26. Thayla
Thayla
I don’t move. I haven’t moved.
I’m sitting on the couch where Kyzen placed me. He didn’t tell me what to do with myself, so I’ve just…sat here. It’s been three hours.
It feels wrong in a way I can’t explain.
Every time my gaze drifts to V’s nook above the fireplace, my hands shake. Pale smears of his blood still cover them.
I can’t bring myself to wash.
When I glance at Creed’s open bedroom door, my soul thrashes uncontrollably. He still hasn’t woken up, and the fears plaguing my mind keep whispering that he isn’t going to.
Riven and Derivius haven’t left his bedside since we got home. Amick and Kyzen take turns sitting in there and checking on me.
I can’t bring myself to walk in. I’ll crumble again.
So I sit here and…think.
No matter what thought comes, it gets swept away by the what-ifs. Something inside me keeps reaching for a moment that isn’t there. Like if I think hard enough, I’ll find the second where everything could’ve changed and undo it.
But there isn’t one. Even if there were, I can’t undo anything.
The kitchen is full of quiet movement.
Careful voices. Mugs clanking. Chairs shifting without scraping. It’s the kind of presence people offer when they don’t know what else to give you.
No one is pretending this is normal. No one is pretending we’re fine. No one has tried to fix anything.
They’re just there.
Everyone who went with us to the Abandon came back here with us.
Except for one.
My eyes slam shut, and I shake my head.
I can’t even find it in myself right now to care that Gladian is sitting at my dining room table. For a man who fucked up so royally, the issues I have with him seem so small in comparison.
Maybe I’ll just whip him in return, then we can call it even.
A small grunt vibrates in my throat at the thought.
What a horrible thing to think. That’s not who I am.
Or maybe that’s exactly who I’m becoming.
That’s who the realm is shaping me into.
No. I refuse it.
My chest tightens around…emptiness. I loathe the feeling more than I can explain. I’ve felt it so many times in my life. I thought after this last week, this type of grief would never find me again.
Yet here I am, facing an absence that hasn’t decided what shape it wants to take. I mourn, although I don’t truly know what I’ve lost.
My body knows something has ended, but my mind hasn’t accepted it.
My gaze stays fixed on Creed’s door as if staring alone will wake him. I want so badly to go in there. I want to get up, walk across the room, crawl into his sheets, and lie beside him.
I can’t. I can’t get up.
My eyes blink as Kyzen, Riven, and Derivius come barreling through the threshold at the same time, and hope rises in me like a wave.
My fingers dig into the couch cushions as I hold my breath, waiting for them to say he’s awake.
They don’t. They don’t even glance at me.
“Is he dead?” Riven asks.
I shift my attention to where they’ve stopped three steps away from Creed’s door.
“No. The realm would know if he were. He’s hurt, though. Pretty badly. That’s going to buy us some time before he plans his retaliation. We can’t pretend that won’t happen. That mistake would cost us greatly.”
Cost us…
Like we haven’t lost enough already.
“I’m going to kill him. So you better think long and hard now, dear Consequence, about how to save the realm after that happens.”
Meridamus hangs his head at Riven’s cruel words.
“That isn’t going to happen. Today, tomorrow, ever. The consequences are beyond any of your understanding.”
“They’re beyond even your own,” Amick says. “You know no better than the rest of us. You fear an outcome you can’t even see.”
“Yes, I do. What I do see is the true descent of the realm, and we’ve all sacrificed too much to throw it away. Kira will be punished, but it will have to be in a way that doesn’t destroy the realm. For now, we figure out the next steps moving forward.”
The next steps…
Moving forward…
It sounds too much like moving on.
“Is that all you have to say?”
The house falls eerily quiet, and my ears ring as I rise from the couch on unsteady legs. My skin heats as every eye turns toward me.
Meridamus frowns.
“What do you mean?”
“After everything…” I mumble, glancing at V’s nook, then Creed’s room. “Everything that happened today. How do you just come in here, ready to discuss the next strategy? The next plan?”
“Because we have to consider the consequences of what comes next, Thayla. Kira is hurt, yes, but he’s now more than aware you possess multiple Bindings.
He’s going to do whatever he can to get his back.
After the arguments in the Neutral, followed by him returning home to find you all there, he’ll easily put together that Val has chosen to stand with you.
We have to prepare for the consequences of our actions. ”
Consequences. Consequences. Consequences.
“What about the consequences of your actions?” I ask quietly.
