She looked at each and every one of her table companions. Their eyes were lowered, like they were holding a moment of silence for a fallen comrade.
Lorelai eventually broke the silence. "So, about this prophecy and the reason you stabbed us in the back?"
"Lorelai!"
"No, no, Grandma. If I'm going to die, I want to know why."
"There are signs that indicate the beginning of a prophecy coming true. In the case of Agatha's, these signs were a royal betrayal, a Guardian sacrifice and a blood union, all concentrated in a five-year period of time."
Everyone looked at him, waiting for him to continue. Iris glimpsed at the Elwoods. They were clearly browsing all the major events in their past, trying to identify those three critical ones.
Aeryn was the first to speak. "We haven't had any king who has been betrayed by anyone in the past two hundred years since Agatha made her prophecy."
"No, but we have had a king who betrayed the country."
"King Lu Ahn," Connor whispered.
Raven's father, thought Iris.
"The boy helping Dorian—" Lorelai said.
"He's the Crown Prince, yes. I had Dorian break him out of a prison in the Sahara desert."
"What the hell for?"
"He's one of those who will play a critical role in the fulfillment of the prophecy."
"Are you saying that Raven is one of the Fae that will bring down the Council?"
"Yes."
For a few moments no one said a word. Then Lorelai went on. "Okay, so what about the other two signs? Actually, just the last one—the blood union. I guess we all know who the sacrificed Guardians are."
"What do you mean?" Cyrus seemed genuinely confused.
"Come on. We failed to protect the Amulet. We all know how this story is going to end."
"Someone will have to answer for your incompetence, yes."
None of the Elwoods even blinked at Cyrus' words. They all knew they would be punished for letting the Fountain be summoned. They'd been trained to accept the consequences of their failures. Iris knew that. She'd heard it countless times. And yet it didn't make things any less heartbreaking.
Cyrus went on. "However, you're not the Guardians that Agatha was referring to. Like I said, the three signs must happen in a five-year period. King Lu Ahn was dethroned eighteen years ago."
"So who was she talking about?" Lorelai asked.
"Dorian's parents."
"What?!" Connor and Lorelai both jerked at the same time.
Aeryn just raised her eyes, staring at Cyrus. Iris had the feeling that the woman wasn't as surprised as her grandchildren by what Cyrus had just said. He on the other hand, was. "You haven't told them?"
"What's he talking about, Grandma?" Connor asked.
Cyrus answered in Aeryn's place. "Your grandmother knew them. Your parents did too. I would go as far as to say they were friends. At least up until Kieran and Mara Reed decided to break the law."
Connor and Lorelai looked at Aeryn as if she were a complete stranger. Iris was just as shocked as they were. She remembered something Connor had said to her when she asked him why Aeryn went to so much trouble to take Dorian in. I have no idea and she always refused to talk about it, even if Lorelai and I insisted that she told us why we were risking our lives to protect a couple of teenage strangers.
"How did they break the law?" Lorelai asked.
"Dorian's parents were Guardians. Kieran, his father, discovered the identity of a Traveler close to the Fountain that he was protecting and, not only did he not report it to the Council, but he actually performed a blood union between their children."
"What?"
"Kieran was one of the many Fae who secretly believed in Agatha's prophecy. He thought that the reason the prophecy spoke of a blood union between a Guardian and a Traveler was because it would make them both stronger. A blood tie between them would allow them to draw power from each other and have better chances of success in the final battle."
"How did the Council find out about it?" Aeryn asked.
"The Reeds' supervisor, a former colleague of mine, Alistair, came for a routine visit. It was the children's third birthday. They were playing in the garden. At one point they tried to grab hold of the same toy and their hands touched. There was a spark and the toy caught fire. That's when Alistair knew that there was an unnatural bond between them. The Guardians were trained so they managed to withstand the mind reading. Unfortunately, the child Traveler's father was not as strong. A few hours later the Council troupes marched in and tried to arrest the Reeds for treason. We sent a few dozen men to try to save them and help them flee but they were too late. In the commotion, Dorian was kidnapped and the rest of the two families were killed. His parents fought to their deaths trying to protect the Traveler."
"The Guardian sacrifice," Connor said, mostly to himself.
Iris ran her trembling fingers over her wet cheeks. No wonder Dorian had so much rage in him. It was impossible for one person to carry that much heartache and not be affected by it.
"Does Dorian know all this?" Aeryn asked.
"No. He thinks his parents were Dark Fae."
"Why does he think that the man who kidnapped him worked for the Council then?" Connor asked.
"Because he most likely did. Since Agatha made her prophecy, the Council has been taking steps to ensure its survival in case of an attack. The national army has doubled, the punishments for even the smallest crimes have become preposterous to drive the people into submission, and the greatest warriors from every kingdom have been recruited to serve the Council and the Council only. But these were only the official steps. There have been rumors about a secret project that the Council put together. According to these rumors, the Council has been hiring a series of mercenaries to find Travelers without summoning the Fountains. These mercenaries would test and train the Travelers."
"Train them to do what?" Lorelai asked.
