by E E Everly
No wonder she was sad.
I couldn’t understand why this forlorn statue stood in the garden. Even her expression was strong enough to induce tears if I stared too long.
Cystenian excused himself, mumbling something about running off to find his crazy cat. Iestyn hadn’t returned after bouncing off through the woods. He had to have been after some critter, Cystenian said. They had training to do, so he had to be off.
Training for the festival to celebrate his marriage. Training for the games that would show off Cystenian as a worthy catch for whomever this noble lady was he was supposed to marry.
I called her noble, even if the emrys didn’t have official titles besides lord and lady. Everyone was a lord or lady. If I didn’t know a name, Bronwen had said I was safe to refer to them as my lady or my lord.
I guessed that was equivalent to Mr., Mrs., or Miss in our world.
Fine. I settled on a nearby bench in the shade of a tree that had fuzzy plum-colored fruits.
After I situated Trysten and she was happily sucking away, probably relieved to be free of her sling, I turned my mind to dismal thoughts.
I wasn’t sure of the conclusion I had come to in the meadow, though hopeful as it might have been.
“I hate this, Trysten. I absolutely hate this.” I stroked her head, fretting. I hated that I would have to ask my father for help. I hated the thought of anything having to do with him, but this was his fault. Everything. He hadn’t taught me who I was or how to control my powers. He hadn’t helped me find Cystenian. He’d abused my mom. He was horrible, but if I needed him for opening the portal, there was no way I was letting him deny me.
But I couldn’t make myself call out to him. How pathetic that I couldn’t humble myself to ask for help. And no one was helping me here. Everyone was busy with the upcoming festival. I didn’t see anyone beside the nanny and Bronwen, and Cystenian whenever he emerged from his gallivanting to check on his daughter or to find me as he had today.
I felt completely alone. I looked up at the Willow Woman. She looked exactly how I felt inside.
I had to cling to that one morsel of hope I’d felt earlier.
“How can I trust him?” I whispered. How could I trust anyone in this place for that matter? How did this telepathy work exactly? Did I have to think my thoughts and direct them straight at my father?
Ew. What if he could always hear my thoughts?
I shivered.
Bronwen stepped around a shrub. “There you are? How did things go with Cystenian?”
I eyed her shamefaced expression. “You sent him on purpose. You could have come yourself.”
She grinned. “Guilty. He needs to spend more time with you.”
“Are you hoping he changes his mind about his betrothal?”
“Maybe.” Today, Bronwen looked as if she could have been Hermes on an errand, with one bare shoulder and the rest of her covered in a swath of golden fabric that stopped below her knees.
She even wore dainty sandals.
They just needed wings.
Trysten was done nursing, so I handed her to Bronwen so I could adjust my top. “You want to get into some trouble?” I asked.
With a keen conspiratorial look, Bron leaned in as she burped Trysten. “What sort of trouble?”
I needed a distraction. My father could wait.
“I’m going to teach you how to fly.”
Hermes eat your heart out. He’d be nothing in brilliance next to Bronwen.
TWENTY
“This flying thing actually works?” Bronwen was stunning in the late afternoon sun. She favored dresses over any other outfit, even though I told her she might want to consider pants for flying. The dress would work with my god image though.
She stood on the bluff, with her dress clinging to her in the warm wind. Her light-blonde hair trailed to her waist as she lifted her chin.
“I’ve done it twice.” I shifted Trysten in my arms as I stared out over the bluff. I felt more comfortable starting from a high vantage point.
Don’t ask me why. Dumbest idea to jump and hope wings popped out.
Just two days after delivery, I refused to leave Trysten at the estate in the nursery, so she tagged along, firmly tucked in my arms. Nanny Aelwen came to assist while I coached Bronwen. The nanny was young and pixielike, hardly old enough for me to trust her as a nanny, but we were becoming fast friends. She and Bronwen were already close.
