by Juniper King
“What?” I interrupted. “Now my mother’s involved too? Why would she take me just to abandon me at an orphanage in another town?”
Aksel held up a hand. “It’s a good question, and we’ll get to it shortly,” he ensured. “The man said your mother ran away with you right before you were born. He said your father was devastated, he had no idea where she’d taken you, or if you were even alive, but now that he knew about you, he wanted you brought back.”
A silence stretched through the tent like they were waiting for my reaction, but other than the involvement of my mother, I was at a loss.
That was it? That didn’t sound like such an unusual story, just a father looking for his long-lost daughter. It certainly wasn’t out of the ordinary enough to justify everything that had happened to me since Aksel and Ayre walked into my life.
Raen had suggested through all his ramblings that it was my father who was the daemon, but their story made it sound more like my mother was the daemon and my father was just a human man who wanted the chance to meet his daughter. Either way, it sounded like more than just a one-night stand with a daemon, like there was some kind of relationship between my mother and father, or else how would my father have known I’d even been conceived?
But wait. “‘Now that he knew about me’? How did he find me after twenty-four years?”
Aksel leaned over and reached into his pack in the corner of the tent. Fishing through the pockets, he pulled out a folded up and crumpled piece of paper and handed it to me. The texture of it felt thick and I guessed at one point it had been glossy—like photographic paper. I gingerly flattened it out and leaned into the light to see it properly.
Any thoughts I’d been mulling over immediately froze in my mind. “How did you get this?” My voice was weak, I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo.
The quality was slightly blurry, as if the person taking it hadn’t taken the time to appropriately focus the image; as if they’d been in a hurry.
Branek never had an official dress code at his tavern, but in the photo it was clear that I was wearing summer attire and my hair was quite a bit shorter. This photo was taken last summer.
To anyone else it might have just been a normal, low-quality photo of me in The Sluggish Nymph collecting some empty tankards off a table, but I knew it was something more sinister than some creep taking a photo of me as a keepsake. Someone had discreetly taken a photo of me and given it to mercenaries so they could track me down. With this photo I went from being an ordinary bar maid to an object, the target of a job.
“From the man in the tavern,” said Aksel, jerking me out of my memories. “He gave us the picture and told us where we could find you.”
“Was he stalking me? How did he know who I was or what I looked like? He’d said my father had never even seen me as a baby, if his story is to be believed. And why didn’t my father come to see me sooner if he knew where I was… this photo was taken last summer! Why did he create a job for mercs and want me brought to him and instead of just coming to me?” Had my father taken the photo or had it been someone else? How long had I been followed? The world was beginning to tilt around me, and my breathing began to stutter and hitch.
Aksel placed a hand on mine, making me realize how tightly I was clenching the blanket between my fingers. My grip loosened and he took the opportunity to slide his fingers around mine. His hands were warm and sturdy. I paused and took a deep breath. Then another.
“I admit we didn’t ask many questions. It seemed like an easy job with an exorbitant amount of money in reward, it was a win-win for us. I will say your father probably wasn’t the one who took the picture or else he would have just walked up to you and avoided this entire thing. If someone else took it, it would have taken time for the information to come back to him. Travel during the winter would have been next to impossible for someone inexperienced.” His thumb began to stroke back and forth across my knuckles. “But photo aside, we didn’t, and still don’t, have any other information other than that.
I dragged my eyes up from my lap where they had been staring for the last several seconds and looked into his. He appeared remorseful, like he was upset he couldn’t give any more valuable information to alleviate my concerns. My chest was still tight with anxiety, my stomach roiling and churning.
After a fleeting glance towards Ayre, Aksel dropped his gaze from my eyes and continued. “At the time, we didn’t much care about his reasoning either way. His hardship and family drama did nothing to conjure any sympathy from us.”
“I still don’t understand, though. Strange as the situation was, if the story was that simple, why didn’t you just tell me that from the beginning? Tell me my father sent you? Shown me the picture? Why go through the deception of a town wide fire just to get me to come with you?”
“Because it didn’t take long for us to realize he had to be lying.” Ayre interjected.
Aksel nodded slightly and continued before I could ask any more questions. “We figured out the father-daughter thing was a lie as soon as we saw you in person, but it didn’t matter really. Maybe you were worth such a high price because you had done something wrong or made some powerful enemies. People who hire mercs don’t always give them a true story, so it wasn’t too surprising. But after your encounter with Ilane you were so genuinely confused with the idea that anyone would be hunting you.”
“But how did you know he was lying?” I felt bad for rushing through their story, but I needed answers before my head imploded under the gravity of all the questions I had.
“Because it was clear to us you weren’t human the moment we met you,” Ayre continued on, giving Aksel a break from his narrative.
“Well, anyone can tell that just from looking at me,” I could hear the frustration in my voice ramping up. I was tired of getting more new questions rather than answers.
Ayre shook his head, “Your ears were never visible in the photo and your hair was covering them in the tavern. At first glance you looked human. It was when I touched your hand. It’s hard to explain, but you gave off the magical equivalent of a static shock. It sometimes happens with inexperienced magic users.”
