SONS of DON

by Brenda L. Harper

  Then he betrayed her. He’d known all along who she was—what she was—and he lied to her.

  She couldn’t forget that, either.

  “What about?”

  He cocked an eyebrow like it should have been obvious to her.

  “Let me get dressed.”

  She closed to door again without waiting for his reply. One of the perks of having her own bedroom, she didn’t have to explain anything to anyone. That was another new perk of being in the Langleys’ house. Not that it made up for all the lies and the secrets. But it was definitely a perk.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans and a loose t-shirt, her go-to outfit most days of the week. Her auburn hair was a rat’s nest, the natural curls tangled from a night of restless sleep. As she dragged her fingers through it, pulling out as much hair as she managed to untangle, her mind automatically went to that place—I wonder if I got my hair from my mother or my father—but, she supposed, she already knew the answer to that question if she let herself think about it. Obviously, there were no photographs from the Iron Age, but there were multiple drawings of Blodeuwedd in books that contained varying versions of her story. All of them depicted her with long, auburn hair.

  And then there was the vision.

  Gwen had yet to tell anyone about that. But, in light of her new reality, she was pretty sure it hadn’t just been a figment of her imagination. Touching a book she found in Tony’s office had set it off. And, if the fact that the woman in the vision was turned into an owl told her anything, it was clearly a vision of her mother on the day Gwydion cursed her for her role in the attempted murder of his nephew, Lleu.

  That woman had also had long, auburn hair.

  Not that it mattered. Gwen caught a glimpse of herself in the decorative mirror hanging over her desk as she pulled her hair into an old fashioned knot at the back of her head. She’d always been proud of her unique sense of self—a feeling that she depended on no one outside of herself. That hadn’t changed, no matter who her mother might or might not be.

  Mother. It was still such a foreign concept.

  Gwen slipped on her shoes—sensible tennis shoes that probably cost her last foster mother less than twenty bucks—and glanced around the room, as though trying to remember what else she might need, but really it was just an attempt to stall. As much as she appreciated the idea of having powers, it was something altogether different struggling to figure out how to use them.

  Worse than figuring out calculus.

  Or maybe it wasn’t her daily magic lessons that Gwen was trying to avoid. Maybe it was more about avoiding Cei.

  Not that she could. Not anymore.

  There’s one thing you have to understand, Gwen. You are the last chance we will have in breaking this curse. And breaking it means everything, not only to us, but to the world in general. You can see what the imbalance of light and dark has done to the world in the last few hundred years. Look at all the wars, the rise in serial killings, the terrorist groups, the death and destruction that seems to have become so routine people are rarely outraged by it anymore. You are the only one who can change that. You are the only one who can rebalance light and dark, make this world a little less dangerous.

  Cei’s speech was…touching. And scary. And outrageous.

  Whose idea had it been to put that kind of pressure on one teenage girl?

  Save the world, Gwen, and maybe we’ll let you graduate high school and go to college.

  Some deal.

  The knock came again. So impatient.

  She yanked the door open and found herself faced not with Cei, as was expected and almost could have been handled without too much embarrassment, but with Rhein.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I haven’t seen you since…well, since last week.”

  She let her eyes move over his face for a long second, the quickly-growing-familiar blue of his eyes. She felt a blush beginning to spread up her throat to her cheeks. She pushed past him out into the small hallway that stood between her bedroom door and Cei’s.

  “You mean, since I came on to you and then you and Cei told me my mother is a Welsh god?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.”

  He seemed amused. She could hear the laughter in his tone.

  She wasn’t.

  “Where’s Cei? He wanted to talk to me.”

  “He’s waiting downstairs.” Rhein came up behind her; she could feel his presence with every nerve in her body. “I asked if I could talk to you alone first.”

  “That wasn’t necessary.”

  “It was.”

  Rhein grabbed her upper arm and pulled her around. She refused to look at him, her eyes focusing on her own open bedroom door instead of his well-sculptured features that were rivaled only by the thick, ropy muscles in his arms.

  If Cei’s kiss hadn’t sent her over the moon…

  “There’s something you need to know.”

  Gwen’s head came up then. She was learning to dislike it when someone said that phrase to her.

  “What more could there possibly be to tell me?”

  “It’s about Morgan.”

  Gwen’s eyebrows rose as she pictured her other classmate—persistent, handsome, spoiled rich kid. Morgan was in her history class, and he had attempted to sweet talk her into a lunch date on multiple occasions. But he wasn’t even on her radar.

  So why was Rhein bringing him onto it now?

  “What about Morgan?” Gwen lifted her hand, pressed it against Rhein’s chest and almost immediately regretted it—how could a teen boy have such well-defined muscles? But, again, Rhein wasn’t a typical teen. “What does Morgan have to do with all this? Is he immortal, too? Is he supposed to be part of my protection detail? If he is, I hate to say it, but I don’t think he’d be very efficient.”