"We all know that Travelers can only make one journey. If they bring back a soul from the land of the dead into that of the living, they have to leave a soul in its place to preserve the balance between the two worlds. However, a few decades ago, a brilliant mind came up with an idea to get the Travelers to cross over multiple times."
"How?"
"We think that the Traveler's soul is tricked into staying on the other side with images of their loved ones. But if the Traveler has no emotional attachments..."
"He can go back and forth as many times as he wants," Connor concluded.
"But why? Why have them travel so many times?" Lorelai asked.
"To bring back fallen warriors. The Council is building a secret elite army to defend it against the rebels. And it's using mercenaries to do it."
"Like the one who took Dorian," said Iris.
"Probably."
"But why take Dorian? He was the son of the Guardians," asked Connor.
"The man must have assumed that the parents had switched the children at birth to protect the Traveler."
"Why would he assume that?" Aeryn asked.
"Because the other child was a girl."
The Elwoods jerked. Aeryn stared at Cyrus. "Are you sure?"
"What? Why is that so impossible to believe?" Iris asked, shifting her eyes from one person to the next.
It was Aeryn who explained. "There has never been a record of a female Traveler. We assume that either they are all born male or they die in the first years of life."
"Why would they die?" Iris asked.
"One of the few ways we can identify a Traveler without actually summoning the Fountain is through his terrible nightmares. From our records, they're flashes from the Land of the Dead. He starts having them very early in life, usually at around three years of age, and as he grows up they increase in number and intensity. As girls are considered more sensitive, they are generally more affected by these images. Their minds usually break and they remain stuck in the dream world, in an endless vivid nightmare. Eventually they all die
in their sleep."
Iris was overwhelmed with sadness, listening to Aeryn's words. She remembered her father, the way he'd taught her to calm down every time she'd wake up screaming from one of her own nightmares.
"What happened to the Traveler?" Aeryn asked.
"She died in the altercation with the rest of the families."
There was a moment of silence, then Lorelai spoke. "You said that these signs point out key players in the fulfillment of the prophecy. Are you saying Dorian is one of these key players?"
"Yes," Cyrus said. "He's one half of the blood bond."
Lorelai got up and leaned forward, her palms on the table, the tips of her fingers white as butter. A thick vein was pulsing in her temple. When she spoke, her words came out like the bullets of a semiautomatic gun. "You let him take the Amulet from us, signing our death sentences, based on the ramblings of a madwoman who may or may not have seen the end of the world. You sacrificed us for him. He's a murderer."
"He is important. But you are too blinded by your personal feelings towards him to see this."
"Why us? Why this Fountain?"
"I don't know. Agatha said it had to be Dorian and it had to be this Fountain, on this Harvest Supermoon."
"That's ridiculous. You're a wise man, Cyrus. You can't bet your entire life on one person's words."
"He may not know it yet, but Dorian was meant to be a Guardian. He may be a murderer, as you say, but seeing the things he's been through, what he's overcome… I didn't believe Agatha either when she sent me to find Dorian five years ago and set him on this path. When I met him, I didn't think he was any more useful than a piece of wet wood in winter. But I was wrong. He's strong and relentless. He survived the Scarab of Azra."
"What's that?" asked Iris.
Aeryn clarified. "It's a very poisonous bug that, if you survive its sting, gives you a certain amount of immunity to cold iron. But the process is excruciating and the few survivors throughout history describe it as similar to being burned alive."
Connor leaned back in his seat. "Clearly, Dorian didn't know about any of this, otherwise he wouldn't have stabbed you in the back like he did. What I don't understand is, why keep him in the dark?"
"Dorian is a wild card. You never know which way he'll go. The only way to control him is to give him a purpose, something to fight for. At the time, the only thing he cared about was finding the last member in the bloodline of the person who was responsible for his parents' deaths. Had he known that that person was actually the Council of Seven, he would have gone off the rails. I couldn't afford that. If you want to defeat the Council you need a well-executed plan, not brute force. That's why I chose not to tell him anything about this."
"Well, that went well," Connor said.
A deep vertical line formed between Cyrus' eyebrows. "Yes. I'm not quite sure how to proceed from here. Dorian was supposed to find the Traveler. Instead, he found the human. I don't understand how that's possible."
"Oh, I think I might be able to help answer that," a voice resounded from the corner of the mansion and everyone turned their heads at the same time to see who the uninvited guest was.
Kane was the last person anyone would have ever expected to see anywhere outside the Underground Society, let alone at the Elwood mansion.
Connor jumped to his feet. "What are you doing here?"
Kane smiled as he pulled a chair and sat at the table. "This is a memorable moment that even I couldn't miss out on. I get to see the Guardians crumble, witness the beginning of the Council's fall and meet an old friend." He turned to Cyrus. "Hello, old fart. How long has it been?"
Cyrus cleared his throat. "Not long enough."
Kane chuckled as he shifted his eyes to each and every one of them. "Ah, my sister really knows how to scheme a plot, doesn't she?"
Lorelai frowned. "Your sister?"
"Agatha." He paused for effect, letting the others enough time to digest what he'd said and close their mouths. "You're surprised, I know. We don't speak much these days, she and I. She seems to have a problem with the way I… connect to those around me."
