Unraveled Homecoming

by J. L. Shelton

  Garin equated the following exit to a stampede. Nearly everyone began to rush out the doors, chairs becoming the casualties as they were thrown haphazardly aside. Thaddeus made his way to stand next to Lord Gregory, but Garin couldn’t clearly hear what they had begun to discuss. Plus, there was another pressing distraction on his mind. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing even taller than they had before.

  Garin’s eyes narrowed as he turned to inspect the constant cause of his unease since he had arrived. The landing above him was covered in shadows, but the far corner most of all. There was just something unnerving about the thickness of them being unaffected by the light of day. There was also the spooky fact that the curtain of blackness swayed and hummed quietly every minute or so.

  “Garin…”

  Hearing his name softly called from the dark brought him quickly to his feet! His heart was pounding like a wild stallion, and fleeing from the scene would have been a wise decision. But his steps went cautiously up and closer to the blackness rather than rushing down and out the door.

  Pride and curiosity were going to get him killed one day, he had little doubt. Then Mattie would bring him back just so she could beat him up for his stupidity in the first place. Intelligent reasoning swiftly returned, causing him to stop his foolhardy approach. But just as he turned his back on the shadows, a strong hand grabbed him by the arm. Before he could respond, he found himself yanked into the enveloping darkness!

  Chapter 35

  “Stop your struggling, lad! It’s just me.”

  The voice that hissed into his ear was familiar, but Garin would never have imagined that the woman was physically stronger than him! She had yanked him behind this shadowed veil with an ease that had made his heart race. Then his futile attempt to escape her grasp had almost made him reach the power he had over the element of Air, just so he could blast his way free.

  He didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “Henriella Brewer?”

  “Who else?” came the snorted reply.

  Once he obeyed and stilled, the iron grip lifted. Garin couldn’t help but rub the spot once her hand was gone. There would be a bruise there come the morning, he was sure of it.

  Because of his wounded pride, the demand from his mouth was sharp, “Why did you do this? Shouldn’t you be out there helping the healers!?”

  She returned his harsh tone with one of her own. “I’ve been waiting for you to come by my home so we could work out when I could train you. Time is not on our side these days, lad, with far worse things than this to come. Since I was already here hiding from the angry crowd, it seemed a perfect opportunity to get things settled between us.”

  Garin opened his mouth to argue further, but footsteps coming up the stairwell stopped him. Soon he was looking straight into the face of a man heading their way. Despite the gray, rippling sheen in front of his eyes, Garin could see the person clearly. The blond man was shaking his head and muttering to himself about how this place had gone to hell. No notice or recognition in those brown eyes when he passed close to their corner before turning down the hallway. It was almost as if the man hadn’t seen them at all.

  Garin nearly jumped when Henriella frankly answered his unspoken question: “He didn’t.”

  “We’re invisible behind here?” he asked with awe as he began to glance around. None of this made any damn bit of sense. The corner couldn’t possibly fit both of them.

  “We’re not behind anything, lad,” said Henriella with a firm voice. “Consider this your first lesson—we’re inside the shadows themselves. We could’ve kept right on blabbering, and that man wouldn’t have heard a thing unless we wanted him to.”

  Garin felt nothing but disbelief. He could still hear Lord Gregory and Thaddeus murmuring down in the main room. Tentatively, he reached for the dark veil in front of him. The contented hum his touch caused almost made him pull back, but he wanted to understand. How could something that felt like the rippling surface of a puddle hide anyone?

  “Great way to spy on people, don’t you think?”

  He could only nod in response to her barbed question, thinking how this power was a dual-edged sword. Helpful and harmful in equal measures. Though he seldom had the stomach for them—tales of wounded elves being rescued from battle by those who could Jump through the shadows were still whispered behind closed doors in Arduenna, as were the ones about how they were also used as assassins.

  “Now you know why so few of us with this power are left,” snarled Henriella after a violent shiver hit his spine. “That damn queen killed most of the Shadow Benders off after the Great War. Useful during, but damn inconvenient once it was over.”

  “Sounds like her,” grumbled Garin.

  How in the hell was he still alive!? He carried two powers his mother had no compulsions about cutting down. Was it because he had kept them secret, or was it because he was her son? He knew which one he wished he could believe, but that was an internal debate to save for another time.

  “Besides the uncomfortable history lesson involving the Arduenna queen,” he said snappishly. “Is there another reason for pulling me into this shadow trap?”

  The woman’s voice went from harsh to soft, as if she knew his turmoil. “This is the original way the gift presents itself. That’s why I must ask if you have ever found yourself in a gathering of people and made your way to a corner? A small nook where it seemed as if no one bothered you once you had settled into place?”

  Bending his head, the admission came out like a harsh whisper, “Many times.”

  The most recent occurrence had been in Arduenna when Mattie was being presented to the elves. Oh, how he had wanted to be the first one to greet her that night—especially with her wearing a dress that had made her look like a goddess! But his standing in that kingdom was too low, and it would have offended everyone present if he had given in to his whim. Because of that, he had wandered over to a far corner so he could watch from a distance, almost arriving too late to help her avoid his damn half-brother’s machinations.

