There is a tall male standing in front of a large window. The sun is shining through, illuminating the room. This male stands with his arms behind his back. He glances over his shoulder slightly, revealing only half of his face. “I’ve been waiting for this day,” he whispers before turning around completely. His hard expression warms upon facing her.
Rowan is shocked to see that The Overseer has a striking resemblance to Shadow. Could this be Shadow’s father? He walks over in long unhurried strides gripping her shoulders to get a good look at her before pulling her into a hug. She reluctantly wraps her arms around him, hugging him back.
“You look just like your mother,” he pulls out of their hug and walks around to sit at his desk. “Although, you do have all of your father’s features. Please, sit.”
Shadow shuts the door and stands in front of it, as if he’s guarding the exit. Rowan slowly sinks down in the chair across from his desk.
“They call me The Overseer.”
Rowan fidgets in her seat. “Rowan,” she introduces.
“I know who you are,” he smiles. “I was there when your father picked the name out.” Her eyes light up at the mention of her father. “I was his general and he was my king, but we had known each other since childhood. I loved him like a brother,” The Overseer pauses. “Before Bren died he asked me to be your godfather. To take care of you if anything ever happened to them. I’ve always felt it was my responsibility to find you. After the war no one knew where Queen Etna went. No one knew whether you had survived long enough to see your first day or not. We assumed you died with your mother until Madame Tallulah told me she saw you in a vision, powerful with his fire magic and alive.”
Her mouth goes dry. “So you’re my...my godfather?”
“I am your godfather,” he radiates with pride. “I have so much to tell you about them.”
Rowan’s throat closes and eyes prick with tears threatening to spill. She wants more than anything to learn about her parents as the beings they actually were, not the malicious descriptions she read in textbooks. She wants to know everything.
“Your father was brave. The bravest male I have ever known. He was strong and stubborn,” The Overseer chuckles. “He was a good king despite what you may have heard. It was the Shevka who couldn’t stand a Dakra on the throne. They burned down villages in protest and told other Shevka it was King Bren’s doing. They made him seem like a monster, and then they killed him. They killed him, Rowan, so they could take the throne and torment our people,” he takes a deep breath. “That is why the throne must be taken from King Syro.”
“How? How can I do that?” It all seems impossible for Rowan. Her father—if she could even call him that anymore—is a strong male with incredible powers. She is too young, weak, and unpredictable in her own magic.
“With help,” The Overseer puts his hand over his heart. “When your father told me his wife was pregnant with you, I swore to protect you. I have no intention of breaking that oath.”
“Tell me more about them,” she pleads.
The Overseer leans back in his chair and places his hands on his stomach, interlocking his fingers. “What would you like to know?”
“About the day my father found out about me.” She hopes he somehow has a story. She is holding onto fabricated thoughts of her real parents experiencing explosive happiness at the thought of having a child—at the thought of having her.
“I remember that day well,” he smiles from ear to ear.
The Overseer looks handsome when he grins and makes him look ten years younger. She’d have to ask Shadow later, but he looks shockingly like an older version of him. If he denies any relation between him, he’s surely lying. They’re nearly identical with their shared dark features. His black hair is thick with a widow’s peak. It’s slicked back into perfectly tamed shiny waves and on the sides you can see a sparse scattering of gray hairs.
“It wasn’t unusual for your father to invite me and my family to join him at dinner. My wife and my son, who was one and a half at the time,” Rowan notes he doesn’t comment that the son he’s talking about is Shadow. “We showed up to dinner in the palace and your parents looked as though they were glowing. We barely sat down when he blurted that Etna was pregnant. They were so happy. They had been trying for years to get pregnant and they were starting to lose hope but...they called you their miracle baby.”
Rowan wipes her damp eyes with her sleeve. “What about when they found out I was a girl?” She needs more. More information. More tales. More everything. She was robbed of a life with her parents to live a miserable one with the male who ended her real father’s life.
“I was lucky enough to be there. We were going over a plan to send troops to a Dakra village that was destroyed. It was just him and I in the throne room when Etna came skipping in, round belly and all, with Madame Tallulah by her side. Your mother said Madame Tallulah knew the gender and said she couldn’t wait a moment longer to find out. She didn’t want to know before him, they wanted to find out at the same time. The sorceress said you were a girl and Etna jumped into Bren’s arms and spun her around. Kissing her,” he smiles down at his lap remembering the memory fondly. “I was about to leave to give them their privacy, but your father stopped me. That’s when he asked for me to be the godfather. I humbly accepted. Then Bren looked into his wife’s eyes and said, Rowan. Her name is Rowan. Etna couldn’t agree more.”
* * *
Shadow cannot believe how much Roe is eating out of the palm of his father’s hand. She is hooked on every word and every expression. Watching his father, it was like watching a stranger. His father doesn’t smile, let alone smile for an hour long conversation. Shadow knows he is full of it, his stories might not be, but his bad intentions Shadow can smell from a mile away.
