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17
The breath didn’t fully return to my lungs until we reached the party outside, but it wasn’t because I had decided to tell Kingston about my love for Evie—not that the idea wasn’t terrifying. It was the fact that Evie and I had been interrupted, and something told me that what she was about to say would change my life.
Based on the way her voice became heavy with worry and regret, and her hands briefly trembled in mine, I knew that whatever she was withholding from me was serious. Her words danced in my mind as she tried to explain. She had wanted to protect me? From what?
Everything that I had learned returned to me. The first time I put on Dad’s ring and felt its power. It was a talisman to enhance the user’s ability, in this case, to enhance my father’s affinity to the Dragons. I thought about his journal, his trips to earth, and the story Evie had shared with me about who he used to be. How he had been the first sky rider, helping liberate our people during the uprising, and then the imposing image of my father’s portrait came to me.
A hero immortalized to be remembered forever, then hidden away where no one could see his face.
Why would they do that? Even the portraits of Evie’s parents and her aunt hung proudly in the throne room here. Why hide my dad’s like they were ashamed of him? Why had my father created such an amazing legacy here, just to leave to the human world?
A sinking feeling course through me, like a wave of frigid power that spread through my being, freezing and cracking everything it touched.
“Asher.” I gripped his arm, stopping him before we reached the table where our brothers and sisters sat. “Tell me about the Harbinger of Justice.”
His brows furrowed in confusion, until the gravity chilling my voice conveyed the urgency of my request. Glancing behind him at the others, he guided me towards the shah’s pond, and turned to face me. A certain recognition entered his eyes when he regarded me, and he finally nodded.
“There are many legends about the Harbinger of Justice. Most of them start the same way, but vary as his story ends.” A certain weight fell on his shoulders, and he sat on one of the rocks, waiting for me to join him. “The one I trust to share is the one my mother used to tell me when I was boy. The woman hated lies, so I always knew that I could trust anything she said.”
He glanced at me with a small smile at the memory of his mom.
“Why does the story vary?” I asked, intrigued.
“Conjecture, pain, needing to fill the holes with what makes the most sense. But sometimes the easiest explanation is not the truest one.”
“Tell me the one you deem true.”
“He was the greatest of our warriors. The first Chief of Battle the Skyborne Legion ever had. But before he became the powerful Harbinger, he was nothing more than a slave among slaves. He singlehandedly started the uprising, after the sentry oppressing him went after his frail father, who was so old and weak from the abuse and torture inflicted on him that he could barely walk. They beat his father to death in front of him, while he was restrained by the other sentries’ and helpless to stop it.”
His pained gaze connected with mine as my hands fisted at my sides.
“My mom was only fifteen then, but she said his pain became so overwhelming that it burst out of him like a wave, breaking through the Dragons’ dormant consciousness. Because of it, they turned on Raithian’s men. She had the gift of sight,” he explained. “So that was the way she always described it. A wave of anguish and despair that awoke the Dragons… The other slaves started to fight back, using their own chains as weapons. Somehow, the Harbinger tore through his shackles and jumped onto one of the creatures, lunging into the sky. He was the first one to ever ride a Dragon.”
With his every word, a rushed of recognition crashed into me, because I had already heard a similar version of the story.
“His Dragon unleashed a breath of fire so fierce that it burnt the giant coil of chains used to imprison our people, spreading through the links and melting the shackles as it did. After that, the others…”
The images his story formed drowned his voice, colliding with the same moments in Evie’s version. She had told me that story, but it was about my dad. Except, in this one, the old man who was killed was not just a slave, it was my grandfather.
She had kept that from me.
Pain, anger, and a sense of betrayal captured my being, and I jumped to my feet. “Was his name, Khayden Skystorm?” I demanded, my shout carrying in the wind.
“Braxton, calm—”
“Was he, Khayden Skystorm?” I seethed, trying to contain the tempest forming inside me.
Confusion colored Asher’s expression with my reaction, until his gaze fell to my ring. When it returned to my face, a glimpse of shock and understanding entered his eyes. “Yes… and he was your father, wasn’t he?”
The muscles of my jaw tensed at the reminder of all the times my father’s name had been cursed since I arrived here. The memory of the most honorable man that I had ever met, of my loving and selfless father dragged through the mud because… the answer came to me before I even had to search for it.
He had left.
He had abandoned their fight, and because of it, they damned him, spitting at the mere reminder of him. But they didn’t know Dad fought until his last breath, that even in the Mirror World, Raithian found a way to take his revenge on him, and killed him.
Life was a bitch sometimes. Both my dad and I had to watch our fathers be murdered by the Dark Empire, in two different worlds.
Whirling around, I entered the castle again, while Asher’s urgent calls got lost in the air. All the moments I had spent with my dad growing up awoke in my head. When he played with me, secretly teaching me to fight. His desperation as he tried to find a way to rid me of my illness, which threatened to take my life before I had a chance to live it. All those nights I awoke to find him asleep on the floor beside my bed, just to make sure I was okay.
