Now that she was standing in front of him again, however, Aegeus knew that there was nothing for him to worry about. He could see the same love glowing in Ellora’s eyes that he had seen the last morning that he was with her, the love that had sustained him and drove him to remember who he was and what he would lose if he allowed Ryan to fully take control of his body and his mind. Aegeus reached toward Ellora and she stepped into his arms. Her body curled into his with the exact comfort and fullness that it always had, her arms wrapping around his waist to cuddle him closer. Aegeus took a breath and let it out slowly, resting his head down on top of Ellora’s
Right then, everything was good again.
Chapter Twenty
“I heard that you accomplished something that your father was able to do.”
Loralia turned toward the sound of the voice and saw Azrael standing behind her. Her heart squeezed and she took a step toward him, her hands reaching out imploringly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I’m so used to---“
Azrael held up a hand to quiet her and shook his head.
“There’s no reason for you to apologize,” he said. “That is what you knew. It’s what you grew up with. It became part of your identity.”
“But you— “, she started and he shook his head again.
“That man loved you. You carry the name that he chose for you. He raised you and took care of you for the entire life that he had to live. Who am I to question that or to stand in the way of your memories of him?”
“You are my father,” she said, the emotion that she was feeling genuine and honest.
Azrael nodded.
“I know I am,” he said. “I have always been your father and I will always be your father. But so will he. I don’t want to take him away from you, Loralia. I don’t want you to pretend that you didn’t have him, or that you didn’t love him. I know that you did, and I am happy that you did.”
“You are?” Loralia asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve told you that.”
“I know,” Loralia said, looking away.
“But you don’t know if I am being honest with you.”
She looked back at him. He had felt exactly what she was feeling, just as she was able to.
“I know that it hurts you,” she said.
“Of course, it hurts me,” Azrael said. “It hurts me every time that I look at you and I wish that I knew what you looked like when you were a child, or that I had been able to hold you when you were born. It hurts me when I see you and I can see your mother in your face and I wish that I had been able to live the life with her that we wanted so much. It hurts me to know that you didn’t even know that I existed, even though I spent your entire life loving you. It hurts me more to know that even while I was loving you, I thought that you were dead, out of my reach forever. How could it not hurt me? I never came for you.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Loralia said. “You had no way of knowing that we were alive or what we were facing. You couldn’t know.”
“Just like you couldn’t know that the man who raised you wasn’t truly the father that everyone you knew told you that he was. You bear no responsibility in that, Loralia. You were a child who needed a father, and I couldn’t be there to be that father for you. I would have. I would have given every moment of my life to you and your mother.”
“I know that you would have,” she said. “I know that you would have done everything that you could to protect us if you had known.”
“I still feel like I did,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I fought,” he said. “I fought throughout my entire life. I went into battles that I never should have and faced down enemies that far outmatched me in their age and strength, but I was victorious. I did those things because I felt like every time that I went into battle or was able to defeat someone and prevent them from hurting someone else, I was, in a way, taking care of you. I carried all this love for you and the desire to take care of you, and I had to put it somewhere. It also happens that that love and desire to take care of you also came with anger and regret. I used all of that to fuel my warfare and each time that I was able to stop someone or to help someone who needed it, I was protecting you.”
“I wish that I had known about you,” Loralia said.
The sentiment was from a place of complete honesty and truth. Though it had been stunning to find out that the man who had raised her, the man who her mother had been married to from before she was born, was not actually her father, and that instead, this tremendous winged man was, Loralia had gotten accustomed to the idea and was now searching for ways that it had been there with her all along, even as she was growing up in the underground realm created by the Irisa after the first plague came and members of the clan began to die.
“You did,” Azrael said.
“What do you mean?” Loralia asked, feeling confused by the statement. “I never knew that he wasn’t my father and that you were.”
“But you did know that there was something different about you,” he said. “You knew that your entire life. There were things about you that were just a bit different than the others. It’s important to remember that while the man who raised you taught you many things and you have grown up using those skills and attributing them to what you got from him, that I was there with you as well and every day you use the skills and capabilities that I gave to you.”
“Being able to feel the thoughts and emotions of those around me,” she said, the realization becoming clear. “There was no one else in the clan who was able to do that.
“Of course, there wasn’t,” Azrael said. “That’s because there was no one else in the clan who had Eteri blood. That was unique just to you. It was the only way that I was able to be there with you when I wasn’t there with you. I passed along that ability to you.”
“It’s also what kept me alive,” Loralia pointed out.