He wants to grab her arm and pull her out of here. He has the overwhelming need to protect her even though he feels this entire situation is his fault. He’s torn between saving her and saving his sister.
The door creaks open behind him, the door frame hitting him in the back grabbing his attention. He turns around to see Blade and Knot. He looks over his shoulder to see his father and Roe too engrossed in their conversation to notice.
“How’s it going?” Blade queries.
He pushes them outside the door shushing them. He shuts the door behind them hating leaving his father and Roe alone in the same room. The main reason he stayed is because he promised her he would be at her side. Promised himself if he saw his father push her too far, he would step in.
“What in Hellias name are you two doing here?”
“We live here,” Knot jeers.
“I know that,” his patience is beginning to wear thin. “I mean what are you two idiots doing outside the door? You know my father is meeting with Roe.”
“We wanna know what’s going on,” Blade eagerly says.
“Yeah, we tried putting our ears to the door but we couldn’t hear anything,” Knot continues.
“My father will call a meeting later to fill us in, as for now, you two have performances to get to,” he points out and the two of them groan. He watches them walk out of the headquarters building and waits until they are fully out the door.
Shadow conjures his shadows to help him sneak back in unheard. Roe is still enthralled with every word that comes out of his father’s mouth. He doesn’t blame her, if his father was talking to him about his mother the same way he is talking to her about her parents, he too would be transfixed.
“You know, Madame Tallulah isn’t the only one who has some of your father’s journals. She got the ones that explained his magic, I have some he wrote about his personal life. I think he’d like you to have them.” His father opens a locked drawer below his desk and pulls out old brown leather journals with broken spines, tied with a string to keep them together.
Roe takes the journals holding them in front of her. If she is saying anything, Shadow can’t hear due to her back toward him. What he does notice i
s how she rubs her thumb across the front cover of the first journal on top. He notices how gentle she is holding them as if the journals are her father herself.
Shadow reads his father’s lips as he says goodbye to Roe and he can see her reluctance to leave. He knows she is dying to hear more stories, but it is also obvious that she is anxious to read the first page of the first journal. When Roe turns her back on his father, his smile quickly turns back into the intimidating stoic expression he always wears. Shadow holds open the door for Roe as they exit the headquarters building.
Roe is quiet, he doesn’t want to push her, but he is also wondering what is going on inside her mind. When they step outside Roe stops, stares down at the journals, and then looks up at him. Her eyes are filled with tears—he had no idea she was crying. He has the overwhelming urge to take her into his arms.
“That was your father, wasn’t it?” Her question surprises him.
“Yes,” he doesn’t bother lying. The truth will come out sooner or later. At least he can give her this truth.
She goes stiff. “So he is the one who…”
Whipped me. He nods his head knowing that is what she is trying to say.
“How? Why? Why did he do that to you?” She lets out a sob.
He wonders if the real reason she is torn about this is because she cares for him, or because she wants to believe his father—her godfather—is truly the good male he pretended to be.
“Who says I didn’t deserve it?”
“Don’t say that!” She says further upsetting herself. “How could anyone deserve that?”
“You’d be surprised,” he murmurs under his breath.
“I don’t believe that,” she shakes her head adamantly. “It’s just...he didn’t seem like the type to do that. He was so nice. Why would he do something like that to his own son?”
“I told you,” he growls at her, “I deserved it. Now leave it alone. I don’t feel like discussing it.”
Roe grabs his wrist, her piercing gaze full of sympathy. They stay like that, facing each other without uttering a word for a few heartbeats. He wants to pull his arm out of her grip, but he stares into her eyes and can feel all the unspoken words between them.
I’m here for you.
She doesn’t let go of his wrist but hooks their arms together as she holds him close. They walk to Lola’s booth where she’s waiting to hear everything. Lola smiles sucking in her lips trying to conceal her I-knew-it look. Roe gives her a dismissive look and reluctantly removes her arm from his. Shadow feels a cool breeze on his arm and starts missing her warmth.
Lola and Lottie are sitting in Lola’s booth and Pepper shows up with Solana not long after he and Roe arrived. They begin to hound her with questions of his father. He always knew his father was a well-known rumor for the performers of Cirvka. They claim all sorts of vicious things, some say he is a beast or a Darkwraith, others say he is the Shevka owner working with the king. No one can agree with what he looks like or what he is, but they do have one thing right—that he is unbelievably cruel, vindictive, manipulative and bloodthirsty for power.
“Was he scary?” Solana is the first to ask.
Roe chews on her bottom lip. He knows she found him to be pleasant, but she is fighting over the fact that he is also the same male who mutilated his back with a whip. “He was...he was a friend of my dad. He spent my entire visit telling me stories of my father and mother.”
“That’s wonderful, Roe,” Lola hugs her. “What did he say?”
Shadow looks away not wanting to hear it all again. He hates the look in her eyes, hates how happy she looks because of him. Another part of him is happy that she is happy. She deserved to know her parents—the unfairness of them being taken away from her too soon is a tragedy.
