Chapter 59 Ellowyn
Ellowyn
“Father?” I asked, my voice a broken whisper.
He chuckled dryly before his chest spasmed with a fit of coughing. His lungs sounded wet, like infection was setting in, and I cringed involuntarily.
“Kind of you to finally see us, Your Majesty,” he sneered, and I frowned.
“I . . . I don’t understand? I’m not a queen—”
“But you will be. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?” A female voice cut through my statement, just as imperious as I remembered, even if it was dry and quiet.
Mother.
“You always wanted to be important, to be valued. Well, here you are now, daughter,” she sneered the word like it was something dirty.
My heart pounded in my chest as tears came unbidden to the corners of my eyes.
After all this time away, her words still could cut me to the core.
I felt Alois kneel next to me, his strong hands lifting me up to my feet before he grasped my waist. As much as I despised him, in this moment, I relished the strength he lent me. When he went to remove his hands, I covered them with my own, pressing them tighter to my skin.
Alois’ fingers flexed, but he left them where I wanted. I dropped my hands from his and returned my gaze to my parents.
“Look at you, the Warlord’s whore,” Mother sneered, her skeletal face pressed against the front bars of the cage, bony fingers wrapped around the metal bars.
I shook my head. “No. Your actions, your alliance with the rebellion put me in this position. Your inability to tell me your plans allowed for this to happen.”
But it was like my mother didn’t hear me.
Maybe she never did.
“Where is your brother? Where is my Peytor?” Her eyes were feverish as she begged the woman she just called a whore for information about her favorite child.
For the first time in my life, I ignored my mother’s pleas and turned toward my father.
My mother’s deception, I almost could have predicted, but my father? He wanted the best for Hestin and his family, yes, but I was always under the impression that he loved us completely and utterly.
Was that all a lie?
“Father—why are you in here?” I asked, voice hard and unyielding. I pushed aside my emotions, boxed them away just like I did in Hestin. The box was dusty, the hinges creaky from disuse.
How far I’ve come since I left Katiska.
My father sighed, leaning his head against the iron bars. “You know the answer to that question, Ellowyn. For all your flaws, you’re smarter than that. How about you ask the question, you really want to ask?”
I chewed my lip in thought.
“Why did Alois take me to see you?”
“It’s Alois now?” My mother’s voice snaked through the room and my father made no move to silence her. “Of course it is. You’ve spread your legs and bought every word he sold you, didn’t you? I warned you, you ungrateful—”
“Acantha,” I snapped, my voice a cold whip. “You will hold your tongue or I will have my husband remove it.”
Her mouth snapped closed immediately and a sinister grin spread across her face.
She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she slunk away from the bars and retreated as far as she could into the back corner of her cage.
My mother curled herself into a ball, back to Alois and me, effectively dismissing our presence.
“That was particularly savage,” Alois whispered into my ear, but I batted him away.
“Why did Alois bring me here to you? I’m certain it wasn’t to be abused,” I addressed my father again, and Alois squeezed my hips in approval.
My father’s head lolled against the bar before his gaze came to rest on the two of us.
“Does it matter? Anything I was planning is now, obviously, defunct.” He gestured one hand lazily at Alois and me.
He thinks we’re together.
I kept the truth to myself, deciding to use it against my father to pull further information from him.
“If your plans are all foiled”—I squeezed Alois’ hands for show and felt a laugh rumble at my back—“then there’s no harm in telling me, is there?”
He was quiet for a moment before he scoffed slightly.
“Gods, you’re good. Better than your brother ever would have been at ruling. Perhaps I should have made you heir when I had the chance.”
My mother made a sound of protest, but Father just lazily waved a hand in her direction. “Pah, enough, Acantha. Peytor wasn’t infallible. Clearly, if he was fucking his best friend for years and thought we didn’t know.”
“Your plans?” I reiterated, my skin growing tight and itchy the longer I was in their presence.
“You know you’re not a normal Mage at this point,” my father finally said, and I nodded my head once.
I knew I was different, obviously, and some of Faylinn’s musings had sparked a curiosity within that wouldn’t abate.
I had my own theories about my powers and my heart pounded as I waited for them to be confirmed or denied.
“Years ago—centuries, really. A Keeper of Memories made a prophecy about two bloodlines that would carry the genes that would, eventually, produce someone like you. One of those bloodlines was tied to one of the most powerful southern empires, the other to my ancestors.”
“What made your ancestors so special?”
My father shrugged. “I have no idea, in honesty.”
“Truth,” Alois whispered into my ear, and I nodded my thanks.
“That prophecy was passed down from father to son throughout generations in my family, until it came to me. I was rather adventurous in my youth and I sought further answers. Things were happening in Elyria that made me believe the time was . . . right for my bloodline to activate their destiny. I visited the Valley, spoke with the Matriarch, and was given a vision of the woman I would have to fuck in order for the prophecy to come to fruition. It was not your mother.” My father admitted this all so flippantly, and I frowned.
“But . . . you were already married. Peytor was a few years old. You’re True Bonded. You had sex with another woman after being True Bonded and married to Mother for years?” I asked incredulously.
My father simply nodded his head. “Sacrifices must be made. Your mother understood what would happen, her role in all of this.”
The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. All my life I had envied my parents’ relationship, had taken their advice to heart—find a True Bond that is both your Vessel and the love of your life. Now, I questioned everything.
“I found the woman, fucked her, and waited until you were born. She died in childbirth, and I took you back to Katiska to be raised as Peytor’s full-blooded sister.
We couldn’t let anyone know of our deception and plans lest he”—he gestured at Alois—“find out. We hid it well for years, too. Up until your Awakening. Little did we know that he was also making plays behind the scenes, cavorting with Keepers. Trying to find you and the other like you.”
“Moves and countermoves,” Alois grumbled, something akin to respect lacing his tone, and my father nodded his head to the side.
“What am I?” I asked, unable to hold it in any longer.
“No one knows.”
“Truth,” Alois whispered, and my shoulders sagged.
“But we know that you have been featured in dozens of prophecies—and that is only of the ones we know about. What you do will affect the future of Elyria, the future of this entire realm. That much is certain.”
“So . . . my existence was all so you could, what? Have power? Hold something over Alois’ head?”
“Yes, and no. It was more of a convenient bargaining chip. A failsafe if everything went to shit before we could create the Elyria that should exist.”
There was no remorse in his voice, none of the warmth that I was so used to hearing as a child.
The man that I knew as my father was simply a lie; all the care and love that I experienced at his hands a ploy.
Now, more than ever, I was grateful I never divulged my secrets about the Dreamscape, about meeting Fate, about conversing with Torin.
“You sound like them—the gods,” I whispered before turning in Alois’ hold and ignoring any response from the man who fathered me.
“I would like to leave now.”
Alois nodded his head, darkened the cells once more, and led me from the dungeon. I closed the door behind us, locking myself away from my parents for the last time. They could rot down there for all I cared.
Eventually, the emotion of this interaction would catch up to me, but for now, I needed to process in the safety of numbness.