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EMBER
Wally is my father.
I was not abandoned as a child.
I’d been wanted—well, kind of. I suppose they hadn’t wanted a child at first, but if I am to believe Walter’s claims about my mother, she’d been happy I existed. And for a woman who grew up believing she’d been abandoned by her parents, that’s the first turn of good news I’ve had. And what a testament it is to how fucked up my life has gotten, that I am so easily accepting of his outlandish explanation.
Grudges have never been something I cared to hold. Either he’s telling me the truth and I just got the explanation about my family I always wanted, or he’s lying, and that is something I will sort out once I find Rafferty.
Basically, Wally is a problem for future Ember to deal with.
Wally is silent beside me as we walk through the place he calls the Veil. To be honest, it looks like any other part of Faerie. Part forest, part meadow, and so far, we haven’t seen another soul. Which, given the ones here are all dead, is probably a good thing.
“Can’t you dematerialize?” I stop, wanting to smack myself for not realizing it sooner. “Wait, can’t I dematerialize?”
“Not in here,” he says abruptly as if I might try it before he could get the sentence out. Which, I totally was going to do, by the way. “If you dematerialize in here, the Veil will sense the ancient blood in your veins and send you back to the prison. Which is exactly what will happen should you die. You will be sent back, then be forced to find your way out all over again.”
Holy shit, I’m invincible now?“Ooh. Yeah. Don’t want that.” I fall back into step beside him. “Tell me of my mother.”
“What do you wish to know?”
“You said she knew what you were when you met?”
The ghost of a smile passes over his lips. “She knew. Though she said she believed there had already been too much bloodshed. Millie believed in peace. So she told me I could leave and never come back. Though, should I choose to stay, she told me it would be her who walked away.”
Millie.“My mother’s name was Millie?” Emotion warms my chest as I try to conjure an image of what she might have looked like. Do I truly resemble her?
“It was. And I will never forget the fight in her eyes when I first laid mine on her. Very similar to the fight I saw in yours when you moved into the apartments. That was the first time I’d spoken to you after you received the diagnosis.”
The times we spent together, the times he rescued me from an episode all begin to make sense. Wally hadn’t adopted me as a surrogate grandchild—or daughter—I am his daughter. He was caring for me in the only way he knew he could.
“You still should have told me who you were.”
“I know. But telling you would have put you at risk. And after what happened to Millie—” He trails off. “I couldn’t lose you, too.”
“Did you know what the disease was?”
He shakes his head. “Your mother and I never discussed the origin or surfacing of her power. To be honest, we never focused on what either of us was born as because our choice to be together was far more important. Or so we’d thought. I believed that in binding your power, I turned you human, which left you susceptible to human diseases.”
“Is that what killed me?”
“I don’t believe so. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have ended up in the ancient prison. I believe, now, given your hot flashes, that your power was activating. As you well know—the legend of the phoenix and how—”
“It must burn before it can rise,” I interrupt
He smiles softly at me. “Precisely.”
As we continue walking, I do my best not to obsess over everything he’s told me. It’s hard, though, because even as I long to be one of those women from the books I’ve read—you know the ones who hear everything one time and then just accept it as is?—it’s difficult to believe that this is my new reality.
I’m a fae.
A fucking myth. And my father is the original of the species. Oh, and neither of us can be killed. Which would have been fantastic information to have prior to this shit-storm ever snowballing out of control.
“I never witnessed your mother wield her magic, though I did see others of her kind use it before—”
“You killed them?”
His jaw hardens. “Yes.”
