Seeker’s World
Page 21
I strode forward until I came to the door, but before I had a chance to knock, it opened inward to reveal a small, white-haired woman staring me in the face.
“I was expecting you, Vega dear,” she said. “Though perhaps not this soon.”
“Nana,” I said, a sob forming in my throat as I threw my arms around her.
“It’s all right,” she replied, patting my back. “Come in for some tea, and tell me what’s happened.”
I followed her in and sat down at the kitchen table while she put the kettle on. In my haste to fill her in, it took me all of two minutes to explain what had happened—my turning into a Shadow, the drones, the abduction. The only part I didn’t tell her about was Callum.
“So, the Usurper Queen knows what you are,” my grandmother said, turning to me with a raised eyebrow. “She’s right to be frightened of you, you know.”
“Frightened of me? What, because I can call up doors and turn into smoke?”
Nana shook her head. “You can do so much more than that,” she said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
I narrowed my eyes and chewed my lip for a moment. The question was hard to ask, but at this point, I had no other choice.
“Nana—who is my grandfather?”
My grandmother pressed her hands onto the counter and leaned back, rocking on her heels. “It’s so strange,” she said. “I’ve known for years that this question would come. Your father never knew that the man who raised him was a stepfather, of course. Never suspected a thing. As far as he was concerned, the fisherman he knew so well was his flesh and blood.”
“But he wasn’t, of course,” I said.
Nana shook her head. “No.” When the kettle began whistling, she turned around and turned the heat off. “When I was a little older than you,” she said, twisting back around, “I fell madly in love with a very gifted young man.”
“That was the scandal. The one they talk about at the Academy.”
She nodded. “They still talk about it, do they? Bunch of gossips.” She let out a chuckle. “I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising. They all think I ran off with a Waerg, or worse. It’s very exciting to them, I’m sure, to think I might have carried the enemy’s baby.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Of course not,” Nana said, flapping a tea towel in my direction like she was swatting at a fly. “I only told them I did. You see, the man I loved was someone important, and I knew it. When I discovered I was going to have his child, I knew if I allowed his reputation to be destroyed, I would be destroying all his potential in one go. I couldn’t do that, so naturally, I made up a story about falling for the enemy. I protected him and returned to Cornwall in shame. But I didn’t care. I received the most wonderful gift in the end. I got your father in the bargain.”
“Who…who was the man? I really need to know.”
“He was the most handsome creature. And so skilled in the ways of magic. He was the best the Academy had ever seen. In fact, they didn’t know how to classify him—red, blue, green—so they gave him his own color.”
I was about to ask what she meant when my mouth dropped open.
“Purple,” I breathed.
“Purple,” she echoed. “Purple for the wizard who turned to shadow when called upon. The wizard who could summon protective spells, who could make flowers grow on stone. The wizard who would one day run the Academy for the Blood-Born.”
“Merriwether…is my grandfather?” I gasped.
He’d never let on. Yet there was something in his eye when he looked at me. Something familiar, protective. I’d felt an attachment to him the first moment we’d met, but I hadn’t known why.
“He is indeed your grandfather. He knows it, too. When he learned of the pregnancy, he followed me here, you see. He wanted to stay with me, to raise our child. To marry me. He is such a good man, and noble, too.”
“You said no?” I asked.
“Of course I did.”
“But why?”
Instead of answering right away, my grandmother walked over to a nearby cupboard, pulled out two cups and saucers, and set them down on the table in front of me.
“Because I loved him too much to let him wither in front of my eyes.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was never meant to stay here. He began to age quickly in this place. A year, over the course of days. Then two years over an hour, and so it accelerated. I could see it happening—his hair turning gray, his back beginning to hunch. I couldn’t bear the thought that I was stealing time from him. I was stealing his life.”
“Is that what happens to everyone who leaves the Otherwhere?” I asked. I hardly dared think of Callum ever following me to Fairhaven to be with me. But if he did, I couldn’t bear the thought of him aging so quickly and possibly dying so soon.
Nana shook her head. “I don’t know. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay in the Otherwhere and raise his baby, as the Academy would have expelled him. And he couldn’t stay here. So he stayed just long enough to grow old with me even as I stayed young, and then we said goodbye. When he went back, he told them he’d tried to persuade me to tell him who the father was, but to no avail. They were shocked by his rapid aging, but it seems they were willing to overlook it, as they made him head of the Academy. The good news, I suppose, is that it sounds like he’s stabilized over the years.”
I nodded. “But you saw him again, right? He told me he saw you a few years after you found the Relics.”
“Yes, he came to visit just once. I’d met your other grandfather by then, and Merriwether saw that we were settling down. He wished me well and left again.”
She shot me a focused look. “Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, let’s talk about the reason you’re really here. You came here looking for my blessing, didn’t you?”
“Your blessing?”
“To go after the queen yourself.”
I clenched my jaw and stared at my hands, which were tightly locked on the table in front of me. “I guess I did,” I said. “But I really just wanted to know who my grandfather was. I wanted to know if there was a chance I was as strong as people say I am. Because right now, I’m feeling pretty weak.”
“I suspect, Vega dear, you’ll find you’re far stronger than anyone ever imagined.”
Her words gave me the strength to pull myself to my feet. “Do you think I can get them back? Will and Liv, I mean? Do you think I can save them?”
“I think,” Nana said, “that if anyone in this world has a chance of doing exactly that, it’s you.”
“Thank you, Nana,” I said, rising to my feet to circle the table and give her a hug.
“You’re welcome. Now go. Finish what you started.”
With a nod, I closed my eyes and called forth the door that would lead me to the woman known as the Usurper Queen.
End of Book One
Seeker’s Quest, Coming Soon!
Seeker’s World, Book Two: Seeker’s Quest
Excerpt:
I sat on the cold floor, my knees pulled up under my chin, my arms wrapped tight around my legs as if tucking myself into a tight little ball would protect me from the horror to come. The only light in the small cell came from a tiny window, crisscrossed by thick iron bars, twenty or so feet above me.
It must have been late afternoon by now, though I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that the guards were going to bring me to the throne room sometime that night. It was there, they told me through a series of mocking smiles, that the one they called the Mistress would decide my fate.
I guess I should have been thinking about every regret I’d ever had. Or about the feeling of loss that came from knowing I’d never see my family, friends, or home again. Maybe I should have just curled into a pathetic ball and let myself drown in the sea of fear and anxiety surging its way into the dank prison of foul air and impenetrable stone.
But at the moment, all I could think about was the boy with the bright eyes and the magical voice. I
wanted him to be my saving grace, my lifeline, my light at the end of a terrifying tunnel.
I closed my eyes and repeated his name softly, over and over again to summon him, even though I knew it was an impossible wish.
He wouldn’t come for me.
No one would.
I was alone with no heroic prince racing to save me, no merciful lord to offer me a stay of execution, and only myself to rely on.
I had to hope that this time, I would be enough.
Also by K. A. Riley
Seeker’s World Series:
Seeker’s World
Seeker’s Quest
Seeker’s Fate
Resistance Trilogy:
Recruitment
Render
Rebellion
Emergents Trilogy (same world as Resistance Trilogy)
Survival (Available for Pre-order)
Sacrifice (Coming Soon!)
Synthesis (Coming Soon!)
Athena’s Law Series:
Book One: Rise of the Inciters
Book Two: Into an Unholy Land
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