Juno brushed past her, and the mark Morgen had left on her tingled slightly. Nya ignored it, watching Nyx and Thanatos leave, whispering amongst themselves. Once she was alone with her parents, her mother gently lowered Nya’s hand from her face.
Nya hadn’t even realized the laughter had turned to tears.
“Shh, love.”
“Mama, I—” Her voice broke off. “Do you hate me for it? I swear, I didn’t know, not for most of it, and then I just?—”
“Nya,” her mother cut in gently, a hand cupping Nya’s cheek. “You are one of the few things in this godsforsaken world I could never hate. I know you think you’ve done something terrible. I do not think so—but even if you had, it wouldn’t matter to me. Do you understand?”
Nya’s throat was tight with unshed tears, so she merely nodded. Her mother tucked a loose strand of silvery hair behind her ear and said quietly, “Good. I’m going to go talk to the others, but your father will sit with you, alright?”
Nya took a deep breath. “Okay.”
Her mother squeezed her shoulder before glancing at her father, who gave a shallow nod. Nya sank onto the couch by the hearth, and once her mother was gone, her father joined her. For a few minutes, they just sat in silence.
Nya knew her mother loved her fiercely, but she had always felt closer to her father. Perhaps it was the hint of mortal blood they shared that allowed for a sort of understanding even her mother could not claim.
Eventually he spoke, asking, “Did you hear what we said, in the other room?”
She glanced at him, brow furrowed. “How did you know?”
His lips twitched. “Because I’ve caught you trying to stay up and listen past your bedtime one too many times. I can usuallysense when you’re nearby. You’re my daughter, and I would have done the same.”
She smiled despite herself, but it quickly slipped away. “I didn’t realize Juno was in the room… She didn’t say anything because she thought I needed a moment to hear the truth alone.”
“Juno isn’t usually wrong.”
“You know all of them—the principals,” Nya pushed, watching silver flicker in his eyes as she said it. “And they know you. Respect you, even. Why did you stay away from Arcadia for so long?”
He laughed tightly. “I don’t know how much they respect me. They just know I have plenty to hang over their heads if they tried to insult or threaten me.”
Her next words were quiet. “Because you died for them? For the realms?”
“I wish I could say I was that noble, Nya,” he said, meeting her eyes with a sad smile. “But only your mother can truly claim that honor. I was just happy to finally follow her into the void that day.”
Nya frowned. “You were happy to die?”
His throat worked. “We should have told you all of this. I’m sorry we didn’t and that you’ve had to make sense of the past in pieces.”
She dropped her gaze to her hands, twisted in her lap. “I don’t know if it would have made a difference, but you could tell me now.”
When she looked at him again, his eyes were on the fire and filled with enough pain, she almost took the request back. But then, in a quiet voice, he said, “There are many, many things worse than death. I didn’t realize that when I was young and still in my first life. Some of it probably had to do with being raised in the mortal realm, where death is feared above all else. But Arcadia is different, and my mother had ill-prepared me to faceit. I think she hoped I would never venture across the border, perhaps never really even realize the truth about who I was.” He laughed, a soft, sad sound. “She didn’t live long enough to understand how impossible that was.”
“Because Vulcan is your true father.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“And what is worse than death?” she dared, her heart beating too fast and her stomach already turning in anticipation.
Her father looked her directly in the eye as he said, “Watching the one person you swore to protect destroyed in front of you while you are helpless to stop it. Living with the memory of it and being forced to exist, decade after decade, in an empty world you both created. Kronos murdered your mother simply because he could not have her, Nya, and then, when he exiled me to the mortal realm, he took magic from it too.”
A shiver raced up her spine, and he took her hand, adding in a low, insistent voice, “I am not telling you this to scare you. Your mother and I wish we did not keep so much from you, but I willneverregret keeping you from this place for as long as I could. Fate is at its cruelest in Arcadia, and to immortal souls, death only holds meaning when it is wielded as a punishment in the worst of ways.”
She nodded, unsure of what to say. What could she say? All throughout her childhood, she had imagined Arcadia through rose-tinted lenses. She had assumed her parents were exaggerating the true danger of the realm of the gods, but over the years, she had slowly learned that perhaps that wasn’t the case at all.
“Do you ever regret meeting Mama?” she whispered after a long stretch of silence, only broken by the popping of embers.
A huff of air escaped him. “No.”