  “No need to pull more shadows towards us,” whispered Henriella while she put a firm hand on his shoulder. “We have more than enough. Make it too dark, and others can’t help but wonder if something is amiss. Especially around these parts.”

  Garin looked up and blinked his surprise! The wall before him had grown a shade darker. Furrowing his brow, he couldn’t help but wonder how. How had he done that without noticing?

  “Maybe I was wrong about this gift eventually making you crazy. At least, not when you stop fighting them. It seems you have a natural affinity with the shadows, which changes things completely,” said Henriella after he voiced his question aloud.

  Confirmation that Caligo’s trapped form had been right about him having an unusual kinship with the shadows made him want to flee, but Garin managed to croak out a question instead, “In what way?”

  “So much more than I have time to explain at the moment,” she said with a huff. “But with taking everything about you into consideration, I can’t say I’m surprised by this turn in events. Still, the basic concepts are the same, so training you isn’t impossible.”

  He couldn’t help but feel thoroughly confused. “How can you say all that when I’ve never purposefully touched this power before?”

  “From the way they swiftly responded to just your stray recollections, they must have often helped you in the past. Actually, a gift that could help you hide without putting much thought into the process has probably kept you alive more times than you know.”

  Garin shook his head, feeling sick to his stomach. Were the times when he had successfully hid after Esus attempted to kill him due to this power? More than once, his half-brother had passed right on by him, oblivious to the fact his quarry was but crouching down and hiding in a nearby corner.

  He shivered when he reluctantly admitted, “It’s possible, but I still don’t understand how I wouldn’t have noticed that I was using magic.”

  “If y
ou didn’t know you were doing such a thing, would you?” she countered. “You can still clearly view and hear the world around you. As a child, would you have truly noticed the change if you were already standing in a shadow? And even if you had, would you have admitted the truth to yourself when you were raised by someone who vehemently detested magic?”

  No, he thought.

  Though his answer was unspoken, he heard the woman let loose a perfectly-timed and frustrated sigh. “Seems we need to focus more on attention and control then.”

  “Story of my life,” he said with an angry mutter.

  Evangeline Von Bos’ views of magic had rubbed off on her foster child, a fact pointed out to Garin more than once. And those lectures started even before the Dragon’s Heart had changed him. His heart sank, thinking it was too late to outgrow the unfounded fear the woman had implanted within him.

  A sudden smack to the back of his head caused him to growl! Henriella wasn’t intimidated at all by it because she snarled right back, “It’s only because you’re not one of my sons that I haven’t tanned your hide already. Damn it, lad—you can’t afford to wallow in self-recrimination anymore! Not with who and what you are! There’s a monster of a storm brewing, and the first onslaught will be here sooner than you think. Both your wife and your child need you to figure this shit out!”

  “And that’s why you struck me!?”

  “No. That’s because you were spoiled by your foster parents for far too long! Thank goodness for both my brother-in-law’s influence and Metis’. Otherwise you would have been a worse disaster, Hermadoron.”

  Hearing her call him by that name caused Garin to whirl around and grab Henriella roughly by the shoulders. Something about the way she had phrased things had upped his suspicions, but hearing his secondary moniker come out of her lips nearly confirmed it!

  His demand came out like a hiss: “Why in the hell did you just call me that!?”

  The woman didn’t try to force her way out of his grasp. She just slyly grinned and lightly countered, “You have never liked that permanent reminder of your mother’s willingness to do anything to get what she wants, have you?”

  “No,” he growled. “And that wasn’t a good answer!”

  “Have you already forgotten everything I told you during our conversation the other night?”

  Snarling, he released her and said, “I remember the goes you made at my character quite well! Everyone keeps acting so damn surprised to learn that I’m a decent person, meaning you people in Crosshawk have always hated me for some awful reason! And that was long before I stole a kiss from Mattie! Why!?”

  Henriella darkly chuckled, “At least my niece didn’t marry a complete idiot.” He snarled at that, making her shake her head and say, “It’s not hatred we hold for you, at least not from most of us. Fear and confusion are the two leading factors for our callousness towards you. The majority of our feelings stem from the identities of your true parents. After all, neither one of them garner much trust in this place. Part of it comes from the rare powers you hold. And many of the residents’ unease increased due to the fact you and Mattie married after you both became something never before seen on these shores. And the fact your wedding occurred less than a year after that shameful display of yours at the Pheasant has raised suspicions that you had planned all this from the very start.”

  While he could see her point, he couldn’t help but argue. “You know the truth behind why we had to marry quickly! And neither of us had any choice about what we became—which are dragons in full! Just like the Draconians your ancestors supposedly respected!”

  Henriella’s eyebrow rose in challenge. “And who told you that the Draconians were ever truly dragons in full?”

