Chapter 20 #2
Tristen turned to Belas. He reached for her hand, another wave of magic surging from him, this one softer, gentler. Nyx didn’t know what it did—what he’d fixed in her—but it removed any cautious doubt Belas had managed to cling to. She threw her arms around him, more tears flowing down her face.
For a moment Tristen just stood there, as if he didn’t know what to do. Then he closed his eyes and hugged her back. When he opened them again, he was looking at Nyx.
“Take your time” she said softly. “We’ll be waiting.”
Nyx and Connell trailed Tristen and Belas to his mother’s apartment, because Nyx didn’t want to leave Tristen unguarded, and Connell clearly felt the same way about Belas.
If anyone had given him the opportunity, he probably would have insisted on going inside with them, but Tristen and his mother deserved to have their reunion in private.
There was a perfectly serviceable cafe across the street from the dwelling, so Nyx and Connell settled at a table with a window view of the apartment’s front door.
Nyx was thoroughly sick of sitting in eating establishments, but she ordered tea for both of them and, after Connell stopped being utterly weirded out by the lack of pain in his recently repaired knee, convinced him to tell her the story of Tristen's mother.
Belas Veld had been married off young to a much older man, who'd died before Tristen was born. Her late husband's financials had not been awe-inspiring, but she had been a decent manager of funds, and it had been an adequate amount to allow her to raise Tristen.
She hadn't realized what he was until he was eight.
Most Shamans were discovered because they happened to be in the vicinity of some life-threatening injury, and they healed it instinctively.
Alternatively, they healed every tiny scrape or cut a family member had, which could simply mean a child had a future as a Warlock, but was also the point at which most parents took their child to the nearest warlock or medical establishment to see if they were a Shaman.
One minute around a patient on the brink of death, and Shamanic magic couldn't help but out itself.
Belas, like most mothers, had thought her child was special.
She hadn’t put together that the migraines that had plagued her since she was twelve had disappeared with the birth of her child.
She had noticed that cuts and bruises seemed to heal quicker than usual, but as she'd never felt any magic coming from her son, she had never attributed this fact to him.
As she would later learn, this lack of recognition was because her son had been healing her since the moment he was born, as the birth should have killed her.
She hadn't been sensitive to magic anyway, so the magic she did feel afterwards only felt, to her, like her son. She’d found out the truth when a friend had come over and tripped going down the stairs of her house, fracturing her ankle.
Tristen had been there, and a few minutes later, Belas’s friend hadn't had a broken ankle anymore.
What she had had was a lot of anger. She'd belonged to a religion that believed speeding the body's healing beyond its natural limits was against the edicts of their god. She had agreed to keep quiet about Tristen only because she was afraid that if her husband found out what he’d done, she would be punished for allowing it to happen.
So Belas had kept her son’s talent a secret for another year, before another incident occurred, this time one that couldn't be kept quiet. People—supposedly representatives from the Enforcers’ Shamanic branch—had arrived on her doorstep mere days later.
They had had the correct identification to convince her they were who they said they were, but the thing that had leant them the most credence was that they’d had a Shaman with them.
One who could explain things like how Belas had nearly died in childbirth, and how her son's magic worked.
Still, despite all of their warnings that Tristen would be safer with them, Belas hadn't wanted to let her child go.
Then someone had tried to steal him, and nearly succeeded.
Because of that event, she had been convinced that she could not keep him safe, that she could not teach him everything he needed to know.
She had signed the papers that allowed the Council representatives to take him.
Then she had waited. She was supposed to receive updates—pictures, letters, an address where she could send her own letters.
When nothing came, she wrote to the address she’d been given in the event she had any questions.
She had written them once before, to verify the identity of the people she was handing her son over to.
That letter had been promptly answered. This one had received no response.
So she’d written another, and another, and another
Finally, she went in person, only to be informed that her son was not in the Enforcers’ Shamanic division, nor had his name ever been entered into their registry as a potential candidate.