  “No, Morgan’s not immortal.” The amusement slipped from Rhein’s tone. “He’s more like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “I’m not your protector, Gwen. I’m Morgan’s.”

  Gwen stepped back a little in an attempt to put space between herself and Rhein. Her head was suddenly spinning as she tried to put everything into perspective.

  “Like me?”

  “Yes.”

  “As in, a demigod? As in, his mother is a goddess?”

  Rhein began to say something, but Gwen held up a finger and gestured for him to stay quiet. Again an image of Morgan filled her mind, his handsome, eager face, his insecurity that was almost endearing, but not really.

  “Is he my brother?”

  “No,” Rhein was quick to say, a little smile turning up one corner of his full mouth. “No, definitely not. That would be a little awkward.”

  “It would be a lot awkward.”

  “Morgan’s father is a Welsh god, one you’ve probably never heard of. And his mother is Alicia Cecil.”

  “So he got to stay with his human parent.”

  Rhein inclined his head, acknowledging the unfairness of that statement. “His circumstances were a little different.”

  Gwen stepped back, leaned against the wall as she considered his words. She had wondered a few times since she learned the truth which of her parents had taken care of her the first three years of her life. Had they been together, living like normal people, hiding from this enormous secret? Or had her mother left her with her father, promising to return when the time came to tell Gwen the truth? Was it her mother who abandoned her, or was it her father? Which of them left her outside that restaurant? Which one decided it was the best thing for their unusual child to be left to the mercy of a world grown cruel by the imbalance she was ironically born to correct?

  Compared to Morgan’s situation, the answers to those questions seemed to be more obvious than she cared to admit.

  What kind of a man had her father been? Clearly, not the kind who stuck around.

  “Does he know?”

  “He does now.”

  Gwen glanced at him. “You’ve just tol
d him?”

  “Last week, not long after we told you.”

  “How’d he take it? Better than me, I suppose.”

  “No, not really.” Rhein dragged his fingers through his hair—Paul did that when he was nervous, not that she wanted to think of Paul right now—and sighed as he moved to lean against the wall directly across from her. “He’s got a…complicated relationship with his father. Learning that he really isn’t his father—and then not having the freedom to go to his mother and demand answers—was difficult.”

  “Why couldn’t he talk to his mother?”

  Rhein looked down at the floor, as though struggling to put his thoughts into coherent order. When he looked up at her again it was out of the corner of his eye, his head tilted as though he didn’t want to look at her directly, so that she couldn’t read his expression.

  “It would complicate things. His mother—she likely doesn’t even know that his father was anything but what he appeared to be: a human who was not averse to sleeping with a married woman.”

  “You don’t think she knew?”

  “Alicia is…” Rhein seemed to search for the word. “She’s an innocent. Just the idea that she would cheat on her husband is surprising to me. And to Morgan.”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize she was. If these gods are capable of manifesting objects out of thin air, maybe they can manipulate someone’s perception, too.”

  Rhein met her eye for a brief second. “That’s very possible.”

  Gwen tried to imagine what Morgan was going through—growing up with one set of parents only to learn that they weren’t who he thought they were—but she had trouble empathizing with him. It was hard to put herself in his place when she’d never had half of what he did. Never mind the fact that his father—or stepfather, apparently—was the head of a billion dollar company or that his mother was a well-known, well-liked socialite. He had parents. He had two people who had cared for him in their home for all of his seventeen years.

  Whether they lied to him or not, whether they concealed his true nature, they were still a steady, reliable presence in his life.

  That was more than Gwen had ever had.

  “Why was it so important that you tell me this now?”

  Rhein pushed away from the wall, tension coming into his shoulders that suggested confession time was over.

  “Morgan is beginning to manifest his gifts. I thought—with your permission—that it would be beneficial to him if the two of you work together at mastering your skills.”

  “You want us to train together.”

  “Yes.”

  Gwen brushed a stray piece of hair off her cheek. “What does Cei think of this?”

  Rhein shrugged. “Cei and I have a difficult past. He’s not thrilled.”

  “So he left it up to me?”

  Rhein nodded.

  “Typical.” She pushed away from the wall and headed downstairs without saying anything else. She heard Rhein follow, almost expected him to grab her arm and insist on an answer, but he surprised her by remaining quiet. She found out why when she reached the bottom of the stairs and walked into the living room.

  Morgan was already there.

  He looked tired. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes red-rimmed. He didn’t look up at her when she walked into the room, didn’t even seem to notice her—which was highly unusual in her experience. He was sitting on the edge of the loveseat, staring down at his hands, which were steepled in his lap.