I still had a hard time not thinking of her as the help. Bronwen told me that they’d spent many years in school together, so I decided to drop nanny from her title and call her Aelwen. It was an elegant name anyway, not deserving of the dowdy images the title gave me.
“I can’t believe no other emrys has done this,” I said. “Have you heard of anyone, Aelwen?”
“No one, but I’m excited to see you fly.”
“You’ll have to try it too.” Bronwen stretched her arms wide, as if testing the wind. “How’s it possible that you and Cystenian are the first ones?” she asked me.
Surely we couldn’t have been the only ones. Someone had to have done it and hadn’t told anyone. I shook my head. “Heck if I know.”
Bronwen questioned me with her eyes. Aelwen giggled. I shrugged. They would just have to become used to my Earth lingo.
“How do we start?” Bron asked.
“I pictured myself soaring like a hawk, so I think that’s why I had hawk wings. Cystenian is familiar with a dragon, so I guess that’s why it was his chosen animal. I never asked him how his worked.”
“That makes sense,” Bron said. “Every ability with the light begins with our thoughts. Harnessing it is all in our control.”
“How has no one tried this before?” Aelwen asked.
“Beats me,” I said. “You might want to have a clear image before you jump.”
“I’m not jumping until those wings pop out,” Bronwen said.
I smiled and picked up the tone I’d heard Cystenian use with his sister. “I don’t know, Bron. I think you might need the stress of the fall to trigger the energy.”
She pushed on my arm. “You’re a bit crazy, you know.”
I nodded. “Half-cocked.” I handed my sleeping Trysten to Aelwen, who made herself comfortable on a blanket.
Bronwen stepped toward the edge. “I can do this.” She took a deep breath.
“What’s the largest drop you’ve fallen from?”
Bronwen lifted her foot. “Nothing this high.”
“Would you survive the fall if you hit the ground?” Although Bronwen had filled me in on an emrys’s amazing self-healing abilities while we were on our way up to the bluff, I didn’t want her broken body on my conscience.
Bronwen set her foot down and peered over the edge. “Yes, but it wouldn’t be pretty. I’d need a healer immediately to speed the process up. The damage would be too much for my body to heal on its own.”
I gripped her arm. What if Cystenian and I were the only ones who could do this? “Maybe we should have a healer stand by, then.”
“Relax. I have faith.”
“Faith in you or me?”
“I just believe I’ll be able to do it.” Bronwen leaned forward and raised her arms. “Here goes.”
I held my breath.
“If I recall—” A man’s voice.
Startled, Bronwen screeched, and I grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the ledge.
“—you were always the level-headed one, stopping me from doing something drastic,” the man said.
Oh crap. I knew that voice. I whirled around to confront the interloper at the same time Bronwen did. “Dad!”
“Vaughan?” Bronwen asked.
Dressed as I’d never seen him before, like an emrys in their fancy, new-age fabrics and sleek tunics and pants, Dad stood ten feet away, behind Aelwen and my daughter. Had he kept his emrys clothing with him on Earth? Did he happen to have something to change into so he wouldn’t stand out in his 1950s gangster attire?
I was perplexed, puzzling out the strangeness of seeing him this way. My dad, as an emrys, wouldn’t quite make sense in my brain.
A twitch from Bronwen broke my bewilderment. As I turned toward her, a range of emotions passed over her face. She went from astonished to confused but settled on rage.
She went ballistic, practically leaping over Aelwen as Bronwen raced toward Dad, with her fists raised, a goddess hell-bent on destruction. She was beautiful and dangerous. “How dare you come here, Vaughan? How dare you!”
Whoa, did I miss something? She knew my father… by his first name.
Dad lifted his arms, and Bronwen fell on him, or rather into him, and pummeled his chest while yelling and pushing at him. “What are you doing here? How can you just show up after all this time?”
I smirked. Punch him harder! Give him a taste of his own medicine. Don’t hit him like a girl.
