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Taking another breath, I glanced down at the page.
“Our king and queen decided to hide me in our refuge, so no one could find out that I was pregnant with you. Evie was almost a year old, so the Skyborne Kingdom already had a princess to take the throne after her parents were gone, but she would need you.
For nine months, I remained in the castle, hidden from the world while Khayden helped Ezra and Sienna come up with a solution that didn’t involve having our children risk their lives. We wanted you to grow up in a free world. One where the Warlock King no longer existed.
It was then that your father crafted a plan. A final battle.
With him commanding Tharion, Azazel, Nocte, Knight, Ardor, and Storm, along with any others you had summoned to us, and the entire Skyborne Legion, we could defeat the Dark Empire once and for all. Our army wasn’t as large as his, but with the sky gods on the Harbinger of Justice’s side, he would never defeat us.
Ezra and Sienna agreed… with only one condition. If anything went wrong during the battle, and we lost, your father was to grab me and leave to the Mirror World without looking back. That way, Raithian would never find us, and we could train you to be the weapon that would one day come back to destroy him.
Caelisium’s savior.”
Holy fucking shit!
The truth knocked the air out of my lungs like a punch in the gut, and I jumped to my feet, panting. I wasn’t sure if Tharion was still behind me, if up was down, or down was up. I could only hear my mother’s words echoing in my mind like a haunted cry.
Evie’s parents had been the ones to ask my father to leave if something went wrong with their plan. Obviously, something did go terribly wrong. Raithian somehow took control of Azazel, turning him into the monster he was today and killing half our people with one breath.
All so I would be safely hidden in the Mirror World, and one day return to help Evie end the Dark Empire once and for all.
Blinking, I forced myself to concentrate, and continued reading the letter.
As destiny would have it, while the great battle raged on one side, my mother was giving birth to me on the other.
She didn’t explain how Azazel left my dad’s side after he had given him his loyalty, ending up under the Warlock King’s curse. Yet, once the four-headed Dragon became the beast, he turned him against the legion, and even his own kin—making him kill several of the Dragons the Harbinger of Justice had fought side by side with for years.
Once my father returned to the refuge, and entered my mother’s chambers, he realized I had been born, which increased the danger not only for me but everyone around us.
Honoring the pact my parents and Evie’s had made, he took his ring off, left it on the bed, and carried my mother out of there while she held me in her arms. Tharion flew us through theEye of the World, leaving us on the beach of theGray Whale Cove, and flying back to Caelisium to wait for the day when his Soulris would return.
But he never did.
“Leaving our world, our people, was the hardest thing your father and I ever had to do…”My mother’s words were stained with the tears that fell as she wrote the statement.“But we knew that this fight was bigger than any of us, and you were the last hope our people had left.
We planned to raise you as the warrior Caelisium needed you to be, but then your “illness” appeared, and we scrambled to find a way to block the connection you had to the Dragons, even from another realm. We were desperate, not only because of what it was doing to you. But because we knew that as long as those creatures could feel you, and you could feel them, then Raithian had a way to find us.
Khayden tried his best to find ways to still prepare you, even when you didn’t know that he was doing. And then Azazel found us, taking your father from us.
That night, I thought I would lose everything. I ran and ran with you in my arms because my biggest nightmare had just come true. I failed you… I guess it was all too much for my mind to endure, and it began to torture me with the horrors of the past.
I am sorry, son.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you needed me the most. I’m sorry that you ended up taking care of me, when it was my duty to protect you. Above all, I ask your forgiveness because I was never able to tell you the truth. To prepare you for everything that you are now facing.
That is my biggest regret of all.”
Her pain clogged my throat, because even though life had been difficult after everything that happened to us, I never once blamed them for it, or regretted taking care of her. My parents might not have been perfect, but they were perfect for me. They made me happy, and I would cherish those memories for the rest of my life, regardless of what they thought they failed to do.
Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I dropped the finished page, to find a new one with the last piece of her message to me.
“I realize that after that battle, your father might not be regarded as the hero he was. The notion alone hurts me, but I understand how life works. In order for us to remain safe in the Mirror World, no one could ever know what we had done, until the day arrived when your father’s ring made its way back to you, and you were summoned back to Caelisium.
But there is one thing that will help you clear Khayden’s name. You will find the pact Evie’s parents made us sign, attached to the back of his portrait in the Hall of the Forgotten. I am not sure if Evie was ever told the truth or not, yet if you show it to her, she will know the sacrifice your father and I truly made that day.
There is one more truth you should know, Braxton, and this will be the hardest to take. For that I’m truly sorry. If I could have changed it I would have, but sometimes our paths are the most difficult of all, and we must still walk them.
That connection you share with the Dragons, that goes beyond the bond of blood, is not the only reason we hid you in the Mirror World. There is something else just as powerful inside of you.
