"I'm so angry at you," I whisper, because I need him to know. Need him to understand that his choice, however necessary, left scars. "For leaving. For not fighting. For letting me grow up thinking I was abandoned, thinking there was something wrong with me that made my own father not want me."
"I know." Dante stops a few feet away, giving me space, respecting my boundaries even as his eyes plead for forgiveness. "You have every right to be angry. I was a coward in many ways. I should have found another way, should have fought harder, should have built alliances and challenged Dmitri directly instead of hiding in the shadows while you suffered."
"But you also saved my life." The words hurt to say, scraping against the anger I've been nurturing for so long. But they're true, and I can’t deny the truth. "If you'd fought Dmitri then, when he had the full Council behind him, you would have lost. And I would have died. You chose the only option that kept me alive."
We stand there in silence for a long moment. The essence-lights flicker, casting dancing shadows across the walls. Harlow and Ambrose wait in the corridor. I can sense them through the stone, their concern a steady pulse.
Then Dante speaks again, his voice barely above a whisper. "Your mother. She knew what would happen. Knew that having you would make us targets, would put everything we'd built at risk. The Council had been eliminating demigods for three hundred years by then, ever since Dmitri convinced them thatdivine bloodlines were too dangerous to allow. But she chose to have you anyway."
"Why?" I need to know. Need to understand the woman who sacrificed herself so I could exist.
"Because she believed the world needed divine balance." Dante's expression softens with memory and grief so intertwined I can't tell where one ends and the other begins. "Needed someone who could harmonize the chaos Dmitri had created with his seven-element system. She believed Mother Nature herself had blessed our union, had chosen us specifically to bring a new demigod into the world."
He sits down on the edge of the bed, gesturing for me to join him. I hesitate for a moment, then move to sit beside him. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel his power resonating with mine.
"Tell me about her," I say. "Everything. I need to know who she was."
Dante's golden eyes grow distant, looking at memories I can't see. "She was magnificent. A minor goddess of harmony, sent to the mortal realm to learn and grow and eventually return to the divine plane with new wisdom. She wasn't supposed to fall in love with anyone here, certainly not with another demigod hiding from Dmitri's purges. We were impossible. Divine harmony and divine balance, two aspects of the same fundamental force. But somehow we found each other, and somehow it worked."
He pauses, a smile ghosting across his features despite the tears still tracking down his cheeks. "She could harmonize any essence naturally, make opposing forces work together instead of destroying each other. Sound familiar?"
My divine balance nature. I inherited it from her. All these years, I thought my power was random, a mutation, somethingbroken that made me different from everyone else. But it was a gift. Her gift to me.
"When she found out she was pregnant, terror and joy fought for dominance." Dante continues, his voice growing stronger as he loses himself in the story. "Demigods weren't supposed to exist anymore. Dmitri had made sure of that three hundred years ago, hunting down every divine bloodline, eliminating anyone who might challenge the system he was building. But she believed you were meant to be. That Mother Nature had chosen us specifically to bring balance back to the world."
Tears are streaming down my face now, and I don't bother wiping them away. The black threads pulse with the intensity of my emotions, but they don't feel threatening anymore. They feel like part of me. Part of my heritage.
"How did she die?"
Dante's expression darkens, grief giving way to old rage that burns beneath his calm exterior. "The Council came. Dmitri led them personally, said a demigod child was too dangerous to allow, that you had to be eliminated before you could manifest your power. Your mother tried to fight, tried to use her harmony to turn them against each other. But she was one goddess against Dmitri and his entire inner circle."
His voice breaks, cracking on words he's probably never spoken aloud. "She died buying me time to get you out. Held them off for almost ten minutes while I ran with you in my arms, hiding us both with every divine trick I knew. Her last words were to tell you, if I ever got the chance, that you were loved. That you were wanted. That you were never a mistake, no matter what anyone told you."
I'm sobbing now, full body shaking with grief for a mother I never knew, for a woman who died so I could live, who used her last breath to send me a message of love. Dante moves closer, his arm wrapping around my shoulders, and I let him. Let myself beheld by my father for the first time in a hundred years while we cry together.
Father and son, mourning the woman who connected us.
Eventually, the tears slow. My power settles back toward balance, the black threads calming as my emotions stabilize. We sit there in silence, and I realize something has shifted between us. The anger isn't gone. A century of hurt can't be erased in one conversation. But it's softer now. Manageable. Mixed with understanding and the beginning of forgiveness.
"The black threads," I say finally, gesturing at my own aura where the dark strands are visible even without divine sight. "You have them too. What are they?"
Dante looks at his own essence, at the matching threads woven through his golden light. "It's part of our heritage. Divine balance isn't just about harmony. It's about holding opposing forces together, including light and darkness, creation and destruction. The threads are the darkness we carry so others don't have to. They're not corruption, Rumi. They're purpose."
Relief floods through me so intensely I nearly start crying again. I've been so afraid of those threads, worried they meant I was becoming something dangerous, something that would hurt my mates. But they're just part of what I am. Part of what my father gave me.
"I want you to meet my mates," I say finally, changing the subject before I can dissolve into tears again. "I want you to see what I've become, who I've found, what we're building together at Phoenix Sanctuary."
Dante's eyes light up with genuine joy. "I'd like that more than anything. I've been watching from a distance, saw the demonstration, saw you stand against the hunters, saw the sanctuary transform from a prison into something beautiful. I'm so proud of you, Rumi. Your mother would be proud too."
"You were watching…" I still can’t really believe it.
"Through divine channels. Ways of seeing that don't trigger Dmitri's monitoring contracts." He looks almost embarrassed. "I couldn't stay away completely. Couldn't stop myself from checking on you, making sure you were surviving. When you manifested your full divine nature during the demonstration, I wept for hours. You were everything she hoped you'd be, and you became it without any help from me."
"I had help," I correct him. "My mates. Stellan, who showed me that different isn't dangerous. Jade, who taught me that hunger can be transformed into love. Harlow, who proved that choosing life is always possible. Ambrose, who demonstrated that any price is worth paying for family. And Skye, who believed in all of us when we didn't believe in ourselves."
"Then I owe them everything," Dante says simply. "For protecting my son when I couldn't."
We spend hours talking after that. Dante teaches me about demigod heritage, about abilities I haven't discovered yet, about the ancestral voices that whisper through divine power and how to interpret them. He tells me more stories about my mother, about their love, about the hope they had for me even knowing the danger.