It was a harsh, sometimes overwhelming reality that she was the only one of her species who survived the second plague that burned through. No one had understood why she seemed to be immune to the horrifying ordeal. There was a time, early in the spreading of the plague, that there were several other people who didn’t get sick like the others. They seemed to be able to resist the disease just as she had, and they helped her as she took care of those who had fallen sick. This was incredibly reassuring at first. Loralia didn’t realize that she was alone in not becoming ill until those who had been helping her care for the sick and then perform rituals for the dead that fell every single day began to become ill as well. Now that she had not only gotten through the plague but survived for several years on her own, it was clear that there was something about her that was different than the rest, something that set her apart and ensured that her body was resistant to the devastating disease. She knew that it was the Eteri blood that she had in her veins.
“I am so sorry that you had to go through that,” Azrael said. “I wish that there was some way that I could have known what happened and could have come for you. I can’t stand the thought of you living for so long alone after going through all that you did.”
“That’s something that you gave me too,” Loralia said. “You had to be strong to get through all that you suffered after losing my mother, and me, and spending your life fighting. I had to be strong as well.”
“And you were.”
Loralia drew in a breath and let it out slowly. There was a question that she had been wanting to ask Azrael, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to. Now it seemed like the right time.
“Do you know for certain that I am the only one of my kind left?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Azrael asked, sounding somewhat shocked by the question.
“Did Ryan use any of the Irisa in his experiments? Even one?”
“I don’t know,” her father admitted. “I don’t think so. I believe that the Irisa are among the few species tha
t Ryan wanted but was never able to find.”
Loralia nodded.
“I expected you to say that,” she said. “But part of me was hopeful.”
“That he had captured one of your kind and was using it to create hybrids?” Azrael asked, somewhat horrified now.
“Yes,” Loralia asked. “If he had done that, then at least I wouldn’t be completely alone. The Irisa would have a chance to not disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“I am Irisa, but only by half,” she said. “My mate is Denynso. If we are to ever have a child, it will have half Denynso blood and half of my blood. That means only a small fraction Irisa. That child would be likely to bond with a Denynso, which will mean their children will have predominantly Denynso blood and just a very small amount of both Irisa and Eteri. As the generations continue, that will only fade further and further until the future generations of my family are for all intents and purposes purely Denynso.”
“That is if they bond with a Denynso.”
“Yes,” Loralia said, knowing that he was right to make that distinction. Just as she never expected that she would become the mate of a Denynso warrior, she had no way of knowing where her future children would find love. “But I know that the Eteri live on through other people. Even if the future generations of my bloodline can’t carry it through, there are more. There are no more Irisa. They live and die with me.”
“As long as there is memory, there will be Irisa,” Azrael said. “No matter how many generations go into the future, as long as you make sure that you pass down the knowledge of the Silver Warriors, they will live on.”
“Will you tell me more about my mother when she was younger?” Loralia asked.
She hated to admit it to herself, and she would never have put it into words, but there were elements of her memories of her family that were starting to fade with the time that had passed since they had died. She had been so young and though she could still remember the important things like that her mother never let her go to sleep without telling her that she loved her or the songs that they used to sing together, there were other things that were no longer as distinct. Even the lines of her face in her mind had started to become hazy and the image of her had become less a memory than a lingering thought.
Loralia wanted to know more about her mother and about the world that her kind had had to leave behind. All Loralia knew of her and of the rest of her kind was how they were when they were already underground. Though they adapted to the realm and learned to see it as their home, she knew that many of their hearts still ached for the lush, beautiful village that they had been forced to leave, and she wondered how much that might have altered them. She knew that Azrael was right. The Irisa could never truly be gone as long as her bloodline persisted and as long as each of them knew the proud history of those who came before them. Just as Ty showed the incredible ability of the Valdicians to move things with his thoughts, and Ero had the speed and beauty of the Mikana, both many generations removed from when those pairings occurred, the future generations of her family would still carry the Silver Warriors within them, and as long as the stories about them persisted, they would live on.
Chapter Twenty-One
“He’s going to be alright.”
Icelyn shook her head slightly, not turning around to look toward her grandfather as he spoke. She was crouched beside the bed where Malcolm still lay sleeping, and now that some time had passed, the extent of his injuries was becoming more clear. As though the adrenaline of running to escape the Order had kept color in his face, now that he had been sleeping, he had gone pale and the wounds on his skin stood out bright and angry. She wanted to touch them, to soothe the pain that she knew that he must be suffering, but she worried that touching them would only make it worse. It left her feeling helpless, only able to sit there beside him and hope that her love could surround him and somehow give him the strength that he needed to pull through.
