“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I should have looked harder.”
That had his tears falling. He brought her hand to his face and sobbed, which seemed to cause her to cry harder. Seri's heart wrenched painfully. All the thoughts he’d denied himself growing up, broke free.
Pressing his face to her small trembling hand, he sobbed his heart out, grieving for what had been denied to him, and all that could have been but never will. And with the sounds of her quiet weeping ringing in his ears, Seri thought that perhaps he wasn’t the only one…
Breath shuddering, he managed to gasp out the words. “It’s not your fault.” Even though he still wasn’t a hundred percent clear on how he’d been taken.
He looked up, hands still holding her’s, and watched as even more tears poured down her face.
He knew…the pain he saw in her eye…the yearning. She couldn’t have had anything to do with him being taken.
His mother shook her head, her tears coming faster. “No, Seri. Don’t absolve me of my part. I should have left. I should have done more than what I did… I just…”
“Did you even have the means to leave?” Severo asked.
Seri flinched at his voice, having been so lost at the sight of his mother, he’d forgotten the man was there. But then again…Severo had remained silent until now. Seri couldn’t help but appreciate that.
His mother’s gaze snapped to the Dweller. “I…” Her face crumpled, making him oddly want to hold her and tell her it would be alright. But as much as he wanted to do that, he was afraid of hurting her.
“M-mother.” The word felt weird yet right on his lips. “T-this is Severo Ambrose, the agent that helped me get free, and…m-my boyfriend.” His face heated when he said the last part.
Looking like she was about to bawl her eyes out again, the woman's gaze swept up and down the Dweller, before she cleared her throat and said, “Thank you, young man… Thank you for saving my baby.”
Seri's eyes widened at the term of endearment. He couldn’t even recall the last time someone had called him a baby, let alone ‘my baby’.
On another note…the file he’d been sent showed that she was younger than Severo, so her calling the Dweller a young man was slightly interesting, to say the least. Was he dating an old man? He supposed, if he’d been human, the gap would feel weirder… Cryptids were used to wide age gaps…
Severo smiled. “I think you are putting too much weight on thehelppart. Seri saved himself. He is pretty good at it, not going to lie. Though he does like someone standing by his side as he kicks down his dragons.”
She giggled but then winced, followed by her expression sobering. “I was never one to fight my own…and it’s time that changed. You asked a question earlier. I won’t avoid it. I didn’t have the means to leave. But that doesn’t negate the fact that I was, and am, an adult. Nymphs younger than me have bravely left with nothing…I have no excuse for staying.”
“Did you ever intend on leaving before that?” Severo pressed.
Avery frowned. “At one point…before Robert, I had. I hated the ways there. Our kind aren’t meant to live like that. We are meant to be as fluid as our gender can be. Strict rules, gender roles… Before these settlements formed, it wasn’t like this… I know some aren’t strict like that even now. Your great-great-grandmother told me that. And she told me how free our kind was back then. How free some still are now. Which is why, I suppose, she left and never looked back. But…then I fell in love… At least, I thought I did…”
“But you didn’t,” Seri stated. At the same time, his mind was slightly freaking out about the possibilities of other relatives.
“For a time, I was content… When we were just dating, he’d been amazing, and someone my parents approved of, which was even better as it stopped the constant arguments I had with them… But after we married…” She sighed. “Things change. And by the time I realized he’d hidden who he was, I felt it was too late for me to leave. At least, not easily.
“You have to understand, Seri. I was born in the Byri Nymph Settlement, and I have lived there all my life. It has been pounded in my head that you don’t leave, and you especially don’t leave a marriage. So, I settled. And then you came. The first time I gazed into your eyes, I knew with all my heart that staying had been worth it…but then—” Her voice broke.
“I was taken?”
“It happened when I was out. We may not be able to leave permanently, but we are allowed to travel to the surrounding city. Robert claimed someone broke in, attacked him, and took you. He was hospitalized from the injury, a single stab wound to the abdomen.”
She let out a laugh full of bitterness. “I was enraged… No matter how many, or what weapons they had, how could he let them take you so easily? I couldn’t understand it. No matter what someone would do to me, I’d never let them take you. They’d have to beat me unconscious.” Avery sniffed.
“I’m sure more than ever now that not only did he let them take you, he probably opened the door for them. We were always short on money back then. Not that we have much now with him not working… But…back then…I never asked why we were struggling so much. With the hours he worked, and the hours I worked, we shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t my place to ask, or even have access to all our funds. But I’m sure us always being short on money has something to do with your abduction.”
“What happened next?” Severo asked.
“I filed a report… And then nothing… He changed a bit afterwards. At first, he was overly sweet, and understanding of my pain. I almost thought the person I had believed I married had come back. But it didn’t last. He quickly went from sweet to bitter and angry.”
“It’s likely because he didn’t change back at all. He just put in effort to hide his guilt,” Seri said.
To him…it sounded like the man had approached his mother, fully intending to manipulate her into marriage from the very beginning. It was the only thing that explained him drastically changing after she couldn’t get away.
“He was sweet until I refused to do what he wanted.”
