Chapter 37
KAIDEN
When I opened my eyes, I no longer stood in the forest.
Instead, I stood in the receiving hall of a castle that looked like my own, but… everything was different—brighter. The windows were curtainless, letting the sunlight shine through, casting an orange hue on the paintings that hung along the wall—paintings I had taken down a long time ago.
I almost jumped as someone passed by me, a member of my staff that had been let go centuries ago. He wasn’t even alive anymore.
But what really caught my attention was the girl running down the stairs, dressed in riding attire.
“Mara?” I breathed out, but she continued toward the doors like I hadn’t said a word. Without missing a beat, I turned on my heels and followed after her. “Mara!” I yelled, but she still didn’t respond.
I followed her all the way past the gardens to the stables, and it wasn’t until I saw her enter that the memory truly struck me. This was it—the day that she died.
“Mara!” I ran after her, but when I rounded the corner to the entrance, I slid to a stop when I saw… me standing there. “What the… Hey!” I called to the man.
I was never there when the fire started.
I had still been with Ryuk at the Garden of the Gods, speaking with some of his lycan generals.
It wasn’t until a shadow walker appeared, alerting me of the stables being torched, that I returned home.
The fire had already been put out by the time I arrived, courtesy of one of the elementals under my employ.
The strange, mirrored version of me locked the stable doors and turned to leave. I wanted to follow him… I should have followed him… but then I heard her scream.
When I ran to the doors, I tried opening them, but they wouldn’t budge. I called to the small amount of elemental magic that I had, trying to burn off the handles, but I could barely warm my palms. “What the fuck?” I hissed.
The smell of wood burning seeped through the cracks of the wood, and another one of her screams tore through the gaps. Even with it drowned out and muffled, I could feel every bit of her pain and terror.
“I’m coming, Mara!” I yelled, banging on the doors. “I’m coming!” I took a step back and called to my shadows. Slowly, they seeped from my sleeve, wrapping around my forearm, but as I tried to direct them enough to bring me to her, they kept pulling back.
“No!” I yelled, using every ounce of my strength to push against their restraint. The harder I tried, the more they began to recoil back into my skin, and I screamed as I kicked at the doors. “Let me in!”
Soon, smoke poured through the walls, and I could hear the fire crackling just as Mara’s screams stopped abruptly. I fell to my knees, still banging my fists against the wood.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in defeat, though I knew my efforts were for naught. This had already happened. She was dead… Mara was—
“Kaiden.”
My head snapped around, and suddenly, I no longer stood at my stables.
Now, it appeared almost similar to the woods we had woken in, but these trees were black and burnt.
And standing before me was the same woman I remembered.
Her skin looked just as soft as it once was…
her long, black hair laying over her chest in a well-kept braid.
“Mara.” It felt like all of my breath had left me in a single word.
She had on the same gown she had worn beneath her riding coat. She was frozen in time, an apparition of a memory standing before me.
“I don’t… I don’t understand—”
“Don’t you?” While her voice was as soft as I remembered, it held a bitterness that was unbecoming of her. She had always been kind. Her hands remained behind her back as she took a step forward, and I rose to stand and face her. “Will you at least tell me why you did it?”
My brows quickly pushed together in confusion. “Why I did what?”
The laugh she responded with was cruel and harsh. “Kaiden, now isn’t the time for one of your games. You just saw it—plain as day. Will you truly deny it even now?”
Deny?
My jaw tensed. “Mara… that wasn’t me.”
“Right,” she drawled. Then, she turned, circling me slowly, but wouldn’t actually meet my eyes.
“I’ve had centuries to theorize why you might have done it.
My overall conclusion was that Ryuk ordered you to.
I know he wasn’t happy with how our relationship progressed when the prophecy had been written.
Perhaps he needed to test your loyalties—”
“Bullshit, Mara. You knew I never planned to actually—”
“But you did,” she interrupted in a quiet voice. She paused beside a tree, tracing the bark with her thumb as she lost herself to her thoughts. “Does she know?”
I suddenly felt sick by the question, even more so knowing that Mara had been here. Had Morrigan seen her? “Does she know what?”
“Don’t play stupid, Kaiden, it never did suit you. Does Morrigan know why we look so alike?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to keep my voice steady. “No.”
Her lips curved up in a sad kind of smile.
“She’s strong, you know. A lot stronger than I was.
Gods,” she laughed, shaking her head as she turned to face me.
“Tristan told us everything. The things they did to her. It makes my death look like mere mercy. Her entire life… pulled by a thread held by everyone’s hands but her own. ”
Tristan. My blood heated at my core, and I dug my nails into my palms in a tight fist until I felt them pierce my skin. “Is that his name?”
Mara ignored the question and continued her path, circling me once more. “I considered telling her who I am… I probably should have.”
“Mara, please—”
“Shut up!” In a quick move, she lifted her hands and revealed a blade I was all too familiar with—one I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
“Where did you get that?”
“I’ve seen those scars, Kaiden,” she sneered. “Did you do those, too?”
“Mara, I swear to you, it wasn’t—”
“Stop speaking!” she screamed and jabbed the blade in my direction. I backed up almost immediately. There was only one thing strong enough to kill both a lord and a god. Obsidian. “You replaced me, Kaiden.” Her voice cracked at the end, and it felt like she had pierced that dagger into my chest.
