“How are you?”
“I don’t know. Are you a ghost or not?”
“Not right now.”
“Are you a ghost at other times?”
“Only when you can’t see me.”
“What does that mean?” His voice was so much deeper now, reaching a baritone similar to mine.
I hated to see my son distrust me so much, but I couldn’t blame him either. If I wanted to be in his life, then why wouldn’t I just come back? What in the mortal world would stop me? “Now that you’re older, I think you’re ready to hear the story.”
He continued to watch me with distrustful eyes.
I told him the tale, the deal I’d made with Bahamut to spare his mother’s life and the fact that my abandonment was the price. I served as god of the underworld and was recently freed from my imprisonment. My relationship with Riviana had allowed me to go back in time and explain all of this to him now. It was a lengthy story, and he listened without interruption. “I speak only the truth to you, Darius. And I do so in the hope that you understand how deeply I did not want to leave you.”
He needed several minutes to process this. “You’ve watched our lives as the god of the underworld?”
“Yes.”
“My whole life?”
“Yes.”
“So you know exactly what happens to me in the future.”
“I do.”
He stared at me but didn’t ask for enlightenment. “What did Mom get me for my eighteenth birthday?”
I had been there, watching them gathered around the table with the homemade cake Anya had made. “She gave you a golden compass that cost her a lot of money.”
He took in a slow breath.
“My brother got you a new tool set for your apprenticeship. And Tiberius got you a rock.”
He sucked in another breath.
“As a joke, of course. After dinner, he showed you the bow and arrow he’d made himself, his real gift to you.”
His eyes flicked back and forth between mine quickly, clearly beside himself.
“I know you had your first kiss when you were fifteen, with Kanth’s daughter up the road. I know you and Tiberius had a big fight right before you moved out because he was constantly picking fights with you, but in truth, he was just upset that you were leaving. I can go over all the details of your life that I witnessed from the corner…crying. Crying that I missed it in the flesh, devastated to think you thought I didn’t want to be there. I always knew I wanted to be a father, and I was so lucky that your mother gave me you two boys. Raising you is still the highlight of my life. I just wish it hadn’t been so brief.”
Darius clearly believed me now because his eyes filled with a thin layer of moisture.
It was the first time I’d felt connected to him since he was eight years old.
“I love you so much, son.” I gave a slight shake of my head. “I’ve lived four hundred years, and I still carry you in my heart every single day. Still think of you even though, in my time, you’ve been gone for hundreds of years. It still kills me that this time was taken from us.”
His eyes continued to water. “Where…where are you now?”
“In the future, four hundred years. I live in a place very far away from here.”
“What’s it like there?”
“Warm. Beautiful. Near the sea.”
