To my pleasant surprise, the guardian imps barely acknowledged me with their eyes slightly taking on a luminous yellow hue before it faded back to the grayish stone color. They didn’t even bother stirring or looking up in my direction. The gates also didn’t actually open, their lack of interference indicating that I could proceed. After all, I wasn’t walking or riding through the gates. So opening them for me would have been pointless.
I landed shortly thereafter in front of my mother’s mansion. The door already stood wide open like a gaping maw eager to swallow me whole. I stepped inside with determined steps as I shifted back into my natural form.
Finding my mother behind her table instead of at her spinning wheel took me aback. Growing up, and in all the years thereafter, I could hardly recall her not working on some new thread. Whenever she wasn’t taking care of me or other tasks, she would always spin. I often wondered if she ever actually slept.
“What a dutiful son!” she exclaimed in a taunting fashion as she watched me approach.
I snorted and placed the bouquet in the hand she was extending towards me. She grabbed it and brought the flowers to her nose before scrunching her face. Turning the bouquet this way and that, she examined the flowers with an unimpressed look.
“Hmm. It seems like you were right. My own peonies are much better than these,” she mused aloud.
“No shit,” I replied in a self-evident manner as I settled down in the chair that had once more glided from its usual position by the door to the front of my mother’s worktable. “But it was never about the flowers, was it?”
Eyes widened in the most dishonest air of innocence, my mother stared at me with fake confusion.
“Whatever makes you think such a thing?”
“Spare me,” I huffed. “The human performing some sort of sex ritual over there spoke of Ranael. Did you send me there to help me find a way to free my brother?”
“No,” she replied, her face immediately closing off.
“What?! Why the hell not?”
“Elliot knows nothing. Didn’t he say as much?” she countered.
“Yeah. He said someone procured him the blood,” I reluctantly conceded.
“Correct. He got it from a broker,” she concurred.
“Which broker?” I demanded.
“That’s not your problem,” she said in a cold voice.
“Like hell it’s not my problem!” I snapped.
“Calm down, Lyall,” my mother warned in a frosty tone, the vertical slits of her pupils narrowing further.
Although I knew she would never harm me, I barely fought the urge to squirm under the severity of her stare. Any wise mortal would have already run for the hills.
I made a face as if I’d bitten into something foul but held my tongue. While her expression relaxed, her tone remained chastising.
“I’ve already told you that Ranael’s turn will come in due time.”
“Then why did you send me there?” I demanded, annoyed by how much I sounded like a petulant child.
“Why do you think?” she challenged as if I had asked a stupid question.
“Was it for her? Is she mine?”
To my dismay, the eagerness in my voice betrayed what I hoped her answer would be. More disturbing still was how tense my back felt as I awaited her response.
“Do you want her to be?” Mother asked, annoying me further.
She loved answering questions with questions, which was beyond infuriating. At the same time, Mother never said anything without a reason. More than us demigods, she fell under a ridiculous number of rules from the Covenant, most of which didn’t apply to me. Answering with questions was a good work around to toe the line without actually crossing it. With questions, she could lead her interlocutor to come up with the answer ‘on their own.’
“Who wouldn’t?” I replied, this time echoing her self-evident tone.
She chuckled and gave me an amused look. “Many people wouldn’t. She’s bold, fierce, and ruthless when needed. Men fear strong women.”
