Looking up she met white eyes as her breath caught. They looked down at her with a look of fondness that made her want to cry.
“You should not be here.”The words weren’t spoken but formed directly in her mind. She flinched at the invasion.“Where is Warren?”
At that question she tensed, “W-what? How do you know my uncle?”
The stranger stared at her for a long time then sighed heavily.“Time is finicky for our kind. You are no longer a babe. Warren? Is he no longer guarding you?”
Lanias pulled back from him with a growing suspicion filling her. “Who are you?”
He tilted his head, “You already know the answer to that question Lanias. You know it as surely as I know your reason for searching for me.”
Feeling paralyzed, Lanias could only stare at him.
He moved toward her,“You have questions, but unfortunately.”He looked over her head at something behind her.“I do not have much time to answer them.”
Lanias had always envisioned meeting her father in some palace where he wore robes of silk. Pretending to be some false god. The Surrem she’d learned about during her hunt for her father had all been like that. Seeing humans as nothing but bugs, lamenting their need to be served by such lowly things.
“It’s your fault,” She muttered, lifting her head. Her eyes were red from unshed tears. “You’re the reason for everything. Ifyou hadn’t let me live I could have—I wouldn’t have caused the suffering of so many.”
“Your existence was indeed a mistake.”
She sucked in a quick breath at his words.
“You are a child of two kinds that should never have been. The result of a union between a god and a flower, but—”He lifted his hand, catching a fist that was aimed at his face mid-sentence. His arm shook from the force of the attacker.“You are my daughter; I would do all that I can to protect you.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and shoved the other attacker away. “Come.”
She was suddenly surrounded by the sound of crashing waves then she heard the sound of cars. Opening her eyes, she found that they were now standing on the roof of a high-rise building.
Recovering she quickly pushed him away. “Let me go.”
Lanias staggered away from him, shaking her head in disbelief. She looked at the bruising on her arms. They felt like they were broken, and she wasn’t lucky enough to have a healer on speed dial.
“You shouldn’t have gone looking.”
Lanias turned her attention to her absentee father and glared at him as he looked at her with worry.
“How dare you say that? Do you know what I’ve been through as your daughter?” she demanded as she let her black magic strengthen her forearms. Lanias wanted the truth about her uncle’s motives. She demanded an answer, “Your brother knew you’d hidden me? Tell me. He used the excuse of searching for a numb Witch to find me? Did he not?”
He didn’t answer.
Lanias’ expression filled with disgust. “The prophecy, the numerous allusions to a Witch with no specific magic. All tools to guide him to me.”
“It was meant for those who wished to return to where they belonged.”Her father explained with little to no emotion.“We were banished to this realm. We were given only two chances to return home when ready. Some of us wished for it, the prophecy was a means to begin the process. I never intended for so many to be hurt by it.”
She laughed, “Well, lucky for you the prophecy wasn’t what came first. What came first was the deaths of young girls who were nothing more than cannon fodder to a madman's war with his brother.”
“There is so much you don’t understand. Pieces you’ve no idea are in place. Time, forward or backward it’s all meaningless and I wish that you weren’t so tethered to it.”
Glaring at him, Lanias tried to rein back her temper. “Time? Are you blaming the passage of time for abandoning me? For allowing your brother to live and harm me and those I love? You should have killed him when you had the chance. When he—” She bit back her words.
At this very moment she wished she’d never read her uncle’s journal. She wished she’d ignored the box of his things that were given to her after her uncle’s death.
Secrets, so many damn secrets.
“When he killed my mother. You could have stopped it then, but you didn’t. Why?”
This question had always burned at the back of her mind since she learned the truth behind her mother’s death from the damn journal of her uncles.
