Chapter 38
Jane
He was awake.
“Where’s Joy?” I asked, my voice cracking like a frayed rope as I strode forward.
My head spun from being flung back to the Hall, disoriented by how abruptly I’d left Banfgaard. Any thoughts of alliances and elves and spies scattered away. All that remained was the echo of the deer’s voice, still ringing in my head.
“She’s with him,” Cerridwen said. She fell into step beside me as we moved down the corridor into the infirmary wing, unerringly guiding me as if she knew I wouldn’t find my way on my own in this state.
He was awake.
Inside the ward, Joy sat at his bedside with her back to the doorway, while my father listened to her speak. His eyes were open, creased at the corners, fixed on her with a weary alertness. He hadn’t yet lifted his head from the bed.
“Where’s Hildegard?” I asked Cerridwen, noting only one other healer at the far end of the corridor.
“She’ll be back soon,” Cerridwen replied, resting a hand on my shoulder. “You can already talk to him.”
My throat dried as I nodded and stepped into the room. They both turned.
Early summer light spilled through the window, illuminating the faint colour that had returned to his skin. His golden hair, streaked with silver, lay matted and slightly longer than when I’d last seen him months ago. Before I’d left for the fair.
When my father spotted me, his eyes lit with a familiar warmth despite the heavy weariness clinging to them.
“Jane,” he murmured, his voice thin and hoarse.
The sight of him blurred for a moment until I circled to the other side of the bed.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Ah, you know.” His gaze drifted around the room. “Waking from a coma. But your sister tells me we’re in a castle, so all things considered, I suppose I can’t complain.”
Relief flooded my chest. He sounded like himself.
“Hildegard says he’s recovering well but can’t overexert himself,” Joy added, sniffling. “So I’m holding him down.”
“She won’t even let me sit up, Jan,” he huffed. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”
I lifted a brow. “You’ll do exactly what the Healers tell you.”
As if summoned, Hildegard entered the room, her light olive robes pristine.
Her report was brisk and reassuring. She would monitor him over the next few days to ensure no lasting effects emerged. He still needed rest, which meant we couldn’t stay long. She answered every question we had regarding his condition before excusing herself.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” my father said, peering up at me. “Your sister told me you were safe, but…detained.”
My stomach tightened. I could imagine exactly how Joy had framed it.
“I had to stay.” I inhaled, bracing myself to explain.
“I’d forgotten about that damn station after all these years,” he said, casually dismissive.
I froze, unsure I’d heard him correctly. “What?”
“I always thought it was a flawed passage. I told your mother someone would eventually fall through it.”
My lips parted as I glanced at Joy. Her frown told me she’d never heard of this either.
“You knew where Jane was?” she asked.
“No, no,” he said lightly. “I thought your sister was working in the Capital, earning her living. Especially since you kept sending such a generous portion of your wages home. And it didn’t surprise me that you wanted to try something different.
” He studied me, as though noticing something he’d missed.
Then his gaze drifted around the room. “It’s been a long time since I was in this land.
I didn’t even think about it.” His voice softened.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have known. ”
“What should you have known?” I pressed.
A crease formed between his brows, his age lines deepening as he took in the sage-coloured sheets.
“You knew,” Joy murmured. “And you didn’t tell us.”
“Sweetheart,” Father started, “I want to explain, but my head hurts, and I need to sit up.”
Joy’s eyes reddened as she tried to meet his gaze, her breaths quickening, turning shallow and uneven. It was a tell-tale sign of her thoughts spiralling, of things no longer making sense.
I helped him sit as Joy stepped back from the bed, creating more space between us the way she always did when something overwhelmed her.
“Hold your pendant,” I murmured, glancing at the gemstone at her neck. Then I turned back to him. “How bad is the pain? Should I call Hildegard?”
“No. I just needed to shift my position.” His eyes flicked to Joy, then back to me. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have known better than to ask you to go.”
“You should have told us,” I said quietly, stepping back and lowering myself onto the nearest couch.
He exhaled and let his shoulders sag, watching Joy for a long moment.
I recognised that look. I had seen it for years, lived through physicians dismissing it as fragile nerves.
And I wondered if he had truly understood that my sister had been fighting a quiet battle inside her own body, trying to rein in the force of the flux without knowing what was happening.
Judging by the way she clutched the gemstone pendant in a white-knuckled grip, it was not an easy task.
With every silent moment he allowed to stretch, the truth began to feel like something neither of us would want to hear.
“Dove, come here so I can explain,” Father said softly.
My own anxiety spiked, my leg bouncing despite my effort to still it. I drew a slow breath while he kept his gaze fixed away from me.
Her voice was hard yet thick with unshed tears. “You’re going to explain why you lied? Go on. Feed us more lies. Explain why you left us wondering why Jane barely sleeps. Why I—”
Her voice failed her.
“What does it have to do—” He paused, then looked to me. “I won’t lie. Can you tell me why we’re here?”
I told him about Mountheim Hall, about Malory’s suspicions after she believed a human had trespassed, and why I was required to stay.
His face slackened, concern carving deep lines into his features. “The ruler’s residence?”
