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Always, though, in the back of Indigo’s mind was, what if?
The day came. Tor brought a midwife to their home. Adriana swallowed her screams, her labor long, hard. Then she birthed a son. They called him Alarik.
The infant had a full head of black hair. But so did Tor. The baby’s eyes were bright blue. Though common for mages to have an eye color other than a shade of purple before their Awakening, no one in Tor or Adriana’s families had ever had blue.
Tor puzzled over the oddity. “Had Adriana heard of such a thing?” He traveled to her parents’ home outside Covenkirk, seeking answers. None were had.
Oft he stood by Alarik’s cradle, staring at the babe. Indigo guarded her brother, her fear growing. In the years to come, Alarik would develop an aura. What if it exposed him as part incubus rather than full-blooded warlock?
Adriana began to avoid Alarik even if he cried. She fed him only when necessary. The rest of his care rested on Indigo’s shoulders, her mother spending more time abed.
With a half-empty growler of Demon Brew on the kitchen table, Tor began the questions. “I do not understand why his chin is unlike anyone’s in our families. Why is his nose dissimilar from mine or yours? Why is his skin color darker than ours? Look at Indigo. She is as fair of flesh as you or I.”
His queries brought tears from Adriana. When she could no longer bear her husband’s doubts, she threw herself onto her knees at his feet, her gown billowing on the dirt floor where she confessed.
While she had walked in the woods near their homestead, gathering herbs for dinner, an incubus blocked her path. In her innocence, she sought to go around him. He grabbed her, captured her wrists before she could cast a spell, threw her onto the ground, and lifted her skirts. The male clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent her cries for help. He raped her, leaving her exposed, sobbing. She made her way home. Nine months later, she birthed a warlock-incubus bastard.
A storm gathered in Tor’s eyes. He fled the house, his treasured Demon Brew in his fist. In the days he was absent, Adriana flitted through the rooms, pacing, wringing her hands, not bathing, not sleeping, not changing clothes, not caring for Alarik.
One day, she approached her babe’s cradle, her eyes mad. She snatched him up, rushing toward the door.
Indigo threw herself in her mother’s path. “What are you doing?”
“We must hide the evidence before your father returns. I shall bury it deep beneath the ground.”
Indigo plucked the bundle from Adriana’s arms. “No, Mother. I will not allow you to harm Alarik.”
Adriana cast a spell to pull the child from her daughter, but Indigo brushed it aside as if it were no more than an annoying gnat. Despite her youth, she was a far more powerful witch than her mother.
The front door crashed inward. Tor stumbled into the living area, drunk on spirits. Throwing out a hand toward Alarik, he also tried to take the babe with a spell. Indigo stopped him. Turning with her brother clasped tight to her chest, she raced for the yard. The ground beneath her shook with the power of her father’s incantations. Still she ran. And ran. And ran. When it grew dark, she sought refuge outside Covenkirk in a cave. During the night, she dreamed. An unseen force pierced her heart, its evil presence like a dagger.
Leaving her brother with a trusted friend in the morning, she sneaked back to her home. On the floor in the kitchen was her mother’s body, her father’s sword beside her severed head. Tor had crawled through her blood to lie not far away, a knife buried in his chest, his fingers twitching on the hilt as he struggled to live.
“The whore fought me.” With blood bubbling from his mouth, he swore, “I will kill the child as I did his mother.”
Because he was an Aeternal, he would survive his injuries. Knowing her father’s cruelty as she did, he would be relentless in pursuit of Alarik. Her brother would never be safe.
Tears rolling down her cheeks, Indigo hefted his sword into both of her hands. Striking across her father’s neck, she made certain he would never rise.
As she watched his head separate from his body, she flashed on better times. Him carrying her on his shoulders through the open market, tucking her in at night, and soothing her when she was ill, which was often before her birthday visitor had changed her life. Yes, Tor was cruel, but there had been a time when he wasn’t.
She packed up Alarik’s meager belongings, stuffing clothes into her suitcase. After hitching up the horse, she set everything on a cart. At her back, the house where she had been born erupted into flames, a simple spell for a witch of her power.
She retrieved her brother. From that day on, she never revealed the truth of her parents’ deaths to anyone. Aeternal law was pretty clear on patricide. Death to the perpetrator. Excuses be damned. So a marauding band of demons had obviously killed them. Such a tragedy.
She kept the darkest secret of all.
Indigo accepted the responsibility of being sister and mother. Though she never shared her role in Tor’s death, she revealed Alarik’s true parentage because his incubus traits along with his aura became obvious as he matured.
Despite personal burdens, her young shoulders grew stronger. Of course, they already bore the weight of another huge responsibility, the gift from a stranger on the fifteenth year of her birth. The River Am. Given the brio of life from the wizened mage, she was the Guardian of Time. But her greatest millstone was her secret. She had killed her own father.
Indigo awoke with a start, patting the nightstand until she found her cellphone. She opened Favorites and punched Bro.
He answered after the first ring. “Sister. It is late. Are you okay?”
“Of course I am, brother. How are you?”
“Just signing off in my office, ready to relax in my new chambers here at the ministry.”