Okay… “I understand the magic part is strange, but even if you’d assumed I was human, why was that what made you realize something was wrong with the job?”
“Generally, it’s humans who hire mercenaries for a fetch quest like this because they don’t want to travel through the wilderness; they’re worried about passing through supernatural land or traveling long distances with no experience. It’s unlikely a Kimyrian—especially a daemon—would have asked mercs to find you. They have their own means of travel and could have easily come to you. And they certainly wouldn’t have used a feeble human as a go between,” Ayre explained.
“So my father must be human,” I agreed with a shrug.
He shook his head, “Kimyrian females can’t carry a human’s baby to term. The ambient magic in their bodies it too much for the fetus to handle. It’s just not biologically possible. Your mother is the human.”
That brought my thoughts to a standstill. “What? But that’s not possible, they can’t both be humans.”
“Now you see what we’re getting at,” Aksel said. “Biology doesn’t lie, but people do. You being half-human immediately exposes his story as a lie. So who is this man posing as your father? Why are you worth so much gold to him? I think it’s safe to assume he knows your mother, if not personally, then at least knows about her. How else would he have known about you? He could be an uncle or something, but then why not just say that, why lie that he was your father? He was probably banking on the fact that, even if we realized the inconsistencies with his story, we just wouldn’t care.”
“More gold equals less questions from the hired hands.” Ayre clarified.
No, that couldn’t be it. It was a little suspicious, to be sure, but if he’s paying two mercenaries to bring me home to him, he must want me in his life.
“If this man i
s paying as much as you say, he must want me in his life, I must be important to him. He may not be my biological father, but like you said, he could be related to me or my mother in some way.” Just thinking about my mother gave me pause. She was a new variable in this story, one whose addition just threw everything out of whack. “But… if that were the case, why would she have taken me away from him only to abandon me in Woodburne? It’s not like she wanted to raise me in secret. If she didn’t want me, why not just give me to him?” I mused, more to myself than the guys.
Why did she disappear? She never stayed in my life and by the sounds of it she never went back to her hometown either. If she’d wanted to leave her home and start someplace new without the burden of a child, why ruin my life by separating me from a paternal figure who actually seemed to want me? Why leave me alone at an orphanage? I felt a sudden contempt for my missing mother.
“Maybe… maybe she slept with a daemon without her husband knowing? Maybe she left because she was ashamed, or didn’t want him to see what I looked like for fear of exposing her cheating? Maybe he has no reason to assume he’s not my father.” There were too many ‘maybes.’
“But then why would she leave before you were born? I don’t mean to poke holes in your theory, but it would have been easy to bluff and say you were his child all along. Why would she think you would look anything other than human? She couldn’t have predicted you would have magic or daemonic features.”
He was right. I couldn’t think of any reason why she would have taken me away from him only to abandon me.
“It’s possible we’re overthinking this whole thing, and the man claiming to be your father really is innocent in all this, but…” Aksel continued, sounding almost as weary as I was feeling. “He didn’t actually want us to bring you all the way home.”
I was feeling a little sluggish from information overload by this point. I didn’t know what he was implying, and I made a face to show it.
“The man in the tavern gave us a location in the middle of nowhere to meet him, said he would take you the rest of the way on his own.”
That piqued my interest. “Where was the location?”
“About five kilometers outside of Deramore,” he replied. “That’s the only human settlement in the area, the only other thing in the area is mountains and forests. Why meet so far from the edge of town? I can understand not wanting us walking around there, some people have their prejudices, but if he trusted us enough with someone as precious as his own daughter, why would he not trust us close to or in the town? I have a feeling Deramore isn’t where he wants to take you, it just made for a convenient meeting place.”
A metallic tang touched my tongue. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been chewing on my lip. “Maybe…” I started… but couldn’t think of anything. I stared into the dancing light of the oil lantern. “You never spoke directly to my father, maybe this messenger had some kind of prejudice against Supers and didn’t want you in his town.” Maybe it was silly of me to continuously try to find innocence in this man.
“But then why trust us with you? Why not go straight to a human merc? I want to believe that you’re right, that even if he isn’t your biological father, he’s still a father figure who cares about you and wants you home, but, well… he trusted his lackey to find mercs instead of coming and vetting us himself. He trusted us with your life. Trusted us to bring you home with nothing but the promise of coin to keep you safe. We wouldn’t have snatched you up kicking and screaming like Ilane had, but there were plenty of other ways to coerce you.”
“Like what?” I almost didn’t ask, but the thought of how they had essentially been planning my kidnapping was something I couldn’t exactly ignore.
Aksel’s face showed a strange mixture of embarrassment and guilt. “The only information we had to go on was that you were a human woman,” he hesitated, “We figured what better way to abduct someone than to have them want to come with you.” He didn’t elaborate further.
I looked over to Ayre for more information and saw that he was avoiding my gaze as well, running his fingers through his bed-messed hair.
