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Despite all those scars, Leoth was the faction that remained the least scathed by the disaster that had occurred in Sythe. The Shadow faction was in complete disarray.
Upon hearing that Melany was dead and that the trove of the faction’s power lived within a long-sworn enemy, most Shadowfaders left the continent in search of a new life. And perhaps even new people that they might train, learn from, and grow with. Until they felt they were strong enough to return. Gwynore was not privy to the strength and will of her sister’s people—not yet at least— but she had no doubts that their plans for survival involved more than a lifetime of running.
With the Faders gone, the city was free to burn and for the past three days, it had been. Almost every faction had burned a little. Even the Land, who not for lack of trying, had stayed out of this mess amongst the gods. But the Land was a stirring cauldron of people at the center of the Continent. Many of Dario’s kind hadnot been directly harmed, but they each knew of a dozen others who were. It was a quick lesson for the young god. Vengeance is a disease, one that spreads quickly and has only one antidote.
A wind blew from nowhere in the hall where Gwyn walked. She did not smile at it but welcomed the nervous presence that followed in her steps. Ione had come to stay in the Well, waiting out the uprisings in her own faction. Most of her time was spent holed up in the war room with Kalen and the court, other times she followed Gwyn around like a lost soul.
With Melany gone, there was no evidence to tie Ione to the attacks on her own people, but many Aegedonians had seen with their own eyes how the High Mer had lost control of her serpent and her Sea. When the water finally did recede, and civilians had outnumbered Faders amongst the dead, it was clear that Ione should take leave. At least until that ugly scar on her cheek healed.
As the two sisters made their way to the war room, Gwyn’s shoulders felt heavy. She would have to find a way to mend the things she’d broken. It was something she had promised Melany before the flames of her pyre dulled in their embers.
Gwyn ignored the impulse to fill the hall with Shadow as she approached the war room. She shook her head at the sound of men yelling. They were always in the middle of an argument whenever she happened to show up. And when she left, she was sure the yelling would start again.
This particular argument was most likely over the plan she and Kalen had cooked up last night. She’d admit, ceremoniously Yielding herself to Kalen in a show of good faith for the joining of their two factions was almost sickening as far as romantic notions go, but she thought it was poetic. They had both become figureheads for the Light and the Shadow. Kalen was born in the Shadow faction and had gained the Light, Gwyn was born of Light and succumbed to Shadow. As terrifying as it was thatthe powers were now combined. Maybe it would ease the tension amongst the factions if they were truly married. Not just in power, but in ceremony.
Gwyn didn’t know how her emissaries would receive the plan. For millennia, she had trained her subjects to be more than wary of her sister and the Shadow, almost to the point of instilling a certain hatred for Sythe and its queen. But when she pulled open the solid doors to the war room and saw them, saw the older emissaries of her court, their weapons drawn and the Light Kalen still held shifting through the room, she understood this was no ordinary grating of egos. And then her eyes found Kalen his throat pressed against her brother Dario’s blade, and she couldn’t help the Shadow that flowed into the room behind her.
“Dario,” she yelled. “What in mortal hell?”
But Dario said nothing, just grinned, and pressed the blade tighter against her second.
Behind them, a man stood from one of the chairs, a ghost of her childhood emerging from the glow of the east window. He was still so roughly handsome, with his curly beard and crooked nose. Looking just as she’d last seen him; dressed in all black, his breast pockets embroidered in red and silver, his pants unwrinkled. And he wore a smile, so similar to the one she always pictured him with when she dared to open up that deep cut on herself and remember him.
But this smile was different. Wrong, it was all wrong.
“Thesion,” his name died on her lips, all of the air in her lungs escaping through the open door.
Ione had gone still at her shoulder. “Impossible,” she whispered. Her face grew pale, sea-blown eyes darting between their father and Dario.
“Not quite, sister,” Dario glanced toward the fire, lifting the ashes from the belly of the hearth. Soot drifted around the room, like snow through early spring air, then fell deftly into a pile inthe middle of the war room.Ione looked down at her hands, and in her mind, Gwyn could see the memory her sister had called forth. The black smudges that stained Ione’s skin a century ago. It was an image so clear, so untouched by time that Gwyn understood without her powers the knife-twisting truth.
Their father had never been dead.
The room darkened, all of that control Gwyn had carefully built in the last few weeks crumbling as her traitorous brother smiled at Thesion, tightening his hand on Kalen’s shoulder.
“Dario,” the sound coming from her lips was more than just a growl. It clamped its ugly teeth down on that power inside her and the entire room webbed with Shadow. “Release him,” she demanded. “Now.”
Gwyn never took her eyes off Dario, if she had, she would have been sick at the awestruck look on her father’s face.
“Gwynore.” The sound of her name in her father’s voice nearly had her collapsing, but she focused on the burning inside her long enough to lock her knees in place. “Dario told me about your transition,” he said. “I did not believe it at first. But I can say I no longer lack the faith.”
Slowly, the old man approached, timidly reaching out to touch his daughter’s face. Gwyn froze, like a child, when his thumb and forefinger took her chin. Thesion lifted her face to him, turning it one way and then the other. “Yes,” he said. “I can see you and your sister have become one.”
Melany, she wanted to scream. How could he not say her name? It took everything in Gwyn not to spit in his beard. Thesion watched his daughter’s eyes flame with bolts of Light and whispers of Shadow. Gwyn watched her father’s smile grow wider. “Much has happened since we last saw each other,” she finally spoke.
“Much,” Thesion agreed. “Come with me, and I will end this now.” Her father leaned to ear, whispering, “Come with me, or Iwill make sure the boy stays dead.”
Gwyn gritted her teeth as her father’s face rose, looking down upon her as he did for the whole of her life. Though he had no power, his eyes grew dark, too. She’d almost missed that look, the one that said he would burn the earth, kill anyone and everyone, for her. And still, he would. For her.
Gwyn nodded and Dario immediately let go of Kalen. Frantically Gwyn whispered into Kalen’s mind,Do not fight this,but she knew it was of no use. She saw his hand move to the weapon snug against the inlet of his thigh. She felt it because he drew on her Light in a way no one else was capable of except for her.
When the blade flipped from the pulse of his wrist into the grip of his palm, Gwyn sent a strap of Shadow across the room. Kalen grunted and ducked around the black power, but he didn’t even pretend to be surprised when he found it wrapping around his wrist. But the hurt, the sense of betrayal. Gwyn could feel it, too.
I will always fight, he said low in her mind and a tear finally escaped through the mask of Gwyn’s control. Her shadows gently ushered everyone from the room. The last of them was her lover. Kalen did not look back and Gwyn did not blame him.
Together, she and Dario ripped open a projection, and they and her father stepped through. It was in the dark sea of the Astral Plane, that Gwyn realized what her father was. A Shadow. One she had made long before she called such things her own.
And it was time she faced him.
