“It is the Danamain,” Angel breathed before she shook her head like she couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “No. Seriously. You’re a myth.”
Ixana breathed heavily. “You’re the original creature, Mainey?How?The literal Mother of Creatures?”
They knew her as Mainey. I knew her as Dannie. Between all of us, she’d been the Danamain. We just hadn’t had all the puzzle pieces to put it together.
Unable to stop myself, I stepped closer to my old friend, running my hands through her flames. As always, anything fire dragged me in and never let go.
The burn was pleasantly warm, and comforting, like I was the one coming home to my own mother. Once again, I panicked at the thought that Shadow and I were somehow related, and apparently only one person had the answer to that.
The Mother of Creatures.
43
Dannie, having proven her point, shifted back. Unlike me, her red robes appeared the moment she returned to her humanoid form.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was talking directly to her son. “For keeping this from you. But you were so young when they stole you from me, and I could not escape this realm until I figured out how to release Mera into your world.”
“Excuse me,” I cut in, blinking near a million times as I tried to figure out what she’d just said. “You released me into…What the actual fuck, Dannie?”
Now it was my turn to get an apology. “I have a lot to tell you, my sweet little wolf. And I’m sorry for the many years that you didn’t know your true self, but you are exactly the magnificent creature I expected when I sent your energy into a shifter pup.”
I shook my head, waving both hands in front of me as I refused to believe what she was saying. Shadow’s nearby rumbles were ominous; he was absolutely unhappy with his mother. “You better tell us everything from the start,” he said. “Leave nothing out.”
Dannie nodded, and then she directed us to sit at the water again. “The mists will restore your energy,” she said, “and this is a long tale. Take the restoration, trust me.”
Nobody was trusting her, that was for sure, but in this regard, they complied, sitting. I placed my feet into the Jell-O water and almost instantly felt better. Dannie and her freaking remedies.
“I was the first to emerge from the Nexus,” Dannie said, getting right to the point. “The first creature. The firebird. My place here was one of guidance. I brought the creatures into the world, a mother of sorts, and every single one has some of my energy in it. Only a sliver, though; most is the raw power of the mists. Here they do not fight or battle, they are not opposites.”
She waved her hand. “Once upon a time, everything in this land looked like this, but then the leicher mists in the chasm created the royals and all the beings under them, and after that, we have known no peace. The royals stole my children, controlling and using their pure energy, and there was little I could do to stop it. I was duty bound to stay near the Nexus and maintain the balance.”
I mean, we all knew that wasn’t strictly true. She’d been in The Concordes when Shadow had been born, and she’d been on Earth. Clearly, we weren’t up to that part of her story, but it better get there soon.
No one interrupted her as she continued. “Eventually, I grew strong enough to leave the Nexus for short periods of time while still maintaining the power balance. When I saw the way the royals treated my creatures, I had to figure out a plan to save them. Only, there was so many being controlled that it would have destroyed the entire balance of the mists if I just took out the royals.” She looked between all of us. “The balance is so important.”
She’d mentioned it enough times by now, that I was sure we’d all gotten the point.
“So you decided to take them out from the inside?” Shadow finally spoke up, his voice a dark mist of anger and confusion. “Change them by taking your place among them?”
Dannie’s face crumpled as she forced a sad smile. “I did. And here’s another truth you’re owed: Cristell is not my child. She was adopted from another royal family, after they were killed in a lava blast.”
Shadow’s expression didn’t shift. If anything, that was probably welcome news, after what his sister had done to him.
“How did I come to be born?”
Solid question from the beast himself.
Dannie cleared her throat. “I fell in love with your father. I got to know the royals and figured out pretty quickly that a lot of them weren’t the monsters I’d expected. They also didn’t treat my creatures badly, for the most part.”
She’d been Stockholmed. Couldn’t blame her. Shadow had basically gotten me in the exact same way.
“So you eventually wanted a royal child of your own?” I asked, unable to swallow down my worry that I was about to find myself in the same family tree as Shadow. “Please tell me Shadow and I are not related.”
“You’re not related,” she said without hesitation.
Thank. Fuck.
“You are what I am, which is a creature born of the Nexus.”