  Melanie, on the other hand, was quite aware of Gwen’s presence. And of Cei’s—he was standing beside the fireplace, pretending not to notice Melanie’s persistent gaze—and of Morgan and Rhein. Gwen had never seen a teenage girl so desperate for male attention before. She would have come on to all three at the same time if she had thought it possible.

  Gwen took a seat beside Morgan and touched his arm lightly.

  “Hey.”

  He glanced at her. “Hey.”

  She didn’t know what else to say. The great art of conversation had always been somewhat lost on her. How did one console someone who was barely an acquaintance and who just happened to be a demigod like you?

  Sucks to be us?

  “We need to get going,” Cei announced, all proper and responsible.

  “Where are you going?” Melanie asked.

  Rhein glanced at her, but no one answered her.

  Morgan shuddered a little as he pulled his hands together, interlacing his fingers and pressing his palms together, almost like he was trying to make a double fist. There was a spark that was visible to Gwen—she wasn’t sure if anyone else saw it—that seemed to be a product of the friction of his palms rubbing together. Gwen lay a hand over his and felt a slight shock as that spark seemed to seep into her flesh and dissipate.

  She’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t something she could do.

  “Morgan?”

  He shuddered again, then quickly stood, nearly pushing Gwen onto her side as he did. He stormed from the room and, in a second, Gwen heard the front door slam. Rhein exchanged glances with Cei before he followed.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Melanie asked.

  Once again, no one answered her.

  Cei followed Rhein, leaving Gwen alone with Melanie. That was never a good idea. Melanie thought that Cei was hers and Gwen was trying to steal him away. For that reason, she tended to stare daggers into Gwen whenever they were in the same room together, and took every opportunity to insult her or attempt to get her into trouble. Not that her crush on Cei stopped her from looking at Morgan and Rhein, too. Melanie was an equal opportunity crusher—every cute guy who walked through the door was hers until she said otherwise.

  That sort of juvenile attitude had never been a part of Gwen’s reality. And she had little patience for it in Melanie.

  “You must think you’re something special, what with the way Cei’s always following you around everywhere you go.”

  Gwen bit back a sigh as she climbed to her feet. “It’s not what you think.”

  “I’m sure it’s not. Like everyone in this house doesn’t know that you’ve been sneaking into his room at night.”

  Twice. Gwen had gone into Cei’s room twice for a little bit of comfort. Of course, the whole world found out about somehow—Gwen didn’t even want to think of the ways in which Richie, her little foster brother, might have stumbled upon the truth. And everyone jumped to the conclusion that they were doing something they shouldn’t have been, which wasn’t true. Not really. Just that one night…but that was before she found out about the lies he’d told her.

  “I’m not into him that way,” Gwen said simply. “If you like him, you should probably tell him.”

  Melanie rolled her eyes. “And look like a fool? No, thank you.”

  “Whatever. But you can’t blame his disinterest on me if you never bothered to tell him.”

  Not that her constant staring and fawning over him didn’t tell him. Gwen wondered what would happen if she told Melanie that Cei was nearly two thousand years old…much too old to find anything about a teenager interesting. It would probably blow a few cells in her hormone-soaked teenager’s brain.

  Gwen walked away before Melanie could say anything else. She found the boys standing on the front lawn, Rhein and Cei facing Morgan like he was a rabid dog about to attack. And he did look a little unstable, the way he was pacing, the way he kept shaking his head, like he was trying to rid it of information that had turned his entire world upside down.

  Gwen knew exactly what he was going through.

  “You can’t just ignore what is real,” Rhein said. “This won’t go away, no matter how hard you deny it.”

  “We have to train you,” Cei added. “If we don’t, you might hurt someone.”

  “Guys.” Gwen walked between the two immortals and approached Morgan despite Cei whispering, “Not a good idea.” Morgan saw her coming and backed up, nearly ramming his back into a tree as he tried to keep a little distance between
them.

  “I know all of this sounds crazy. I actually thought I was going insane when that tree—you know that big oak tree behind the school?—when it began talking to me. I thought there must be some sort of schizo disorder in my genetic past and prayed that I could only last until high school ended so I wouldn’t end up in some state-sponsored mental institute.”

  Morgan focused on her. “Really?”

  “Yes. Can you imagine, having a tree wish you a good afternoon? How crazy is that?”

  “Pretty crazy.” He looked down at his hands. “But not as crazy as having sparks of electricity just suddenly shoot from your fingertips.”

  “What about the ability to heal a plant? Or to make a weapon suddenly appear in your hand?”

  Morgan’s head came up. “You can do that?”

  “I did that.”

  He bit his lip so hard that, for a moment, Gwen thought he might bite all the way through. Then his gaze moved to Rhein and Cei. “Or finding out that your best friend is immortal and only became your friend because he knew what you are.”