I wanted to feel guilty. I wanted to show her some kind of remorse, but it just wasn’t true. They may have looked alike, and I may have hated Morrigan for it in the beginning, but the more I got to know her, the more I realized that they were entirely different people.
Mara was always a sweet girl—patient, kind—and Morrigan was as well, but Morrigan held the weight of the world on her shoulders, even when no one asked her to.
Morrigan took on the pain of others so they wouldn’t have to feel it alone.
She saw through people with eyes that read between the lines so easily.
She made people want to do better—to be better.
“She isn’t you, Mara,” I answered honestly, because she wasn’t.
I had once loved Mara with every fiber of my being.
When she died, it broke my heart and left a black hole in my chest that stewed with hatred and bitterness.
I blamed everyone but myself, though I did play a part in it.
I had left her. I spent all of my time with Ryuk, training at his side, and she was by herself… Alone.
But Morrigan… She ignited something in me that I didn’t even know existed.
She took my anger and shoved it back in my face, never backing down.
She knocked me off of my pedestal and reminded me of what it meant to be human—what it meant to feel compassion again…
to feel love. Yes, I had loved Mara, and, in a way, I always would, but she was never coming back.
And what I felt for Morrigan ran so much deeper than that.
She mended every shattered piece of my heart, and replaced the missing ones with shards of her own.
I didn’t just love her. I lived for her now.
“What do you mean, I’m not her?”
Tiny chills scattered over my body like pins scratching at my skin.
When I turned, I found Morrigan standing beside a tree, not too far from Mara.
She wore a black shirt and pants, both more fitted for a man but somehow made her look just as beautiful.
Strapped to her chest was a leather harness with small throwing blades that were coated in a dried, black liquid.
That same substance streaked parts of her cheeks and neck, and next to her stood a large, white-haired lycan.
I could instantly tell that he was an alpha; they were always the largest of the packs.
But why was he with her?
“Morrigan,” I breathed in relief. Every tense part of my body relaxed just at the sight of her. I wanted to run to Morrigan, grab her and never fucking let her go. All that mattered was that she was in one piece—better than one piece actually. She looked healthy. “Thank the gods…”
I moved toward her, but Morrigan took a single step back that somehow felt five times the distance. Her eyes danced between me and Mara, and I had never felt so exposed in my life.
I should have told her.
“Dez had once told me that you had a lot to be angry about. She… She was the reason for that, wasn’t she?” Morrigan whispered out loud, but it almost seemed as though she spoke to herself.
“Let me explain, Morrigan,” I urged, taking another step. This time, the lycan beside her let out a low, warning growl.
“I can tell you the truth, princess.” The bite in Mara’s voice sent off an array of warning bells in my mind.
Her sinister smile made me forget who I was even talking to.
This wasn’t Mara, not anymore. “You see, when Kaiden killed me, his god hated seeing him hurt so deeply…” She formed a petulant pout with her lips as if to tease me. “So, Ryuk promised him something.”
I desperately tore my eyes between Mara and Morrigan. “Morrigan, you need to understand. It’s not like that—”
“I said quiet!” Mara swept an arm out, grabbing Morrigan, and dragged her to her front. “If you interrupt me one more time, Kaiden, I swear to you, I will slit her throat faster than you can stop me.”
“Malakai,” Morrigan spat out nervously.
Every limb in my body felt frozen in place, and I slowly raised my arms in front of me in a plea.
“Tell me, Mal. If obsidian can kill a god, how fast do you think it would kill their little prophecy?” Mara asked, keeping her eyes trained on me as if waiting for the smallest noise to escape.
To my left, I heard the sound of cracking and shifting before spotting a very naked man with hair as white as the beast that had once stood in his spot.
He snatched the bag that lay on the ground and quickly threw on a pair of black pants.
“Mara, he will destroy you,” he warned her.
“Scratch that—I will do it for him if you so much as put a scratch on her skin.”
“Who the fuck are you?” I couldn’t stop the anger I had directed at him. He was close enough to Morrigan that he jumped at the opportunity to defend her, and I wasn’t yet sure if I liked that or not.
Of course, he didn’t respond. He just continued to glare at Mara with his fists clenched.
Mara then lowered her lips to Morrigan’s ear. “You see, Ryuk promised to return his love to him. He swore the prophecy as his own personal gift to Kaiden. A woman made in the image of the one he killed.”
I wanted to scream at her, swearing again that I wasn’t the one that killed her, but I feared what would happen if I spoke again with the blade so close to Morrigan’s neck.
“Tristan swore to me that, when they came to retrieve you, Kaiden’s life would be mine. And if I stab him with this blade, Tristan can use the last of Ryuk’s light that passed down into Kaiden to heal himself, theoretically.”
Passed down? “What do you mean passed down?” I asked quietly.
Mara’s eyes shot to me, still for a moment, and then she began to laugh. It started off small, but quickly became more maniacal. “I told you, Kaiden, stupid does not look good on you. You can’t honestly have me believe that you didn’t know Ryuk was your father.”
My arms dropped to my sides. “You’re lying.”
Instead of answering, she simply smiled.
The blood… My blood… It opened the tunnels…
The markings… shadows…
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt painfully dry now. “Then, that means—”
“Yes,” Malakai answered for me, still watching Mara and Morrigan. “That child that you helped get rid of? That was your brother.”