3. Thayla #2
“Since before I was even conceived. You were my father’s Vedarya.”
“I was long, long ago. Before this path had even come into fruition. Once a Vedae, always a Vedae in a sense. If a path shifts enough that I’m needed once again, I return.”
“You returned to the Valorian Veil and gave him the Goddess of Seduction’s Binding.”
“Yes.”
“And you chose not to tell me the truth.”
“Yes.”
My jaw tightens.
“How could you have kept this from me? I am her companion. We are supposed to be her team,” Seismet says low.
“What good would it have done for me to tell you, then forbid you from telling her? We both would’ve been keeping a secret from her then.”
“You should’ve—”
“What bad would it have done telling me?” I ask, cutting off Seismet’s next statement.
“I’ve understood time after time why you can’t tell me everything you know.
It shifts my path, can cause me to make the wrong choices, yad-ah-yad-ah.
But in this exact situation, what bad would it have done for me to know the truth, V? ”
He sighs low and steps closer to me.
“You would have looked for him.”
I let out a sharp breath as I war with the denial on my tongue. I give up my pointless fight.
“Yeah…of course I would have.”
“And he would have felt that.”
“Felt what exactly? Me calling to him like Derivius does or how he senses my spikes in power?”
“Yes, but more than that,” he says. “Your awareness of him. Your focus. Your intent to find him. You are not separate from him in the way you are the other Beginning Gods. He is your father. Your blood. You are a continuation of him. A tether.”
My stomach drops at the seriousness in his tone.
“Like our father,” Amick says. “He senses when we use our power in the Abandon, anytime we say his full name out loud or in our minds. He knows.”
“Correct. Thayla, if you had known who he was, you would have reached for him—consciously or not. And the moment you did, you would have given the realm a path back to him.”
Silence stretches between us as the truth of that statement becomes clearer in my mind.
“By the realm, you mean their father, who hates him, plus any other god who doesn’t care for him.”
“Yes. If you had forged a connection with him before you were truly ready, one of three outcomes would have followed.”
Seismet shifts. “Three?”
V nods once.
“First, you would have drawn him out prematurely, revealing the relationship you share. That would’ve resulted—”
“In her becoming more of a commodity to our father,” Creed growls low.
“Yes.”
A chill spreads through my chest.
“Second,” V continues, “your power would have responded to him because of your relationship. Not gradually. Not safely. It would have all settled at once and he wouldn’t have been able to hold back claiming you in order to get it under control.”
My breath catches. “I wouldn’t have the seven ties I have. I would’ve been a being of Boundaries.”
“That is correct.”
“And the third?” Amick asks.
V’s gaze softens in a way that has the fine hairs along my body standing.
“Every decision you have made up to this point was made without the weight of who he really was. Your anger, need for answers, all of it was aimed at the ungodly man you had in your mind. If you had known, you would have diverted your path. You would have prioritized him over the threats that needed to be faced. You would have trusted differently. Acted differently. Hesitated where you should not have or rushed where patience was required.”
I exhale slowly. “And that would have…what? Obviously, change some things, but what? The guys and me? All our friends?”
“You five are and always will be inevitable. The group you’ve grown close to would be smaller, and…” he trails off, taking a pause long enough that my heart skips a beat.
“What?” I ask.
“Someone would have died, who currently lives. Everything would’ve unraveled.”
That statement slices me across my chest, stealing the air in my lungs.
“Who?”
He ruffles his wings and shakes his head.
I grit my teeth. “Tell me, V.”
“It does not matter now.”
“It matters so much. You’re sitting here telling me that simply by sharing this truth with me, literally everything could’ve changed.
Someone I care about could be dead. That information completely changes the way I feel about you keeping this from me.
Keeping everything you do from me. Tell me who—”
“Derivius.”
My mouth snaps shut and I jerk back. My men fall concerningly still aside for the nearly painful grips they have on me.
“What?” I breathe.
“If this truth had come out and the God of Obliteration, the Goddess of Seduction, or any other would’ve gone after you or your father, more forcefully than they’ve already attempted to, he would’ve stood in their way until he couldn’t stand anymore.
He would’ve been cut down, and the realm would unravel. ”
Valories.
No.
“He…” Riven pauses, swallowing hard. “He’s safe from that fate now, right?”
“No one is safe from that fate until the realm is made right.”
I cover my mouth with my hand and slam my eyes shut. That can’t become a possibility. Not for Derivius, my friends, my men, myself. No one I care about.
“Thayla, I’m sorry that sometimes the choices I make hurt you one way or another. That is never my intention.”
Another voice blares in my mind right after his. Not actually, but my mind conjures up the words as though it knew I needed to be reminded of them at this exact moment.
“Be careful where you place your anger. It is not V’s, Seismet’s, or the God of Chaos’s fault. Some knowledge should never come from them, and it isn’t fair to demand it.”
Gods damn it, Willow.
I swallow hard and peel my eyes open.
“I know it isn’t.” I sigh in my mind, knowing he sent that apology only to me. “Like you said before, sometimes the best choices we make hurt the most. That doesn’t mean I’m okay with the fact you keep secrets from me, but…I do understand. Unfortunately.”
He hoots, then glides up to my shoulder. I lean into him as he nuzzles into my cheek.
“I want to know something, though, V.”
Want…need…I’m not sure which is the truth.
Nor do I know if I can actually handle the truth.
“What’s that?”
“Will—” I clear the rasp from my throat and squeeze my eyes shut. “Will their explanations be the same as yours?”
He hums, waddling down my arm. “I cannot speak for them. But I can tell you this—truth does not behave the same way in every hand.”
My brows scrunch slightly.
“The same knowledge can be harmless in one moment and catastrophic in another,” he continues.
“It depends on timing, intent, and who delivers it. When I withheld what I knew, it was because the consequences were not emotional alone—they were structural. Realm-wide. Interwoven with your lineage, your father, and the balance of forces around you. What would have happened to you, to him, and to the realm would not have been the same simply because someone else spoke it sooner.”
“It’s a dangerous and delicate balance,” Amick mutters, more to himself than anyone else.
The look on his face, though, says he has a deeper understanding of what V said than I do.
“So it wasn’t just about me learning the truth?”
“No,” V says. “It was about when, how, and through whom it enters the realm.”
I don’t know how to feel about that answer. Deep within my chest, something tells me this is his cryptic way of telling me their answers aren’t going to be as realm-altering.
More like, just life-altering for me…