had become clear to me that it was one of his functions in their foursome.
Lazriel hadn’t really been needed to retrieve them at all.
I knew that. He knew that. But when Ambrose, Ketheron, and I had reported what had happened earlier, I’d seen that dangerous rage inciting in him, something that was extremely trying for him to contain, especially when it came to our son being in any sort of distress.
Yes, he’d done well with that during Torvek’s attack upon Winter days ago, but this was different.
This wasn’t a youthful spat that could be so easily seen to. This was an exigent crisis point.
With Remnant being there, I knew he’d provide a powerful grounding, fatherly influence for Lazriel before he returned with them.
It also antagonized Lazriel that he couldn’t assist from a magical standpoint, and this was predominantly a magical predicament.
And when Lazriel felt powerless and unhelpful, combined with the panic for Winter… it could become destructive.
I scrubbed my hand over my face as I stared at the remainder of the substance that Ketheron had extracted—cleansed—from Winter now. Lazriel certainly wasn’t the only one who felt powerless.
“Motherfucker!” I roared in a burst of aggression, sweeping my arm at my beakers over on the other side of my worktable, glass shattering against my leather-clad arm, some crashing to the floor. “Argh! Argh!”
So much for maintaining calm. This wasn’t exactly a situation built for that.
“It’s not your fault.”
I jolted at Cassius’ smooth, poised voice.
Shoving a hand through my hair, I turned to see him leaning against the doorway to my home lab.
His blond hair brushed the shoulders of his dark shirt, the sleeves rolled up and revealing several dozen beaded bracelets he wore every single day without fail covering the expanse of either wrist and up to his lower forearm, gifts from those under his care at Haven Initiative when they’d only been children, not the grown adults they were now.
It had gone by in a blink, just like with Winter.
Cassius’ black slacks were covered in dirt, his boots caked in mud.
Given that he detested mess inside our home and he’d been walking around the castle for a half hour now, that really spoke to his own state of mind.
As usual, he was concealing it outwardly.
But those of us who knew him well understood just how deeply he truly felt everything beneath that harder outer shell.
Especially when it came to our son, who he still often referred to as our little miracle.
But Winter didn’t see it that way.
Not now.
And the world was making it virtually impossible for us to counter that.
We’d gone to extreme lengths to ensure he didn’t internalize that sort of public sentiment regarding his existence.
But that had been undercut the moment he’d grown old enough to think critically, to notice things beyond his immediate surroundings, that point for every young person where their world grew bigger and they catalogued outside behavior and responses.
I hadn’t wanted to allow him outside at eighteen even.
Because I knew. I fucking knew how somebody else’s demented legacy could impact the next generation, something I’d fought so fucking hard to break for Winter.
And all of us also knew what it was like to be judged and feared for what we were.
Me as The Last Necromancer, Cassius as a Fallen.
Velra and Lazriel as hybrid beings. Ketheron as a Polygenus Entity.
But Velra, Cassius, and Lazriel had insisted that Winter be free to walkabout every now and then, to venture out into the supernatural world in controlled circumstances where we still monitored him, but not to an invasive extent.
Such as me knowing he was at Polaris many times during his free leisure ventures, but not what he was doing.
Aside from the obvious sexual activity, of course, something very healthy.
They’d been right, I’d had too much of a stranglehold on him.
In my bid to protect him from everything, he’d been so suffocated.
Restricted. His freedom impeded.
Me, Sylas Morgrave, all about liberation, personal freedoms and sexual expression, had hindered that for my own son.
The guilt of that—the fucking failure of that—was what had led to Loxley Academy happening. To letting him go. To finally standing at a distance.
But now… this had happened.
He’d been taken.
He’d been harmed.
And he might have even been damaged beyond that, something we wouldn’t know until he woke up.
“You don’t need to falsely absolve me of fault, Cas. I’m not going to fly off the handle in a catastrophic sense.”
“It wasn’t false. You’re not at fault.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t get into that aspect of things any further right now.
“How’s Velra? The spell?”
“The spell is in place. I’ve bolstered her shadows so they’ll maintain perpetually without her draining herself.”
“As she’d no doubt attempt to do for Win. When we’re asleep or something.”
“Yes.”
Velra’s shadow magic had provided comfort to Winter many times during his childhood.
She would have them swirl around him, not actually touching, but creating a soothing encompassing feeling.
It was what she’d insisting on doing for him as he slept now.
Actually, the moment she’d come home from her work in the Dark Fae Realm and found so many of us gathered.
The moment Ambrose and I had relayed what had happened, then Lazriel had settled Winter upstairs in his room, she hadn’t left his side.
Ambrose had taken off and Ketheron had gone with him after performing the cleansing for Winter, the two of them to conduct deep-dive research into the possible location of Ruxnoth’s magical construct.
I watched Cassius’ eyes dart between me and the sealed vial containing that slithery black and blue goo that Ketheron’s cleansing had removed from Winter. The physical manifestation of that twisted should-be-long-dead True Celestial infiltrating our boy.
I moved away from the vial and leaned against the wall with a weighty sigh.
“Shortly before Winter was born, I had a conversation with Remnant about what it would mean to protect a child of Winter’s special makeup.
My words to him? These. ‘This child is born of death magic. An impossibility made possible. It will need to be shielded. Now that can happen in a frost castle or whatever Velra, Lazriel, or Cassius like. But it will be a heavily protected and magically fortified home. If they wish for it to happen above ground, for our child to live a life as though unaffected by being afflicted with this special nature that many will fear, then so be it. I’ll see to it. We’ll all see to it.’”
He nodded, recalling me telling him about it. “He told you that it would only be an illusion. That’s what you’re really driving at, yes? He spoke those words as a test only, Sylas. He didn’t truly believe it.”
“But it is true. Isn’t it?”
“Sylas—”
“And we’re not enough. You, me, Velra, Lazriel—his parents. Nor Ketheron, Remnant, Rhyza. His family. He needs more. I thought we could give him that and he’d be okay, that he could be kept safe.”
“I understand all too well, believe me. But if you’re moving toward locking him down here again, that cannot come to pass. It will destroy him. Even in your current state, I know you see that.”
“We’ll keep him here tonight and that’s it,” a lovely voice sounded.
Velra rounded the corner in that delectable purple wrap dress of hers and appeared in the doorway.
Cassius eased to the side so she could shift beside him. “Little shadow,” he crooned, wrapping his arm around her and tucking her into his side, her stunning ombre hair brushing his face and shirt.