  Racking his brain, his first thought went directly to the Draconian Witch. But no—Astria had hinted that she and her brothers had been the last of her people able to transform into dragons. And the First Ones living within the Dragon’s Heart were much larger creatures than those told in any tale. Still, he just couldn’t believe that there was enough of a difference to cause anyone to be alarmed.

  “It’s okay to have doubts,” said Henriella kindly. “The tales about the Draconians are far older than even Belladonna, so no one could ever contest their validity. Though I hope someday, when things quiet back down for a little while, you and Mattie will let me tell you both the story about the prince I met when he came to Crosshawk and his reason for leaving two of The Twenty in your respective families’ care. Especially those particular swords.”

  Garin’s eyes narrowed. The anger he felt was partly at himself for not fully remembering a prophecy made by his foster mother, Evangeline Von Bos, when he was younger. Knowing that Leto carried one of The Twenty had made him wonder what horror was coming since three of those missing swords had miraculously ended up in Menapolin at the same time.

  The rest of his anger was for Henriella. He knew full well those twin weapons had been given to the Brauns and the Hawksthornes seventy years ago, both the one Mattie wielded and the one that hung in the main hall at the royal castle. That information caused him to ask, “How old are you really?”

  Henriella just shrugged. “While a woman never reveals her true age, I will at least admit that I was the youngest Potenti in Crosshawk.”

  Garin managed to put a hand over his mouth before his jaw could drop to the floor. At least the revelation explained the outpouring of power he had felt from her during their first conversation, as well as her immense physical strength today. No doubt his own would also grow in three hundred years.

  But just as he got over that almost mind-numbing truth and began wondering what she meant by saying she was the youngest, the red-haired woman quickly pulled him close as she spun them both around. He let out a noise of indignation at now being trapped between her and the wall. She quickly shook her head as she turned her back to him, her stance now on the protective side. He tried to push her out of the way, but it would have been easier to move a mountain.

  “Stop it!” she vehemently hissed. “Don’t touch me. Don’t try to break out. And by the One, don’t make a sound! I’m not sure what he might have learned along the way, so I can’t guarantee he won’t see us if we move or speak.”

  Now Garin was both aggravated and confused. “Who?”

  “I have no problems rendering you unconscious if you can’t keep quiet, you know!”

  Crossing his arms, Garin glared at the back of Henriella’s head. Despite being angry, he complied with her orders. No doubt that she was more than capable of carrying out her threat. It shouldn’t be too hard to suffer and obey.

  Until a very familiar voice called from the courtyard, causing rage to shoot through his soul! “Lord Gregory Hawksthorne, Duke of Crosshawk! My Ausas, Iantha, has ordered me to treat with you! Will you come forth and discuss her terms with me?”

  By all that was Holy, Esus was all too alive and well!

  Chapter 36

  While Henriella Brewer had proved to him over and over again that she was a prickly creature of immense power, Garin wasn’t expecting her magic to include anything quite like this.

  “That gift is not going to help you worm your way out of here, lad!” she snapped. “All it will do is suck the life out of you while inviting a mountain of trouble in the process! Besides, it doesn’t work on me. And it won’t work on your wife anymore for that matter! Stop mucking around, or you’ll be waking up tomorrow morning in a pig’s sty with no clue about how you had gotten there in the first place!”

  The fact she was speaking at this moment nearly caused Garin to jump out of his skin! Her voice loudly reverberated in the sudden and complete silence, adding power to the heart-stopping declaration. Only one other had surprised him like this—Helka. The ability to stop time around him hadn’t affected that ancient creature one bit. But she was far in the North, living virtually in secret amongst the mages of the Stronghold. Because of his desire to exact revenge on his brother for all the evil the elf had done
, this had seemed a logical method of escape.

  A choice that was now obviously pointless.

  And as quickly as his anger had raged, the dread replacing it had come just as swiftly. Even in his shock, her comment about his wife had not gone unnoticed! “Just what in the hell happened to Mattie today!?”

  Henriella sighed at his demand. “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. The baby, too, is fine. Now, if you promise not to commit an act of war by attacking a messenger, let time resume its normal course before someone notices!”

  The internal conflict continued for a few seconds more. This was a perfect chance to catch Esus by surprise. The elf had been nothing but a thorn in their side since the beginning, deserving to pay for his numerous transgressions. And while his so-called brother was out there under a banner of truce, Garin doubted the villain could keep his word to anything.

  “But what I really want to impart to you, dear children, is that messing around with time is tricky and unreliable.” Helka then slammed a fist onto the table, causing the hourglass to roll off and then loudly shatter once it hit the floor! “If it stays still too long, the original path Fate intended could be destroyed completely.”

  The lesson flashed through Garin’s mind, unbidden—causing him to re-evaluate his decision. As much as the thirst for revenge was demanding to be quenched, the possibility that any interference could produce an even darker future was too great. And the last thing he needed was to be punished like Helka, trapped before his due time.

  And all the stories agreed that Fate was not known for its forgiving nature.

  “Damn it,” he grumbled while he released the dangerous power.