Oh. I got it.
“Anyway,” Aksel diverged to get the topic back on track, “There was something else that struck me as odd at the time. He said you had to be delivered alive but said nothing about unharmed, which you’d think would be an important point when dealing with mercs. Maybe he just didn’t think about it, but we were the first and only people the man talked with, and he didn’t even ask how we would keep you from harm or tell us to respect your wishes in any way. There was no option for you to stay in Woodburne if that had been your choice. Things are different now, but I just fully admitted to you that we didn’t particularly care about your wellbeing at the start. And we’re not exactly the worst of the worst out there.”
It was true.
If someone like Tam, the lecherous merc I’d met in tavern just days before this fiasco, had been tasked with retrieving me I didn’t even want to imagine what might have happened.
If my father had just wanted to meet me, wanted to see the woman I had become or be a part of my life in any way at all, he could have had Aksel and Ayre escort him to Woodburne. But he wanted me brought to him even though the only life I had ever known was in Woodburne. What if I had a family—children, or a lover? What if I didn’t want to leave? What would they have done then?
Maybe he was just an inconsiderate man who hadn’t thought things through well enough, but Ilane’s treatment of me was enough of an indicator of how much my desires mattered in a situation like this.
“You’re saying he treated me more like a commodity being delivered than an actual person with feelings.”
Aksel looked ashamed for even suggesting it. “Passed a certain point, it’s all speculation and does us no good. All we know for sure is that he can’t be your biological father, and that he lied to us. We can’t even be certain if what he said about your mother taking you is true.”
“I think I’ve had enough explanations for tonight,” I said quietly.
I felt nauseous. I had more questions; about my mother, about the implications of having a daemon parent, how Ilane had known about the bounty if it was given directly to Aksel and Ayre? But I was exhausted down to my bones, and those answers didn’t seem to matter tonight.
I hadn’t even had time to feel excited for the fact I had a father who was looking after me before the entire idea was torn down around me. Was it so hard to believe that there was someone out there who cared about me?
But I had wanted this; wanted answers. I knew the result might hurt, but this was a different pain than when I had learned about the boys’ lies. This pain seeped into my bones, ate at me from the inside out.
“I think we could all use a bite to eat. I’ll go find us some food.” Ayre placed a hand on my shoulder and gave a little squeeze before crawling over the blankets and through the flap of the tent, leaving Aksel and I alone in the lamplight. We sat for several minutes in silence, listening to the night orchestra of sounds outside.
“You look like you’ve got a lot going on in your head.” Aksel tried to break the tension.
“I still don’t understand.”
“It’s a lot to process.”
I shook my head, “Not about my parents. I don’t understand you and Ayre.”
His brow furrowed, “What do you mean?”
“You promised to tell me the truth, right?”
“Of course,” he said with no hesitation.
I racked my brain, trying to remember every conversation, every tiny detail and gesture of our interactions in the days leading up to the fire.
“The day we met in the grocery store… had you been following me?”
“…Yes.”
I knew it. If that was the case, then I truly was lucky they were on my side. If Aksel had followed me around all day and saw me with the kids, if he was an evil person, he could have threatened their safety and I would have gone with them i
n an instant. They had ways they could have coerced me besides the more, for lack of better words, pleasant option of seducing me.
“That’s how you knew about the orphanage, isn’t it?” When we were sitting and chatting in the forest, when I told him what stopped me from using magic as a child, Aksel had mentioned my visiting the orphanage, but I don’t ever remember telling him I visited the kids. “You’d been following me around all day, hadn’t you? You found me in the grocery store, and I felt like someone had been watching me around Rosewood, in fact, I was sure I saw someone standing by the fence but when I looked back, there was no one there.”
A slightly contrite smirk, “You almost saw through my illusion. Your passive magic is stronger than I’d been expecting. At that point I didn’t even realize you had any, not until Ilane’s magic failed as well, I’d just thought it was a fluke. I wasn’t sure the fire illusion would even work.”
“That’s what I don’t understand.” My frustration was building again. Talking about my father and the way my mother had seemingly taken me just to abandon me seemed to have reawakened my sleeping emotions. When it came to questions about my father, I had no outlet, no one to direct my anger at. The fire had been a tangible incident that Aksel and Ayre had been the perpetrators of. I didn’t want to start this spiral of fighting again, but it was difficult to control my frustration. “Why didn’t you just leave once you knew there was a problem with the job? Or just continue with the lie he gave you? Why follow me around—why save me from Ilane and go through the effort of concocting a huge illusion to get me away from home? Why did you—” I took a breath. “You said it yourselves, you didn’t care as long as you got paid, so what changed?” I guess what I was asking was: why did they care?
“I’ll admit at first it was curiosity,” he broached. “Like we said before, we weren’t shocked that our boss had fed us a lie, and we could have just told you about it, but we were also curious about you and your heritage. We snooped around a bit trying to learn more about you, and I followed you around that day. I asked you out on a date because talking to you in person was the easiest way to get our answers.”
