“I assumed you would come for them eventually,” my mother said, rolling her eyes in my direction. “I just didn’t think it would take so long. I had to rip that hole open into the Court of Wanderers just to get your attention.”
“I—I didn’t know you had them,” I confessed.
“No?” she asked and seemed genuinely surprised. “Well then, out of curiosity, what are you doing here?”
“I came to convince you to stop the rifts and because…” I trailed off, my gaze flicking down to the amulet hanging over her breast.
“Ah, they put you up to this then, did they? Traded you to get their precious father back his power? Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree, dear. This amulet doesn’t hold their father’s power. It holds mine’s.”
My jaw slackened.
“You—you stole your own father’s magic,” I repeated because I couldn’t believe it. “My grandfather. You—”
“I tried to reason with him,” she told me with a dramatic sigh. “But the man hardly ever listens to me anymore. Thinks I’ve lost my mind with maternal grief.”
“Now, why would he think that?” A familiar voice drawled from before us.
Ariadne’s gaze snapped to Lark where he knelt beside his aunt, sister, and best friend. She flicked a wrist and he grunted but remained upright, though his arms and legs were shaking with that effort alone.
“Stop!” I cried. “Please.”
My mother’s eyes flicked between us for a moment.
“Oh,” she said, her tone holding a note of interest. “That’s new.”
I looked to her, desperately.
“Let them go,” I begged. “Please, just let them go. I’ll stay. I swear it. I’ll stay with you.”
“Ren, don’t—” Lark started but my mother flicked her wrist again and he growled in pain.
“Please,” I gasped. “Please don’t hurt him. I’ll do anything.”
Tears were running freely down my face now as I pulled against the marble manacles around my wrist. It wasn’t my best negotiation strategy, I would admit, but I wasn’t in the right state of mind to haggle. I could feel Lark’s pain through the bond and I could feel him pushing away from it, trying to maintain that brave face for me, for all of us.
“Anything?” she asked, raising a brow.
Lark’s pain stopped. I could feel the moment it cleared. He hung his head, taking deep, controlled breaths. Cass watched him, her eyes wide with terror. Rook was pulling against his bonds, snarling. Gemini just closed her eyes and waited.
“Richard,” my mother said and a door off to the side opened up.
A man with honey blonde hair and keen green eyes stepped into the chamber and my heart bottomed out. Because I knew, at very first glance, that this man was my father and that meant I knew what he had endured at the hands of this woman. All the abuse, decades of mind controlled subservience and trickery. Decades.
“How?” Lark growled, eyes wide as he beheld my father who was not a day over thirty.
Ariadne’s grin was fiendish.
“I have a few new tricks up my sleeve, Canis,” she answered, standing from her throne with a flourish. “Come to me, husband.”
Husband.
Ariadne backed toward me a step, taking my manacled hand in hers and reaching out the other toward him. He crossed the room in a few long strides, taking her hand and peering over her shoulder at where I sat, chained. I thought he must be under her control, that nothing else could compel him to stay here, with her, to marry her. But then his eyes met mine and they were so full of sorrow and such a deep, visceral regret that I couldn’t imagine any of those feelings were of her making.
“Look at us,” Ariadne said, beaming as she gripped our hands. “A family, whole, finally.”
“Where is grandfather?” I asked.
“Resting,” she told me. “Comfortably. How sweet of you to worry over him, child.”
