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“So, all this time you’ve been keeping tabs on your father.”
“Someone has to. It’s the reason why I’ve been accumulating magic all this time. Trying to create a stockpile.”
“Wow,” I say, mulling it all over. “I guess the both of us have daddy issues.”
He snorts at that. “I guess we do.”
“Tell me about Jeremias.”
He brushes his lips over the top of my head. “Of course.” He inhales, running his fingers through my hair. “Jeremias is a lot like Skarde, though I have less information about him. But what I do know is that Jeremias is a witch who has lived for hundreds of years.”
“Witches can do that?” I gasp.
“Not that I know of,” he informs me. “But Jeremias can. I don’t know if he made the same kind of bargain with the Devil as my father did, but sometimes I do wonder. Wouldn’t that be a thing for the Devil to do? To create two different sons in different creatures, and make them war against each other, eternal enemies?”
“So I’m guessing Jeremias is a bad witch,” I muse. “Atlas told me I had black magic running through my veins, just as he does.”
“I wouldn’t listen to a word Atlas Poe says,” he says stiffly.
“But I do have darkness in me,” I tell him, propping myself up on my elbows. “You know this as well as I do.”
“Everyone does, Lenore,” he says, eyes skimming over my face as he brushes my hair behind my ear. “It’s what you do with it that counts. Just because your father is Jeremias, doesn’t mean you will be like him. Just like I do what I can to not be like my own father.”
“Tell me what Jeremias does.”
“As far as I know, it’s all rumors and hearsay. Black magic is powerful, more powerful than I can handle. They say Jeremias wants to destroy all vampires once and for all, but I don’t think it’s true. After all, if he has that power, he would have done it already. Those are just rumors and fears that vampires spread, to make us hate all witches, to justify feeding on and killing them. I move in the space in between because I know neither side is truly right or just. That is why I do what I do.”
It’s all starting to make sense now. Handing over vampires to witches is a strike at his father. Handing over witches to vampires is a strike at Jeremias. This is Solon’s way of staying in the grey area.
“And me,” I say to him, finally putting out the question that has bugged me for far too long. “Why did you really take me? Did you really plan to sell me to the highest bidder from the start? Would it have mattered if it was a vampire or a witch?”
His expression softens, fingers trailing lightly along my cheek, holding his palm against the side of my face. “I told you the truth, my dear. I never planned on letting you go.” He bites his lip for a moment, gazing at me with a look of adoration. “I’d been watching over you your entire life. From the moment your parents first brought you into San Francisco, I was there.”
My eyes go round, heart skipping in my chest. “What?”
How can that be?
He gives me a small smile. “I feared the rumors about Alice and Hakan’s child were true. So when your parents left, I had a feeling that the child I saw them raise wasn’t theirs. More than that, I could sense the vampire in you. The guilt was starting to eat me alive, knowing that I was the reason you were in the witches’ care. So I watched over you. I watched you grow up. I looked out for you, and I waited, waited until you were twenty-one, to see if what I guessed was true.” He takes in a deep, shaking breath, fingers pressing against my cheekbone. “I was counting the years as they passed by, and for the first time in my life, I was painfully aware of time.”
Tears spring to my eyes, a crushing feeling in my chest. “You were watching me? You watched me…my whole life? All those years?”
“All those years.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I can’t. “So I was never really alone?”
“You were never alone, moonshine. I was always there.”
I close my eyes, a tear rolling down my cheek. He reaches out and brushes it away, and my heart is close to bursting. All those years I thought I was alone, that no one understood me, and yet he was there, watching over me, making sure I was safe, waiting until I could be his. Fuck. Explains why I’ve always been so paranoid. If I’d only known.
When I open my eyes, I swear I see a glimmer in his, emotion on his brow, his cool façade almost crumbling. Then he inhales through his nose and I feel the restraint roll back into him.
