Chapter 30 #2
“I didn’t say that. I had known about them.
All of Kirrasia had. Your father, well, he was strong.
His magic was strong, too. He had the ability to control the air and darkness around him.
Shadows were his speciality. He’d take the very colour from the sky if nobody checked him.
” As Kalan says the words, I think back to all the times when darkness has encroached.
I thought it was Ravi, or a combination of powers that allowed me access to that, but maybe not?
“And my mother?”
Even from here, I can see the sadness shine in his eyes.
“Your mother was kind, that was clear even to me, especially to me, but she struggled with her power. She was, as I understand, more powerful than any Fifth before her. But she kept her power hidden, and fought to diminish it, for fear of what it might do.” My heart thuds in my chest, as if answering a familiar call, anticipating what Kalan might next say.
“She was able to absorb magic—power,” he says, and his words still my heart.
Isn’t that what my power allows me? What I’m cursed with? But maybe, armed with the right information, it doesn’t feel like a curse from Aslendrix, but perhaps an inherited gift.
There’s a void in the centre of my chest, the well that was once full and the source of my magic, is now barren and cold. The rubble of the broken well is all that remains, leaving an even greater gap between me and the family I never knew.
The oppressive air that seemed to listen to our conversation eases, releasing with a gust of wind that sends the small flames wavering and fluttering.
Neither of us says anything for a long while.
My body is tired, and I look back to where Ten has remained asleep, passed out cold.
“What will you do now?” I ask Kalan.
“What do you mean?”
“Will you stay with Lyle? Will you help protect Kirrasia?” He doesn’t answer. “Is it the same for you, now that Fenix is dead?”
“I can’t answer that.” He bristles.
“Will you continue to keep watch over me? Has whatever driven you to keep your promise after my parents died been severed now that Fenix is dead?”
He doesn’t answer but glances my way.
“Kalan?”
“Did you see Fenix die?” he asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “I was unconscious. But…” I stop short of admitting to him that the visions and memories of what happened also came to me. I saw Crimson’s fight. I saw her stab him before Aten pulled the knife free from his chest. He couldn’t have survived it.
“How did you mend after you fought in the training ring when you were injured?”
“The Usher,” I answer, and let the rest of the thought play out in my mind.
No.
My injuries weren’t like his. Crimson wouldn’t have left any doubt.
She’d have gone for the kill. There’s no question.
The Usher was weakened, too. He wouldn’t have the power to heal that great an injury.
I force my mind back to how it felt—that mass of magic I opened myself up to.
Convincing myself I’d taken from him. But doubt remains.
“I am a Shepherd, Ever. My word to your mother, to swear to see you safe, swearing on everything I deem sacred, including the forest, formed an oath, if you want to call it that. I was tied to you and your brother, from that moment on.”
“So?” Defiance snaps my jaw at him.
“So, I’d know if he were dead. Just like I knew every time you or Fenix were injured. Not just in the ring in Nehandun, but back with Lyle. In Estereah and Kirrasia.”
I let the weight of the words sink in. The enormity and impossibility of what they mean. Both for Kalan and for us.
“No.”
He doesn’t answer, as if he can’t say the words aloud for fear of what they will mean.
“No.” I shake my head. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you make sure Ten finished him?” My teeth grind down as I spit the angry words at him.
“I’d never wish death on him. On either of you.” His voice rises as he does, standing and pacing in front of the small fire, towering over the gentle flames, his shadow building behind him, distorting him into a huge beast of a man.
I stand to meet him. “He tortured us, Kalan. He tortured me.”
“And I hate him for that. But that’s all he’s known, nobody was there to teach him differently.
I wasn’t there to teach him differently.
And like it or not, I have watched you both for twenty years.
A pain ringing out, as if the very ground and earth were whispering for me to do my duty when either of you was hurt or in pain.
” He huffs out the words as he stands me down, and I consider them, turning them over in my mind to find the twist, the hidden lie, the subterfuge.
But something in his grim expression, even in the flicker of flame, shows the sincerity of his words.
There is no reason for him to make this up, to scare me like this.
“How?” I ask, oddly intrigued by the magic underlying his admission, and more content to ask this than what it means if Fenix is still alive.
“Your mother is my best guess. I never returned to Kirrasia after the battle that took their lives. There might be something in the histories, but I’ve not found anything in the books that the Usher liberated.
” It feels like there’s more to his explanation, so I still my tongue and force it back behind my teeth.
“You’ve heard the song in the trees. I’m given information in a similar way, but instead of on the wind, on the whispers, it’s through the ground, as if the roots of every tree, every plant, reach out to send a message—a pulsing, rising through my boots and vibrating in my chest.” He chortles at that, as if he can hear how silly it sounds.
But I have seen and learned in the last few months that there are plenty more ludicrous and unbelievable things in this world that are true.
“It terrified me the first time I felt it. I didn’t know what it was. There were visits to Fenix first, and then I felt you. So I visited Lyle after you’d been adventuring, had fallen, and had cut your knee. You were fine. Possibly the first accident you had.”
I think back, trying to remember, and a vague memory bubbles to the surface, rising as if commanded. There was no rule to the times he would stop by. But now, armed with this new information, maybe there was.
“I had to visit your brother significantly more than you.”
“So that’s why I know so little, because I was safe and looked after?” I shout. “Fenix was granted information and truth, while I was left in the dark?”
“You were safe. You were loved. And that was more than Fenix had for most of his life. I chose the wrong people to entrust him with, and that’s on me.
He was different from the start, strong-willed and angry, and never stayed in one home for long.
And then he fell into the clutches of the Usher.
Don’t disregard what you had for what you feel is missing now. ”
“Hey! What’s going on?” Ten’s voice silences what I’m sure would have turned into a verbal sparring match I was intent on winning. It doesn’t matter how much happens, how many new revelations there are—there are more lies.
More secrets.
But through this web, I can see a different view. As if it’s looking me in the face—what was kept from me in order to keep me safe.
Magic. A whole world I didn’t know about. And parents who died fighting in a war against the Orders and who wished to pull them down.
Stupid, Ever.
The realisation clangs through my mind, waking me up with a bang.
My parents died because they were seen as a threat.
They were protecting me.
That’s the reason behind the lies.
Sworn to be kept safe. Kept away. Kept hidden.
For my protection.
That’s what Kalan’s been trying to say to me all this time.
I suck in a deep breath and fight the sting of tears in my eyes at the knowledge that now seems so clear. I’ve been buried in the hurt and pain that information was kept from me, with no focus on the why.
I turn to look at Ten and offer him a soft smile.
And then I rush forward to Kalan and throw my arms up and around his shoulders. “Thank you,” I whisper. His body is as rigid as the trees we stand under, but he soon softens at my touch.
He doesn’t return the hug in such an affectionate way, but I take the sling of his arm around my back as a win.
“Okay, want to fill me in?” Ten asks.