He sits on one of the stools in Lola’s booth. He doesn’t feel like going back to the headquarters building. He knows his father will be waiting for him and he’s not mentally prepared to deal with his father right now. He needs a moment to himself.
Roe tells them everything, they’re all jumping and excited for her. He stops trying to read their lips, but with their movement and fast talking lips, it’s hard. He’s never been good in crowds or group conversations. Everyone likes to talk over each other and with his lack of hearing, he always seems to miss something.
Lottie is distracted, playing with the hem of the dress Shadow stole for her. She skips over to him trying to grab his attention. He opens his arms and she gladly jumps to sit on his lap. “How are you enjoying Cirvka?”
“I love it! Pepper let me see one of her performances today. I want to perform like her one day.”
He frowns. He could tell her the truth, the truth being if he lets her perform the high blooded crowd will be outraged and who knows if Lottie’s parents are still coming to Cirvka to find her. He hasn’t heard anything about a missing girl in the village nor from his father. “I thought you wanted to be a princess?” He changes the subject. “Princesses don’t perform, they watch them.”
“I want to be a princess performer,” she says, making him laugh.
“Some day,” he peers down at her, the look on her face is worth it. She wraps her arms around his neck and squeezes tight.
Lottie pulls back and bites her bottom lip mulling over what she’s going to say. “Is Roe really going to be a queen?”
“Maybe.” Even Shadow doesn’t know how things are truly going to play out. She would care for all her people unlike King Syro. Roe is strong-hearted with a level head, but her assertiveness and motivation to rule needs work.
“I think she’d be a great ruler.”
A small smile plays on his face. “Me, too.”
* * *
Rowan sits at the desk in their tent, the lantern still burning enabling her to see the words in the journal. How can she possibly sleep when there are still unread pages handwritten by her father?
Everyone is fast asleep as flips through page after page. She has tried numerous times to put the book down and get some much needed rest, but each entry she learns more and more about him and her mother. Each entry is more interesting than the last. She feels transported back to a time when he was alive. She feels like she’s inside his head and experiencing and feeling everything he wrote about.
Robin’s son was born today. They named him Mikah, he is a healthy boy born long and heavy. Robin asked me to be his godfather, I am honored. I grew up without any siblings and Etna is an only child as well, so I never thought I would be a godparent to anyone. Robin has been like a brother to me for so long, he always has my back and I always have his. I hope one day I can return the favor and make him godfather to my firstborn. I trust Robin with my life, there is nothing he wouldn’t do—wouldn’t sacrifice for the greater of the kingdom. These have been trying times and I’m lucky to have him by my side. Some days I feel like I’m going to explode, but he is always there to be rational and help come up with missions to save my people who are suffering at the hands of the Shevka. Etna is worried, they started rallying and she fears a civil war will break out. I try not to worry her, she has so much on her mind lately. She held Mikah in her hands today and she looked so happy. If only I could give her a child to hold. I pray to the gods above every night to give us a miracle. For now, Mikah is a miracle, and I can’t wait to see the type of male he grows up to be. I know he will be brave like his father as well as caring like his mother.
The journal entry was dated two years before Rowan was born.
Mikah. Robin. The two names ring in her ears.
There is no doubt in the back of Rowan’s mind that Robin is The Overseer, which means the little boy who was born—Mikah—is Shadow. How can she sleep with this information? Why didn’t he tell her? Their families were close, closer than just trusted general and king, closer than just friends. They were family.
Yet, she has lived her entire life apart from the truth. Apart from parents who were supposed to love and raise her, a godfather who was supposed to protect an
d guide her, and Shadow. Mikah. A boy who was supposed to be a childhood best friend.
Rowan grabs her robe and quickly ties it around her waist before blowing out the lantern and sneaking out. She has questions to ask that can’t wait until morning. She might not know where Shadow’s room is, but she knows where Knot’s is and she hopes he’ll help her.
She makes it barely a few footsteps away from the tent before she hears from behind her, “Sneaking out again?” Pepper is standing outside their tent with her arms crossed. “Where are you going?”
She scratches the back of her neck and lets out a series of uh and um’s. “I have a question to ask Shadow.” She figures there’s no point in lying.
“And it couldn’t wait until morning?” She raises an eyebrow.
“No?” Her tone is high pitched sounding more like a question instead of the answer it’s supposed to be.
“Is there something going on between you two?”
“What? No!”
“Then why are you sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet him in his room while wearing your robe,” she gives her a pointed look.
Rowan tightens her robe. “I told you I have a question. Nothing else.”
“Nothing else,” she repeats skeptically. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, and to prove it, I will ask him tomorrow instead of tonight,” she raises her chin and walks past Pepper who is shaking her head judgingly. Rowan can’t help but chuckle.
She sleeps little to none that night. She finally knows his name, or at least she assumes that’s his name, she has too much to ask. There is still so much she wants to know about Shadow.
At breakfast she makes the occasional glances at Shadow. What made him go by the name Shadow instead of Mikah—aside from the obvious reason? When did he stop going by Mikah?
Fight for the Crown Page 14
