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Hope just shrugged. She made her way to her grandfather and gave him a kiss and hugged her grandmother tight.
“Hope!” Holden called down after her errant daughter.
The little girl just rolled her eyes before giggling and giving her grandmother a kiss.
“Go on now. We will see you later.” Vasteria’s love for her granddaughters filled her face.
“Promise?”
“Pinkie swear,” her grandmother answered her, twining her pinkie finger around the little girl's.
Hope giggled once again before running up the stairs to take her shower.
The room fell silent, but Shalen glanced over at me. “Ask your questions, boy.”
I guess it was obvious why I had come in here, seeking them out.
Before I could say anything, Lily came in and flopped into my lap, cuddling up against me. Her brother, Lark, followed her, dropping on the end of the couch to listen in. Lexi sat further away, sitting behind the massive desk in the study area.
Shalen waited for me to speak, pulling his wife closer.
“Well, first, I'm wondering about your last name. Yours is Black, right?”
The two nodded, their movements synchronized.
“But Holden married Thomas Black, whose brother was horrible to all of us.” A darkness filled my tone, but I couldn’t hold it back.
Shalen leaned forward, his arm sliding from around Vasteria. “I am so sorry about that. We had chosen it for our surname long before he had come along. Black is a common name here, but I chose it because of Inferno.”
Lark interrupted. “The planet?” He shivered, his eyes darkening.
Shalen stared at him. “You know of it?”
Lark’s eyebrows lowered. “I am The Gatekeeper.” He said the words as fact, but there was something almost profound in his tone.
Shalen nodded, his expression thoughtful. “And what do you think of when you gaze into that world?”
“Heat. Death. Blackness.”
Lexi made a noise behind us, but it was Lily who asked, “Why blackness? Why not red?”
Lark shook his head. “No. That deepest, darkest hell has no light. There is no star. All the hotness, so I have heard, comes from a black hole.”
Shalen finished his statement. “Nothing lives on the world. All life ends as soon as it crosses over the threshold of a gate to that place. This is how I lost my hand.” He lifted his arm, showing his stump.
I pushed for my answer, wanting to get back on track. “So you chose your name based on that planet?”
Shalen nodded. “I thought it appropriate to use Black, not knowing that my daughter might one day fall in love with another with the same surname.”
Holden came down the stairs. “It made things easy when Thomas and I married. I didn’t have to change my name. It didn’t impact my career. I was Holden Black before, and I remained Holden Black after marrying him.”
I cocked my head, looking up at my foster mother. “And you didn’t take Uncle Shane’s last name, either, after marrying him.”
She shook her head, standing behind the couch, surveying all of us. “No. He didn’t care, and I had my name for so long, I couldn’t see myself taking his.”
That made sense, I guess.
I turned back to Shalen and Vasteria. “Okay, that sounds reasonable. But I have another question. Why didn’t you come home before this?”
