“Because I spent thirteen years in a ravine with nothing but time and questions.” Farmon turned the pendant in his fingers.
“The collapsed portal I went through was secondary. The primary had been sealed two hundred years ago after the first expedition failed to return. When I found the pendant beside a second destroyed gateway, I recognized the crest.”
“Kaelwyn. A warrior family. Commander Rowson Kaelwyn and his mate Lady Diera were assigned to that expedition.” His silver eyes found mine. “She was pregnant when they left Veyndral. The timeline matched. The crest matched. And when I remembered you, the foundling the palace had taken in, the boy who appeared in the Glowwood as an infant, I knew.”
“The symbol on this pendant is the crest of your family. Your father was Commander Rowson Kaelwyn, one of the finest tactical minds Veyndral produced. Your mother was Lady Diera Kaelwyn, a researcher with an intellect that saw connections where others saw chaos.”
Kaelwyn.
The name dropped into a space inside me that I hadn’t known was hollow.
Two hundred years of being just Percival, the orphan with a locket and no explanation. Centuries of watching Solomon say Theron and Lucian say Valdris and wondering what it felt to carry a name that connected you to people who’d existed before you did.
“Two hundred years ago,” Farmon continued, “King Altun sent your parents to the human realm on a reconnaissance mission. Just to inspect the realm, perhaps send a message if ever The Order is found.”
“They didn’t come back.” My voice came out flat.
“No.” Farmon reached into his jacket again and pulled out a second object. A small book, water-warped and sun-bleached, the leather cover cracked with age. “I found this beside the pendant. Your mother’s field journal. She documented everything, right up to the end.”
He held it out. I didn’t take it. Not yet.
“Her entries tell the story. They confirmed the Order’s reformation, gathered intelligence, mapped compound locations. But the Order discovered them before extraction or a signal to Veyndral.” Farmon opened the journal to a page near the back. “Your father engaged a twelve-man hunting team single-handedly to buy your mother time to run.”
Twelve men. My father had fought them.
“He died protecting his pregnant wife. The last thing he did was give her enough time to escape.” The respect those words carried was audible, a soldier honoring a soldier.
She’d been pregnant with me.
“Your mother was injured during the escape. A silver compound wound.” Farmon turned the page. The handwriting deteriorated, ink smeared in places where blood had dripped onto the paper. “She ran six miles to the portal, bleeding, dying. And when she got there...”
His silver eyes found mine. “She gave birth. Alone. In hiding. With hunters closing on her position.”
The sound of the stream filled the silence between us. Water over stones.
“The last entry is about that plan. Your birth and the portal.” His voice almost held steady. “The entry ends mid-sentence.”
“And after?”
“The journal can’t tell me that part. But the portal was destroyed from this side. Only a lycan of significant rank would know how to bring down a gateway.”
Farmon’s gaze dropped to the pendant in his hands. “When I found the site, the destruction pattern was consistent. The forest would have changed given the centuries gap of my arrival but what’s left is enough for assumption.”
She’d pushed me through and then burned the door behind her. Dying, alone, with hunters closing in, and her last act wasn’t running.
It was making sure they couldn’t follow her son.
“She died,” I said.
“She died. Having given birth and sent her son to safety and collapsed the only path that could have saved her.”
Farmon closed the journal carefully.
“Her research survived. The earlier entries contain detailed analysis. It’s how I’ve stayed alive in hiding. Her work on counteracting silver toxicity is the foundation of every treatment I’ve developed, including the paste keeping your king breathing right now.”
My mother’s research was saving Lucian’s life.
Two hundred years after her death, Lady Diera Kaelwyn was still protecting the people of Veyndral.