Dad held his ground, holding Bronwen to his chest despite her beating. Her efforts weakened until she crumbled into his arms, a sobbing mess.
No. What’s going on here? Had she fallen under my father’s charms at some point? How many other women in his other life on this world had he damaged?
“Aelwen, take Trysten and leave.” I might do something I wouldn’t want her to witness, even if she was a baby and wouldn’t remember.
Aelwen closed her gaping mouth and inclined her head as she slipped down the back side of the bluff with my daughter and the blanket. Did she know Dad, especially since she and Bron were old school chums?
Ew, was Dad an old school friend of Bronwen’s?
This was too much for my poor brain to absorb.
Dad was whispering something into Bronwen’s ear as she hiccoughed softly and clutched his arms.
They looked… content. Comfortable even. As if they’d been in each other’s arms before. A rock lodged under my sternum. What? How? This can’t be. He’d destroyed Mom. He tore our family apart, and what I was seeing… appeared to be the picture of happiness. He was being sweet to Bronwen.
I won’t believe this. I won’t believe that they’d had a happy past.
He must have used magic to subdue her. My outrage returned, stomping out my curiosity. “What did you do to her?”
They looked at me. Bronwen wiped a single tear from the corner of her eye.
Oh my gosh. I couldn’t comprehend what was on her face. Joy? Bewilderment?
Dad looked into her eyes, as if studying, searching her features to commit them to memory. “I need a minute with my daughter, Bronwen.”
She sniffed and bobbed her head. “I’ll find you later.” She reluctantly let go of him, her fingertips the last to release his forearm.
“Wait.” I pleaded with my eyes, fear gripping my heart. “Don’t leave me here with him.”
“You’ll be fine. You should talk.” Bronwen touched her forehead to mine, the same gesture Cystenian had shown me ages ago. The emotion she passed me was acceptance.
Fat chance. I would accept nothing of this. He’d denied me entrance through the portal for months, leaving it up to the fae, and now he, himself, had entered. How? He knew Bronwen of all things!
If he had been on Earth my entire life, then how much of his time had he spent here—before he married Mom? He obviously had to have known Bronwen before Mom.
Was he born here? His birth certificate didn’t say Emira.
“I’ll answer your questions in time,” he said.
“Are you reading my thoughts, like during the delivery?”
“Yes.”
I stiffened. “For how long?”
“Your whole life.”
I choked. Literally. “You bleepin’ a-hole.”
He didn’t seem put out by my outburst. He answered so matter-of-factly that I thought I’d lose it and attack him as Bronwen had.
“I bound myself to you, mentally, upon your birth,” he said. “It was the only way I could be sure of your whereabouts and keep you safe.”
“This is a load of rubbish.” I stared at Dad, trying to understand him. For years he’d been absent from my life. Now to learn he’d been eavesdropping on my thoughts! “What did you do to Bronwen?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Freck. How long ago? How old are you?”
“If you must know, nine-hundred and ninety,” Dad said.
“That’s impossible.”
“I assure you, it’s true. My history with Bronwen is nothing that matters now.”
“It seems to matter to her,” I hissed.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“Of course it doesn’t.”
“We have other matters to worry about,” Dad said.
“Like why you opened the portal for yourself but not for your expectant daughter?”
“Anerah, I don’t do anything without purpose. You have to believe me when I say you were taken to Earth for a reason. You must go back. It’s not safe for you here.”
“You can’t be serious.” Was I born here, then? “I’ve waited nine months for those flippin’ fairies to let me through the portal, and you’re telling me I have to return for my own safety! You’re not my protector. You’ve played no part in my life. Mom kept me safe. Mom raised me. She showed me how to be a good person. You had nothing to do with that.”
“I lied to your mother. After being with her for ten years, she would have noticed that I wasn’t aging.”
