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“You were never made for him. Whatever unnatural union you may have had is over. Leave it in the distant, alternate past, where it never should have happened.”
I thought if I ever found my real family, we would have something in common. But we have nothing in common. Lykar is a glib liar who only cares about what things look like.
He is sitting back in front of the mirror he was sitting in front of when I met him for the first time. He is obsessed with that thing. I think it is his connection to the human world, past, present, and future.
“What does the mirror do?”
He looks over his shoulder at me. “This is a looking glass. It shows me the world beyond. The world is always changing. Through this glass, I can pluck at the strings of time, play the world like the instrument it is. Humans believe Earth was made for them, but that is a sign only of their arrogance. They are an amusing parasite. Nothing more.”
“So I am half-amusing parasite.”
“As I have said before, one drop of faun blood makes you whole. As for amusing, yes. You bring with you an entire set of suppositions which are laughable here, in this realm where there is no pain, no suffering, no fear. You should be in ecstasy, but you’re not happy. You want your lover. The brutal alien.”
“Who saved me. Who kept me safe. Who loved me more than anyone. Please, let me go to him.”
“No,” Lykar says. “If you want to feel better, drink the water at the back of the cave. It will help you forget, and you will begin a grand life anew. You have subjects waiting to meet you. Thousands of fauns who will lay themselves down for you if you command it, because you share my blood.”
“That’s what you say. I haven’t been outside this cave.”
“Nor will you, until you accept your place here, drink the water, and assume your crown. It is waiting for you, Tres.”
He reaches into the mirror and pulls out a pretty band of sparkling jewels. “This could go on your head.”
I stare at him blankly. “… okay?”
“This would mean a lot if you were born later,” he says. “You’re not very sophisticated are you?”
“You’re not very nice.”
He sighs and flings the crown back into the mirror where it disappears. “I could give you everything, Tres. All the power you never had. All the lovers you want…”
“I only want one. Vulcan.”
“Not going to happen.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “It’s going to happen. It wouldn’t surprise me if Vulcan reached right through that mirror and crushed your throat.”
“You are beginning to try my patience,” Lykar growls. “You are ungrateful.”
I absolutely do not like Lykar. At first I was relieved to see someone who mirrored myself back to me, but I have been in this cave for what seems like eternity, and there is no obvious way out. I am trapped, a prisoner of the faun-king, and he expects me to be grateful.
“What should I be grateful for first? Being abandoned by you? Growing up waiting to die? Being left to die of a head injury? Being incarcerated and kept from my loved one?”
“You should be grateful that you are something more than dust.”
“I’d rather be dust than be trapped here with you.”
He looks at me, then his anger melts into laughter. That is the kind of reaction that makes me think I could have liked him if I had known him in another time, another place, if he had bothered to be the father he could have been.
“You’re so fiery,” he says. “So brave. Perhaps I owe you an apology, but a thousand apologies will not make up for the loss of your lover. So you will have to do what so many wayward children do.”
“What is that?”
“Hate your father, until you realize that he could never be what you needed.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Lykar?”
“It means I did not know what happened to your mother. I did not know you had been conceived. I did not feel anything in this realm until you began to sing, and by then you were already almost fully grown. I made this place for you. I waited for you. I could see your life was pain, but if I had entered your world, stolen you away, I would have interfered with the destiny already in motion.”
“I’m glad you didn’t come for me,” I say. “Vulcan came for me. And he will come for me again.”
“He can’t,” Lykar says. “It is not possible.”
“He will make it possible.”
Vulcan
The humans have decided to kill me.
It is reasonable, under the circumstances, and I’m agreeable to the idea. Tres died on this planet. Wherever her soul has gone, `I feel as though the portal, such as it is, must be nearby. I never planned to die for anybody. I thought my end would come on the conquest of some planet, but I would die a thousand times for her.