“How could they do this to him?” she whispered. “He served them. He was loyal to them every day.”
“Until he wasn’t,” Casimir said.
Icelyn’s eyes snapped to the older man, fire in them as she felt her body trembling slightly with anger at his words.
“Are you saying that he deserved this?” she demanded.
Her grandfather shook his head.
“No, Icelyn. You misunderstand me. Of course, Malcolm was loyal to the Order throughout his life since he was introduced into their hierarchy. It was what he was born for and I can already see in him that he has everything that the Order desired in its members. He is brave and strong, willing to offer himself into service for something that he believes in even if he doesn’t know fully what it entails. But he is also something that the Panel fears and the corrupt despise.”
“What is that?” Icelyn asked.
“Enlightened,” Casimir said. “His mind is open, willing to learn and capable of change. He did just as the other Order members, including me, did when he was first inducted. He followed. But then his eyes were opened and he learned that what he thought that he was following was not the path that he should be taking, so he stepped off it and returned to where he should have been. But that meant turning his back on what he believes the Order has become. So, yes, he was loyal to them and he served them. Until he didn’t. And they protected him and treated him with as much respect as his station within the hierarchy would allow. Until they didn’t.”
“But why did it take him so long?” Icelyn asked. “He said that he was kept so low in the hierarchy that he barely knew anything about what was going on within the Order. How could he be loyal and believe in something that he didn’t even truly know what it was?”
“It’s something that only those who are within the ranks of the hierarchy will ever experience and ever know. Being chosen for the Order is something that anyone who is not a part of it can never understand. Even you, the person who is likely the closest to being within the Order without the benefit of being able to be chosen for it, cannot really understand what it is like to be selected and brought into the hierarchy.”
“Me?” Icelyn asked, surprised by the way that her grandfather described her. “Why would you say that about me? I know nothing about the Order.”
“Yes, you do,” Casimir said. “You know far more than you know. It’s within you, Icelyn. There are two parts of the Order. There is the truth and there is the corrupt. You are the lineage of the truth. You were born as an act of war.”
The statement made her breath catch in her throat. It was the way that they had described her marriage to Malcolm and now Casimir was using the words to describe her birth. It struck Icelyn and she turned her body more to face her grandfather without pulling away from Malcolm.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Your parents knew that the Order would come for them. Your father was working under me and Aegeus, and he had fully broken all the restrictions of secrecy by telling your mother every detail of the Order and what was being done within it, both in the truth and in the corrupt. She worked alongside us with greater intelligence, courage, and strength than I could have ever imagined, and I was proud to consider her among my dearest friends, my closest relations, and my most devoted warriors. Because that was what she was. A warrior. She knew what was happening and even though she looked death in the face, she refused to back down. Your parents knew that they only had a matter of time. The Order was going to come for them and their days were numbered, but that didn’t stop them. They had you. Even when those days ended, they knew that you would still be there. You would be a reminder to the Order of what they couldn’t control, and because you would be so protected simply by merit of who they were and who I was, you would be untouchable to the Order when you were a child. But it was more than that.”
“What else?” Icelyn asked, starting to see herself in a different light than she ever had.
“They knew that the truth would be born within you. Your birth meant
that the truth would continue and persevere and that there would be a chance for all that we had started to continue.”
Something suddenly occurred to Icelyn and she shook her head slightly.
“But what about Maxim and Kyven?” she asked.
“Maxim and Kyven?” Casimir asked.
“Aegeus’s sons.”
“What about them?”
“You said that of all people, I was the closest to being a part of the Order without being chosen. But wouldn’t that be them? Especially Maxim?”
“Maxim was not chosen as part of the Order?” Casimir asked, his tone sounding truly shocked by the revelation.
“No,” she said. “Neither of them were. Didn’t you know that?”
Casimir shook his head, his eyes diverting slightly to look into the distance as if to follow some thought.
“No,” he told her. “I would have thought…” his voice trailed off. “When I came here, they were still very young. It wasn’t yet time for them to be chosen. I never would have thought that they would have been excluded.”
“Maybe because they are Aegeus’s sons,” Icelyn said. “The Order already knew that he was working against the corruption and they thought he was dead. Maybe they didn’t want Maxim and Kyven to be a part of the hierarchy because of that.”
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