He doesn’t age? Do I age? I thought back on the ages and dates that I’d heard over the past few days. Bronwen’s parents looked as if they could have been her siblings. What a mind job! I should have guessed that the emrys didn’t age after they reached adulthood.
Emrys means immortal. Duh. I knew that from stories of Merlin. Cystenian did say that I had no idea how long immortality felt. I would live forever. We were all going to live forever.
At least we would look good doing it.
That made complicated family relationships—like the one between my dad, my mom, and me—undesirable.
“You could have told her,” I said.
“No one on Earth can know the truth about the emrys. Earth is full of scientists who’d make lab rats out of us because of our abilities. If anyone from Bryn or Emira found out I brought you there, you’d be tracked down. They could even hurt Jessica.”
“So you beat her to have a reason to divorce her!”
“I never beat her,” Dad said.
“You beat her for two years! I remember the bruises. I remember hiding in my closet while she cried and begged you to stop hurting her.”
“Those memories weren’t real. I planted them in your minds so you wouldn’t come looking for me.”
I should have been amazed that he could even do such a thing, but I was furious. “That’s ridiculous. What about me? What were you planning on doing once I stopped aging?”
“I’d have to fake your death or something. We would have moved away.”
“And leave Mom behind? Why can’t we bring her here?”
“Humans can’t enter Emira,” Dad said.
“Are you serious? Why not? Do they have some sort of stupid rule?”
“They physically are not able to enter. They don’t carry light the way emrys do.”
Figures. There was usually a catch. Amazing new world but crazy magical laws. I blew out a breath. So much for the idea of bringing Mom here.
Dad took a step closer. “We must return to Earth.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I backed away.
“Whether you go with me willingly or not, you will go.”
“You can’t control me.” I folded my arms over my chest like a petulant child. “I’m staying here. Trysten deserves to know her father.”
Compassion softened his brow. “I know that you’re hurt, but put emotion aside and listen to the facts.”
I tapped my foot. I wasn’t going to buy whatever he was selling.
“I’m protecting you from a prophecy.”
I exhaled loudly and o
bnoxiously. The rabbit hole was going deeper and deeper. “This isn’t some fantasy novel. Prophecies aren’t real.”
“There have been too many coincidences for me to deny what I know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Does the prophecy have a catchy rhyme? Let me hear it.” This should be good.
“I don’t know the precise wording”—Dad looked flustered—“but a pure emrys from Urien’s bloodline and a half-emrys from Siana’s bloodline will unite their lights. One of them dies, breaking the seal to the Dark Master’s prison. That can’t be allowed to happen.”
I had no idea who Urien and Siana were or who the Dark Master was. He must have been pretty bad to be sealed in a prison that had a prophecy about opening it. “How does this involve me?”
“Only a select few fit the requirements for opening the prison. The only half-emrys from Siana’s bloodline still unbonded are Yasbail, Rhosyn, you, and me. We can’t risk bonding with a pure emrys.”
This pure emrys stuff again. “The way you’ve bound yourself to me?”
“The bond the prophecy speaks of is a different type of bond than the one you and I have. The prophecy’s bond is akin to a mortal’s marriage, only it’s on a spiritual level. You combine your inner lights, creating an eternal union.”
Cystenian had mentioned physically bonding. Dad had said that he’d mentally bonded with me. And now a spiritual bonding that was akin to marriage? How many types of bonds did the emrys have? What did the bonds allow them to do? “What are you saying? That the bond akin to marriage would open the portal? That I could never bond with Cystenian?” And be his wife?
His brow quirked. “You want to bond with him?”
Maybe.
“Cystenian is from Urien’s line. If you, a direct descendant from Siana, bonded with him, part of the prophecy would be fulfilled.”
“Who are Urien and Siana?”
“Urien is the firstborn son of the High Emrys. Siana is his daughter. Cystenian is from one of Urien’s son’s lines.”
“The High Emrys, is that like royalty?” I figured Cystenian was of high birth, no matter what he claimed about emrys being equal.