She could, if she so chose, file a missing persons report with her local authorities, but as the Enforcers had no proof her child was a Shaman, the matter was not a problem for them.
It was then she’d understood that she had not given her child to the Council at all.
She hired investigators. When her money ran out, she worked and hired more, until the money ran out again and she either saved up to do it all over, or found something else of her late husband's worth selling.
“When she reached out to me, I didn't think there would be anything to find, but...” Connell shrugged. “I liked her. I knew if I didn’t take the job she'd hire someone else, someone who would take her money and string her along for as long as they could. I didn’t think I could find Tristen, but I thought I could convince her there wasn’t anything to find.
To try and come to peace with it and move on.
” He ran his hand over his face and nodded at the apartment. “That’s really her boy in there?”
It wasn't the first time he’d asked, and Nyx figured it wouldn’t be the last. She just nodded, and avoided the follow-up question on how they’d found him, voicing instead the thing she’d been piecing together as Connell had told her Belas’s story.
“It was an inside job. Someone who is normally a part of the Enforcers’ Shamanic acquisitions division is illegally moving some of them.
” It explained why they’d had the right identification, the right documents.
Why they’d come with a Shaman who could grant their claims validity.
Why, when Belas had balked, someone had tried to kidnap Tristen and failed.
They’d never intended to succeed. They’d only intended to scare her into voluntarily giving him up.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Connell acknowledged.
“What I don’t understand is why they didn’t just send her the updates she asked for.
Send her some pictures, let her send letters.
Monitor the kid’s letters back. She never would have known.
They must have done this before, with no one the wiser.
The scheme relies on the kid never being reported missing. ”
“I'm sure they intended to,” Nyx answered, “but his handlers died.”
Connell's eyes narrowed. “He kill 'em?”
“He’s a Shaman,” Nyx said pointedly.
Connell relaxed, reminded that Shamans couldn’t kill anyone and live to tell the tale. Nyx relaxed too, because while she didn’t like Connell knowing about Tristen at all, at least she had kept him from learning anything more dangerous than the fact that Tristen was alive.
They drank tea in quiet silence for a while.
They ordered more tea and she asked about Connell—what exactly he did, and how he’d gotten into it.
It was in her nature to be curious, but more than that, she was trying to ascertain how far she could trust him.
By the end of it, she was relatively certain he was exactly who he appeared to be—a man who’d done military service, come out the other side without any clear direction, and eventually found his stride in private investigation.
He was attempting to be retired, in no small part due to the knee Tristen had healed, but he’d taken a job for a friend that had brought him here. Here, he’d met Belas, and he hadn’t quite been able to turn her down.
“What about you?” Connell asked.
And that was the problem with asking about other people—sometimes they bothered to ask about you in return. “What about me?”
“How did you find Belas’s boy?”
Nyx shrugged. “I was in the right place at the right time.” Dead Earth hadn’t been brought up, and Nyx intended to keep it that way.
The less Connell knew about Tristen, the better.
She couldn’t decide if it was a good thing he was clearly enamored of Belas, or an inconvenient thing.
On the one hand, he would be less likely to do anything to hurt her—such as tell anyone about Tristen.
On the other hand, he was unfortunately likely to stick around—as evidenced by the fact that he was still here.
“And being in the right place at the right time, you decided to, what? Take a man you barely know to find his mother? Why?”
Nyx shook her head. “The why is none of your business.”
“It is when Bel hired me to find him.”
“A task you failed to complete,” she pointed out. “He knows why I’ve brought him here, and he’s the only person who needs to. I won’t tell you any more than that.”
“I could find the answers on my own.”
“You could try,” Nyx conceded, “but you have to ask yourself what those answers are worth. You don’t strike me as a bad man. You also don’t strike me as a stupid one. Shamans are valuable. Shamans not in the direct control of the Council are even more so.