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CHAPTER5
CHARLIE
She knew. She must have known he’d been planning to come back.
Elizabeth swallowed nervously, her hands clenched around her tea cup. “As I told you, the family has been completely divided for some time.”
“Because one side wanted to free Fafnir and the other didn’t?” I crossed my arms and glared. “You said it was about power, politics.”
“They go hand in hand.” She stopped me when I opened my mouth. “Please, Charlie, I will explain. Just let me start at the beginning.
“You’ll remember I told you that the sons of Fafnir killed their mother and her sisters by taking their magic. The daughters, however, were horrified. They’d suffered their father’s abuse and had no love for the males in their family. After the deaths of their mother and aunts, they decided to kill their brothers before they could take any more lives.”
I interrupted. “How many children did he have?”
“Four. Two boys. Two girls.”
“So, the girls killed the boys, and the girls had children.”
She nodded. “Killed them in their sleep. Fafnir disappeared. The girls taught their daughters their history and powers but cautioned them against Fafnir. As the terror of Fafnir was forgotten through generations, more descendants became curious about their dragon ancestor and began to learn of him through diaries the family had collected.
“Our family has been hidden for a long time to protect ourselves from those who would seek to use us. It is why Fafnir sought out my great-grandmother; he, unlike others, found her. But around the same time that the family began looking at the diaries, they also questioned why we had to hide. Why did we have to do a duty that gives us no glory.”
I frowned. “A duty with no glory? What duty?”
She paused to stare at me, debating something in her mind. The cup chinked against the plate as she put it down, nodded to herself, and stood up. “It is easier to show you.”
The room changed in a flash, turning dark and cold, and I dropped to the floor as the sofa vanished.
“A little warning would have been nice,” I muttered as I stood from the muddy, gravelly ground, wiping myself down. Elizabeth started walking, and I quickly followed, our footsteps echoing off the stone walls surrounding us. “Where are we?”
It looked like a cave, but it was a lot nicer than the one I’d spent a week trapped in. This one had lit candles in little holders down the tunnel that widened the further we walked.
“Under my home,” she replied simply as we approached a curtain of hanging vines.
There’s something there. Something hidden.
Just like when I found the magic hiding spot as we escaped the hunters, I could feel magic fizzing under my skin, urging me forward, telling me to find what I couldn’t yet see. It was an interesting, if not freaky, feeling.
Elizabeth turned to me, her hand resting on the edge of the curtain. “I guard a natural portal here.”
“A natural portal? What’s that?” I asked.
“The best kept secret in all the realms.” She pulled back the curtain for a dramatic reveal, and blue light poured out. A huge portal took up the entire cave, swirling and humming like the other portals I’d seen created, but this called to me.
Power unlike anything I’d ever felt seemed to bounce around the cave walls, and the fizzing under my skin intensified. I took a step back, suddenly wary of my reaction to it.
Elizabeth began lecturing, and I had to concentrate around the blood rushing loudly in my head. “This portal, and the others like it around the globe, are how the realms are linked together. They keep magic flowing between lands and make sure there is balance across the realms. After the fall of the titans, the Fates took the knowledge of the natural portals from all creatures except a few.”
“Why?” I choked out.
“Unrest in the human realm leads to imbalance in other realms. The human realm is the only realm with natural portals to all the other interlinked dimensions. It was a lot like a train station for otherworlders who crossed into this realm, aiming to go to another since their own realm doesn’t have a direct portal,” she explained.
“A titan civil war caused chaos in the human realm which had a huge impact on the interlinked dimensions and the portals themselves. The Fates felt the Guardians of the Titans had failed in their mission to bring peace around the realms, and so the guardians were made gods, which is a terrible eternal sentence; the titans were punished, their souls cleaved in half; and the natural portals were forgotten to stop otherworlders traveling so easily.”
“A titan civil war in the human realm?” I ran a hand through my hair as I tried to take in all the information.
“A ten-year war where the Olympians fought the titans for reign over the human realm.”
