“Yes, like that, but red.”
I keep searching and discarding books with no answers.
Pollock finds it. He nudges my shoulder and presents the page to me. My eyes scan it quickly, skimming over the contents, but then something catches. I slow, focus, and read with intent, working to understand.
Afterward, I shift to the notes written along the margins.
Horror grips me.
I turn to Pollock and find my expression mirrored in his, but his holds something more. A knowing.
“You said a wolf guided you here.”
He nods solemnly.
“And the god who fell. Who was it?”
“If it was the same entity who woke me and dragged me for days on end and guided me here, and I had to guess. Then I’d say it was Fenrir.”
“And you said you followed her scent.”
He stills for a moment and scratches at his jaw. “Yes. Not a power I was capable of before, but it drew me to this place. And my chest is tight and warm, it’s… I don’t feel like myself.”
It’s another sign.
“This.” I lay my hand flat on the page, on the red X. “Eridessa claims here in her notes that she used animal blood. A female wolf’s. She was directed to do so from another book, but the sigil altered her more than she anticipated, gave her feverish dreams, and sent her into the state. The state I left her in before coming to see who approached the house.”
“Is it possible?”
I study the words on the page again. “It appears so. She believes it to be so.”
Pollock's eyes narrow as if in deep thought. “The beginning and the end. The alpha and the omega.”
I drop the book on the workbench. “What is he playing at? This was never part of the plan.”
“Ordained or not, it is what it is, or what appears to be his answer to what’s unfolded.”
I shake my head, not ready to believe it. “This is madness.”
Pollock paces away from me and runs his hand through his hair. He stands motionless for a long moment and says, “I told you before that I didn’t remember the day we died.”
Turning, I give him my full attention.
“That’s no longer true. When I woke after the stars fell, I saw what had previously been hidden from me. Those visions…memories have haunted me since.”
His hands fall to his sides, his shoulders dropping with the weight of his next breath. “I arrived too late to save them. And that thought… more than anything else, causes me great grief. Hell’s gates, I still see it every time I close my eyes. Their blood is coating the floor. Father is lying there. Mother is a few feet away from him, her arm extended as if reaching out for him. While I took my last breaths, I wished only to reach her, to feel her hand in mine one last time, and to warn you that he was coming for you as well.”
His expression hardens, something heavier settling in. “I don’t know what you faced, but I know in part you blame me for not coming to your aid, or maybe it’s for not believing you when you spoke up about the true evil growing inside our uncle.”
I say nothing as the past in my mind collides with his version of events.
“You died beside Mother and Father?”
“Yes, and he told me at the end what he intended to do to you. Worst of all, he wore my face. He’d taken power from me, power from what I had become in those final moments as rage and grief consumed me.” His head shakes harshly. “The first time I ever became something other than a man, and he stole the ability. No training I had done had brought it forward, but witnessing what I had did so, and he used it to create a monster out of me when he came for you.”
The truth, as he knows it, is written across his face. No lie rests there. Only regret and grief.
He studies me. “All this time… you thought it was me.” Not a question. A statement.
