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“So, what happened?” I ask, keeping my tone light, aware that it’s growing darker outside, the sunlight fading fast as his mood fades. “Crystal water makes you horny or something?”
He snorts at that, and I feel pleased for amusing him. “Something like that. More like it gives you a one-way look into what feeling like a God is like.”
“No thoughts, only fucking? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem to have a lot more substance than that.”
Another quick smile, this one dry. “I’m glad you think that. I haven’t always been this way. I’d like to think I’m still not in some ways.”
I let my gaze coast over his body. He’s so big and hard and broad, it’s hard not to stare at him. He’s wearing a black shirt, black pants, boots, gloves—all the same as usual. His hair is anchored back in a ponytail of sorts, his beautiful face on full display. His eyes are rimmed and smudged with kohl liner, something I find so incredibly sexy, especially the way it makes his gray eyes pop. I know he does it so that it fills in the empty socket space of the masks he wears, but it’s a look I like. A lot.
“You took to the water well,” he says after a moment. My cheeks burn and he glances at me thoughtfully. “I saw glimpses of you. What you are. What you could be. You’re not…” he licks his lips, eyes narrowing in thought, “you’re not who you think you are, fairy girl.”
“You’ve said this before.”
“But you must know it’s true,” he says, more urgency in his voice. “You know you belong here, with me, in this world. That there are parts of it that sing to you. That make it feel like home. You know it. Vipunen knows it.”
“Vipunen knows what?” I question. “He wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Maybe you ask the wrong questions,” he counters. “While you were sleeping all this morning—recovering from me fucking your brains out—” he adds with a smirk, “I paid the giant a visit. I wanted to know how it went, in the event that you didn’t remember. He said you surprised him. Of course, I tried to get more information out of him but he said anything else he had to say about you, he would tell to you alone.”
I feel that flash of pride again. I’ve surprised the omniscient ancient giant. That can’t be no small feat.
“When do I see him next?” I ask.
“Tomorrow morning,” he says. “You need extra rest.”
I raise my brow. “Because he worked me out too hard or because you did?”
His eyes glitter. “Both.” Then a grave look flattens his brow. Something is weighing on him.
But there’s something weighing on me too.
I inhale deeply.
“I have to tell you something,” I say, at the exact same time that he does.
We look at each, eyes wide.
“You go first,” he says.
“No, you go first,” I say, making sure I sound more adamant.
He stares at me for a moment, eyes searching, then nods. “Fine. Hanna, don’t let this news upset you in any way, because it’s all based on gut feeling and not much else but…I have reason to believe your mother isn’t your birth mother.”
I swallow, blinking at him.
I knew this day would come. I knew it in the deepest trenches of my soul that my mother was not my birth mother and that one day I would find out. I knew it, and all the same…
It kills me.
How can something feel so right and wrong at the same time?
It makes so much sense. I never felt she was my mother. She never felt it either, because she wasn’t. But I had gotten used to it. Used to her, to our awful, cold, never-evolving relationship.
On one hand, I feel relief in knowing my instincts were right, in knowing there was a reason why she couldn’t love me like a mom should have.
But on the other hand…I’ve never felt more abandoned and alone.
Neither mother wanted me.
“If she’s not my mother, who is?” I haven’t realized I’ve spoken my thoughts out loud until Death sighs heavily.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I will find out.”
I frown at him. “But how did you find out?”
“I looked you up again in the Book of Souls,” he admits. He doesn’t look ashamed in the slightest. “I was curious. I went to your very beginning. Saw your father right after your birth, or so it seemed. But when he gave you to your mother, who was sleeping, who seemed to have given birth far earlier…she didn’t look at you as if you were hers.”
I suddenly throw the covers back and get out of bed, not caring that I’m nude.
“I have to go to the library, you have to show me,” I tell him, going for the door, but he calmly reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me toward him, then my other arm, anchoring me between his legs. I should know by now that trying to escape from his grasp is futile, but I try anyway.