The only reason I know I said it aloud is because his brows furrow.
“I know the truth, Meridamus. At least some of it.”
His face falls blank, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.
His unblinking gaze holds mine.
“You. You’re the god who told him to enter me into the Veiling.”
My words come out sharp and sure.
Riven, Kyzen, and Amick all turn toward him at once. Neither Val nor Derivius moves. Meridamus takes a single step forward, holding his hands up like he comes in fucking peace.
“Thayla, I need to explain.”
“You’re going to explain,” I snap.
My voice cracks through the room harder than I expected, and something inside me flares hotter.
“You’re going to explain why you woke up one day and flipped my entire fucking life around.”
My pulse is no longer sluggish, and my power reacts beneath my skin like it’s trying to decide whether to rise or collapse inward.
“You’re going to explain how and why the hell you had custody of the God of Obliteration and the Goddess of Seduction’s son. You’re going to—”
“What?”
The air leaves my lungs as I jerk back a step. Their combined shout echoes through the house, drowning out the multiple gasps behind me. I run my gaze over the shock written across Amick’s, Riven’s, and Kyzen’s faces.
I swallow.
“Mellcom is not Meridamus’s son. He’s the fifth son of Obliteration. He’s…”
I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t have to.
They know exactly what it means.
My gaze swings to Derivius. He still has no clue about everything we spoke about in his temple that drunken night. He knows now that he hinted at that fact for me.
“The fuck he is. No. Absolutely not,” Riven says, shaking his head and crossing his arms.
I wish that were true.
My eyes soften on him as much as I can force them to. He sees the truth in the strain across every inch of me.
“Explain. Now,” Amick commands.
“There’s not much to explain,” Meridamus says. “It’s true. Mellcom is their biological son.”
A bitter laugh breaks out of me.
“Not much to explain,” I repeat, shaking my head. “How did you end up with him?”
“Thayla—”
“No.”
The word cracks through the room as I spare my father a glance. My hand lifts again, pointing straight at Meridamus like it can pin him in place.
“You don’t get to preach about consequences and not confess to your actions that led to some of them.”
He exhales through his nose, and something sharp passes over his expression.
“You want the truth?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question. “You want to know how it happened?”
His hands lift slightly, not in defense, but in surrender to it.
A second passes as I hold his stare, and he gives me one nod.
“We—your father and I—broke into Sabe’s house the night he was born. We took him right from his crib.”
The words hit me square in the chest, and my gaze bounces across the two of them. I don’t say a fucking word, though. Meridamus’s eyes grow distant as though he’s stepped into the memory.
“We took him straight to Oddian, to the house I raised him in. Val watched over him, while I returned to Sabe and crawled into bed beside her. I was there when she woke and realized her child was gone.”
His jaw tightens.
“What came after…” he mutters. “You don’t want the list of names. You don’t want the accounts. The death. The destruction. You don’t want the cost broken down into something you can understand.”
His eyes lift to mine, and the pure…I don’t know what that is. It’s not only regret, guilt, or acceptance, but maybe a little of each.
“I have lived with every single consequence of that night. I’d live them all over again if I had to. The five of them could not be raised together.”
My men shift, but the scowls on their faces don’t.
“That’s why that sick bitch was always obsessed with being someone’s mother,” Riven says, sneering.
“Don’t call her—”
“Don’t you fucking tell me what I can and can’t call her.
She didn’t chain you to a platform and whip you.
Nor did she use your power to make people rape each other.
She did that to me,” Riven shouts, taking a dangerous step toward Meridamus.
“I have no doubt what you did loosened a fucking screw in her mind, but that didn’t turn her into the person she is. She was a monster way before then.”
My attention flicks to Derivius once again. His lips lie flat like he really wants to put his two cents in but doesn’t.
Meridamus exhales hard as he runs his hand down his face.
“When her conception didn’t take the same time Rella’s and Creation’s did, Derivius and I did everything we could to prevent Sabe from trying again. We got away with it for two years. Once she was pregnant, there was nothing we could’ve done differently.”
“Why didn’t you all want the five of us to be raised together?” Amick asks.
I ball my fists at my sides.
“The prophecy.”
He stares at me intently, hanging on to every word that leaves my lips as I repeat everything Mellcom said to me in the Veil. It doesn’t take more than that for understanding to dawn across everyone.
“Sabe never figured out it was you two?” I ask.
Meridamus and my father shake their heads.