“Excuse you,” I said, groaning as I pushed up on my elbows to glare at him. He sat on the ground in his bubble, watching me. “I finally got to two hundred before you distracted me. Again.”
His eyes flicked toward the ceiling. “They’ve obviously hit you one too many times on the head.”
I nodded. “Probably.”
Slowly, I shifted to lie on my good side, the one with fewer broken ribs, facing Unir. “What’s taking her so long? I thought she would eventually come down and threaten us, tell us her master plan, and then we would escape at the last minute.”
Unir’s brows rose, and he looked at me for a long moment. “You are very strange.”
I snorted and winced when it hurt my nose. I cupped it and said, “You know what I find super strange?”
He tipped his head and waited.
“Did you know your daughter can change forms like me, and her silver eyes often shift to red?”
Unir’s throat bobbed.
“Yeah,” I said. “Want to tell me why?” I waved a chained hand, gesturing toward the smelly, dark room. “I mean, we have some time to kill.”
I’d caught a glimpse of it in the blooddreams that had finally returned, but they weren’t clear enough for me to get any real answers. Since we were trapped for gods know how long, what better way to find out the truth than to confront the source of all this mess himself?
Unir sighed and looked away. “She was crafted to end wars, all of them. She wasn’t meant to start them.”
“Well, that was an epic failure.”
“Yes, in your words, it was a grand one.” He cleared his throat. “While the Primordials were not the strongest in the realms past ours, they were strong enough to cross the distance. Their very nature pushed them to conquer, and they came here looking to claim these realms and declare themselves sovereign of it all. They invaded the outermost reaches of our realms, quietly building their armies. They succeeded in decimating more than one planet before word reached us. The gods roused, and I led our forces out to meet them. We defeated the strongest, and on the brink of defeat, they approached us, hoping to broker peace.”
He paused and ran a hand over his face. His eyes were distant, obviously lost deep in his memories. The fates had gone quiet, and when I glanced back at them, I saw they were watching Unir as intently as I was. I shifted just a bit, trying to ease the constant ache that had settled into my muscles. The soft scrape against stone seemed to pull him from the past, and his silver eyes focused on me again.
“War is a terrible thing, especially wars between gods. The treaty held for a time, but the Primordials, like all beings, could not deny their natures. Then my dreams started, and I saw true destruction. I saw worlds breaking, time itself ripping apart, and a dark figure surrounded by beasts ruling it all as it burned. It wasn’t clear who or what it was, but I feared the end of everything. I had seen what we were going to have to face, and I knew we would need an army capable of facing it. So I went in search of Gathrriel’s blood, knowing the magic in it could create more of his kind.”
“Nismera,” I said. “She was the first you made.”
Unir nodded. “I shouldn’t have mixed the godly blood as I did with his. It was too much power, and it created an unending hunger in her for more. It’s what feeds her and all she wants. So then I tried again to make something that could stop her, or at least something that could rival her, but she turned them against me while they were still children. Even the gods pay for their hubris.”
I swallowed, not saying anything as he went on.
“You are all aware of how well that all went, but with Samkiel, I saw hope. Finally, perhaps lasting peace could be achieved. He was someone who could match her in strength and power, but he, too, struggled to contain and control his darkness.”
“You mean Oblivion?”
“Yes,” Unir said. “Oblivion has been with Samkiel since he was a child.”
My brows furrowed. “What? I thought it showed up after his mother’s death.”
“Oh, it showed then, but it has been his since birth. Zasyn and I saw it the first time he opened his eyes. They were solid pits of black with purple swirling in their depths before they turned the deep argent they are now.”
My heart thundered in my chest. Unir, even dead, heard it and gave a half smile. But it was not out of fear of my husband, but out of anger. I knew Oblivion lived under my husband’s skin. I had witnessed it, but I assumed it woke after his ascension. Once more, Samkiel had been deceived and misled.
“Why didn’t you tell him?” All humor had drained from my voice.
“I thought it was nothing, and I had nothing to compare it to. He was my first child born. Eventually, Zasyn and I just ignored it, thinking it was nothing but a newly born god coming into his own. But then we started seeing signs we couldn’t ignore. When he was six, we were in the garden I’d had made for Zasyn. It was just a normal afternoon that we had set aside for the three of us. Samkiel was playing near one of the shrubs. His ankle got tangled in one of the roots, and he tripped, hitting his face. He wailed, and Oblivion reacted. Dark tendrils snapped out, attacking what hurt him. Everything within a two-foot area of him was reduced to ash. Zasyn and I ran to him, and it stopped when she reached for him.” Unir shrugged. “I suppose it would never willingly hurt anyone that he loved. I never felt it, nor did she. It did not make an appearance again until puberty. That was when it grew out of control. A rise in his emotions caused a rise in it.”
“He never said anything about that.” My voice was nearly a whisper. I’d never seen any of this in his past after feeding on him.
“He would not remember.”
I felt like I had been slapped. Even the pain in my body couldn’t stop the pain I felt at those words. Not only had he been lied to, but his memories had also been manipulated.
