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“While you were on that side,” Marcus’s voice shook as he spoke, “I was on this side, trying to get you back. I did this for you! If it weren’t for me, you would still be dead. Both of you.”
Wrath took a long breath. It was a miracle that he was able to stay so calm. “You brought me back to be the king of this legion, Father. It’s my job to protect us, now. It’s my job to fix the mess that you created.”
“This is my family,” Marcus argued, voice rising. “You would be nothing without me! I built this legion!”
“Not alone, you didn’t.” My father stepped forward. “You forget who helped you with your ascent, Marcus.”
Marcus scoffed. “You?”
“Yes,” my father replied simply. “Me. You may have eliminated me, but I was on the other side, too. I was part of this legion before you deemed me as too great a threat.”
“A threat.” Marcus rolled his eyes and dipped his head, beginning to pace around the dark room. “Is that what you thought you were? You thought you would be a good leader to these people? You failed us! You would have let the other legions destroy us!”
“I wanted peace,” my father stated. “You wanted chaos.”
Alek tightened his fists. He was the one who killed my father. He was the one who took down that threat. Whatever it may have been.
“I had two sons to keep safe,” Marcus snapped. “What did you do? You ran away from your daughter. You left her in the grasp of the Goddess of Light.”
Ouch.
“I was trying to keep her safe from you!”
My face heated as the attention in the room shifted to me. I was very aware of the fact that my father had left me. Learning that he was alive had been the biggest shock of my life.
He knew what Theia was doing to me, yet he lived his life in freedom as long as he could, not even bothering to help me.
All for what? My alleged safety?
Marcus stopped pacing and folded his hands together in front of him. “Well, you did a great job of that, didn’t you?”
“You used her blood to open the veil, Marcus. You knew the consequences!”
Natalie held her hands up. “Can we slow down for a second? If the veil is open, we need to close it. That’s the key problem here, not whatever rivalry is lingering between you two.” She gave them both a pointed look.
My stomach dropped as I waited for some sort of backlash on Natalie, but none came.
“She’s right,” Wrath added. “Whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter anymore. If the veil is open, we need to close it. It’s simple.”
“Except nothing is ever simple in this world, son,” Marcus added. “Opening the veil took extremely rare circumstances, not to mention the sacrifice. Recreating those elements will be near impossible.”
“What are you saying?” Alek asked. Marcus stared at him with a blank face and set jaw. “Are you telling me the veil cannot be closed?”
My father dropped his head, shaking it in defeat.
No. There had to be a way.
I didn’t bring Alek back from the other side just so darkness could take over. “How much time do we have?” I whispered.
Marcus shrugged. “The veil has never been open this long. A few minutes, maybe, but days? Weeks? We have no way of knowing how much damage we have caused, how much we continue to cause.”
“And Theia has disappeared? She’s the keeper of the veil. How can she not be concerned about this?” I sputtered.
My father leveled me with a knowing look. “Your mother is a sneaky, selfish woman. If she’s staying away from the veil, if she’s staying away from you, there’s a reason for it. Trust me on that.”
“I’d like to think I know my own mother more than you, but thank you.” I couldn’t keep the snarky comment in. I didn’t mean to have hard feelings toward my father, but this conversation was building and building, uprooting emotions that I thought had left me ages ago.
The entire room went silent.
