He barely moves. “If she died, then I tethered it.”
“Ifshe died?” I’m trying to catch my breath, trying to comprehend the possibility that the woman who fed me and cared for me and taught me everything she knew…
I advance on the keeper, my claws extending and clashing against each other. “If Lucian’s correct, then Galeia was practically immortal. Surely, you would remember tethering that much power.”
The keeper stands his ground, his expression unreadable. “I don’t.”
“Don’t what? Remember her?”
“I don’t recall tethering that much power,” he says.
“Which means?”
His jaw clenches. “I didn’t tether it.”
I stop still in front of him, my voice suddenly a bare whisper. “Which means…?”
He exhales heavily. “I don’t want you to be hurt, my Veda.”
I close my eyes, trying to squeeze my feelings into a tiny box and close them away, but it’s impossible. “The woman who was in that cell with me… She was with me from the time of my first memories. She never left the cell. Not once.”
I take a shaky breath. “If Galeia is alive, then it means she gave birth to me and at some point before my memories began, she left me in that prison. She might have given me up willingly or under duress, but either way, she knowingly left me in that place.”
Opening my eyes, I wait for Anarchy or Lucian or even the keeper to refute my logic, but none of them do.
Their silence presses in on me.
“She gave birth to me and then she left me to die in that place.”
Maybe she made a deal with my jailer to secure her own freedom. After all, I’m the one who is hated and feared. Maybe she planned all along for me to be imprisoned. Maybe she believed, as my father clearly does, that I’m too monstrous for this world and I belong in a cage.
I want to believe there’s an explanation. I want someone to convince me that she was forced to give me up. Maybe she was separated from me and put in another cell in the veil prison… except that, when I escaped with the panthers, all of the other cages were empty.
Or maybe she’s out there somewhere right now fighting to get back to me. Fighting with all her might…
Even if all the evidence points to her being an incredibly strong, incredibly clever, nearly immortal supernatural. If she wanted to get back to me, surely, she would have found a way.
I’m trying to breathe, trying to come up with possibilities. “She abandoned Halle and Vanguard too. Halle was drowning her sorrows in drink when I first met her. Halle believes that Galeia’s gone. If she’s really alive, why wouldn’t she return to the people who treated her like family? Why would she disappear on them, too?”
The keeper’s voice washes over me. “We have no answers for that.”
“No,” I say, backing away from him. “She died in that prison.”
“Veda—”
“No!” I hold up my hands, warding him off. “She wouldn’t abandon me. She wouldn’t leave me to rot in that place.”
He reaches for me and I shove at his arms. “She wouldn’t do that!”
The keeper’s arms slip around me, warm and comforting, but he doesn’t say anything as my hot tears soak into his shirt.
My emotions must be hurting him. All my turmoil. All my anger. All my disbelief. All my questions.
You were loved.
That’s what the woman who raised me—the woman who cared for me and kept me alive—whispered to me over and over.
If she wasn’t my biological mother, then who was she? Why wouldn’t she tell me the truth? And how could she care for me if she was cursed to look like someone else and forced to live in a prison because of me?