Recognition seemed to strike him all at once. His head dropped, eyes fixed on his lap. Joy moved to sit beside me, a surge of mana rolling off her, brushing my skin in a soft vibration.
“Yes. Reagan’s residence,” I said, turning back to Father. “I’m bound to him until they can clarify how I trespassed.”
For now, I kept to myself that the sentence had already morphed into something else.
Father straightened, glancing around the room with a frown. “Are you bound to Thomas Reagan?”
Shock flared in my chest. “Caedmon Reagan. His son. Did you know his father?”
He leaned back into the pillows, his focus settling on me. “I never met him. He and his wife ruled this land when I met your mother. I remember his name from the times she mentioned it. Why would they bind you to him?”
“Why don’t you answer our questions first,” I said calmly, though unease had begun to root itself under my skin.
“Right,” he breathed, looking between us.
A measured smile tugged at his mouth. “You girls are my life, and your mother’s.
We would have done anything for you. You remember how I met her at the Groove men’s show.
She asked me for a light, and I asked her to dance.
That part is true. She told me she lived in Diligen and worked as a singer there.
Or that’s what she wanted me to believe. ”
He paused, shoulders rising in a bracing breath. We had heard the story before, how they met in that dim bar in Erhfurt. She’d come with friends from a neighbouring town.
“It wasn’t until she became pregnant that she came to see me and told me what she was.
She said she wasn’t supposed to tell me, but she was frightened.
Her family would suffer if they found out.
She could do things I thought were impossible.
” His eyes grew distant, drifting between Joy and me, as though he were seeing both the past and the daughters who had once trusted him without question.
“Everything was a surprise to me. She brought me to where she actually lived. A place called Mountheim. We had to keep it secret. No one could know I was there. Here. And we realised that if we wanted to keep you, Jan, we needed to hide.”
My breathing had gone tight, but I couldn’t move. The hurt slipped into my voice. “Our mother was mageborn, and you knew.”
“I knew,” he admitted. “It was easier to live in Erhfurt, in our house. So your mother gave up everything to have you. She changed her name and hid who she was, so she would never stand out outside our home.”
“That’s why she died,” Joy said, her voice cold. “Isn’t it?”
His eyes shuttered. I saw the grief in every line in his face.
“Yes. We were hidden for years. We had a normal life. And then we had you, dove.” He looked at Joy, who struggled to keep still.
She was shaking. “You were a force of nature. There was a snowstorm the night you were born. Jane was still a babe.”
He gave us a pained smile. “But something went wrong with your mother’s family. Someone discovered our secret. A friend who knew where we lived warned her. We were preparing to leave the country, but we made a mistake—she came back here, to say goodbye to her family. But she never returned.”
No words came, but a knot of emotion lodged in my throat.
Everything was a lie. It wasn’t an accident that took her.
Eventually, Father went on. “It was a friend of hers who told me. She did it at enormous personal risk. She hid us and told us to stay where we were, or we would reveal ourselves and you would be taken from me.” His voice trembled.
“That same friend stayed in touch for a few years, until the dust settled. After that, I kept us away from this place.”
My mind whirled with questions, acid coating my tongue. I needed more, needed to understand the truth behind Mother’s death.
If someone had uncovered her secret, it couldn’t have been a court official. They might have punished her and invoked their laws, but they wouldn’t have killed her. And more than that, Father wouldn’t have remembered any of it.
No. It had been someone else. Someone who might have been offended by a mageborn living beside a human.
I blinked hard, forcing the images and the rising anger back before they could take root.
“Did she ever say who might have learned the truth?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “She told me we would be in danger if anyone discovered us. The judges most of all.”
“She made those rings for us,” Joy said. Her face was pale, her eyes too bright. “So we wouldn’t be discovered.”
“Yes.” Father’s voice sagged. “I thought about this for years. I told myself it might be better if you never knew. Then I decided I had to explain. Then I changed my mind again. I was afraid you would come to these lands, and someone would find out about you. And find out about us.”
“You were wrong,” Joy rasped. “It wasn’t better to hide it from us. You left us unprepared. You left me believing there was something wrong with me. You knew, and you never told us. You knew, and you never told us. You knew, and—”
“Breathe,” I urged, twisting toward her on the couch.
But she kept repeating the words, over and over. I reached for her hand, and she jerked it away.
“You knew, and you never told us. You knew, and you never told us.”
“There is nothing wrong with you, sweetheart,” Father said, his voice overlapping hers. “And the medication helps.”
Joy’s words became a mumble of sound and breath. In a sudden motion, she pressed her arm to her mouth and bit down on her skin.
“Jane, help her,” Father said, alarm ringing in his voice. He shifted on the bed, swaying as though he might stand.
The fog in my mind vanished.
“Stay there,” I said firmly and turned fully to her. “Joy, hold this.” I held out the gemstone of her necklace. “It’s just the flux. Hold the stone and breathe.”
Her chest rose and fell in sharp pants, but her gaze fixed on my hand. A single tear slipped free.
I remembered the burning when Seraphyn’s power had thrummed inside me and wondered if this was what Joy felt in moments like this.
Her trembling fingers closed around the gemstone until she finally released her arm from her mouth.