Connor sat back down and sank his nails into the armrests of his chair. "Why are you here, Kane?"
"I believe you need someone to connect the dots for you, in the eve of what happened with Dorian and the Fountain."
"You knew that this was going to happen. You knew that Dorian was here to summon the Fountain."
"I'm surprised by your surprise. Of course I knew. I knew it the moment he came to me to ask me for the underground tunnel plans. I didn't even have to read into his past. Why else would someone want those if not to find out possible escape routes out of the mansion in case of… say… an invasion?"
"You planned that?"
"I did. Although Dorian and I weren't working together, our goals were aligned. At first. I had no idea that he was going to change his mind about the question. I wanted him to summon the Traveler and, yes, I took some steps to facilitate things for him. Like creating a sure-fire way to get the Amulet out of the house. Now, if we could please skip the curses and subsequent glares filled with indignation and move on to more pressing matters…" He turned to Iris. "May I?" He took her hand and rolled up her sleeve, revealing her gold and silver bracelet. With careful hands, he took it off and handed it to Aeryn. "Tell me, what do you see?"
The woman took the bracelet and rolled it between her fingers, analyzing it on all sides. "It's a simple bracelet made of gold and silver."
"Look closer," he insisted.
Aeryn lifted her hand and inspected the bracelet again. Her eyes grew wider and wider. "It's… It's made of golden thread." She ran her finger up and down a small segment of the bracelet. "And not just any kind of gold. Aldera gold."
Everyone around the table was quiet and still as a statue. They were all holding their breaths, waiting for the next revelation.
Kane was the only one smiling. His face betrayed a clear note of satisfaction. "Now try to ignore the silver part."
"It's a binding thread," said Aeryn.
"What's a binding thread?" asked Iris.
"It's used in blood bond ceremonies. The golden thread is tied around the wrists of two people to merge their bloods and forge a bond. Where did you get this?"
"It belonged to my mother. I think my father gave it to her as a gift when she was pregnant."
"Where would he get a binding thread?" said Aeryn, more to herself.
Kane stepped in. "Like I said, my sister, ever the visionary." He took the bracelet from Aeryn. "This, my dear frenemies, is not just any binding thread. It's the binding thread. The one that was used to forge the blood bond between Dorian and the baby Traveler, eighteen years ago."
Iris looked at each and every one at the table. They couldn't have looked more shocked if they'd been slapped in the face.
Kane turned to Iris. "I had my suspicions about your special abilities when I looked through Dorian's memories and saw you chase away the hound for the first time. That's why I wanted to meet you so badly. But then, when you came to me and I saw the bracelet… that's when my curiosity was truly peaked. I really wanted to know how and why a human would come into possession of something so unique. I had a feeling that my sister was involved but, since she was nowhere to be found, I was forced to investigate it myself. After I looked into your past… I hope that wasn't such an unpleasant experience, darling. I tried to be as gentle as I could…" Iris remembered the pressure in her head as Kane was sifting through her memories. She shuddered but didn't say a word. He went on. "As I was saying… When I looked into your past and saw that you had no idea about the bracelet and what it was, I politely asked Dr. Campbell to provide me with your mother's medical records. As it turns out, she had some problems a few months into the pregnancy. For a while, the doctors couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat."
Everyone was silent. Iris couldn't move. Like the others, she'd had no idea about her mother's difficult pregnancy. As Kane's words sank in, she realized that
for a short while she was…
Cyrus broke her train of thought. When she raised her eyes to look at him, his expression sent shivers down her spine. "You can't possibly mean that—"
"That Olivia and John Davenport's unborn child died, and the bracelet, which I assume my sister gave to them, worked as an anchor that summoned the soul of the Traveler that Dorian had been tied to? That is exactly what I mean."
"Then—"
"Technically, Iris is the Traveler that the Reeds died to protect seventeen years ago."
Iris was lightheaded. The faces of everyone around her began to dance in front of her eyes, like a nauseating kaleidoscope of lights and shadows. She could hear them argue with each other but she couldn't understand what they were saying. Their voices were distorted and sounded like they were coming from far, far away. There was a ringing in her ears that made her head hurt. She was suffocating. She tried to get up but her legs refused to hold her and she fell back in her chair.
She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to that state of complete and utter weariness, almost sure that she was going to faint. And yet, after a while, the voices started to become clearer and clearer, until she could actually identify their rightful owners again and understand what they were saying.
Lorelai's voice was too high-pitched even for her. "Do you seriously expect us to believe all this nonsense you've just spouted?"
Kane seemed unfazed. "It's all true and denying it won't make it any less so."
"Then explain to us how. How is that possible?"
"The bracelet contained traces of the blood from the original bond, meaning both Dorian's and the Traveler's. The moment Olivia Davenport put it on her wrist, some of the original blood was transferred to her and, subsequently, to her unborn child. When the child died and the soul left the body, the bracelet activated itself and summoned the soul of the original Traveler."
The Fountain of Truth (Tales of the Dark Fae Book 1) Page 31
