Kody patted his hand. “Well, hon, you’d be dead now if you were.”
“No, you said there was
one
left. One Malachai and one Sephiroth.”
Her face paled. “Trust me, Nick, you don’t want to be Jared. His existence is nothing but pain and utter misery.”
“Oh … never mind.” He had enough of that in his own life. If Jared’s was worse, he’d gladly take evil tool status. “Please continue.” Nick sat down on his bed, but made sure to put a good amount of distance between them. “You left off with the consorts.”
“Noir, Braith and Azura were livid that the light gods had dared create an army to be used against them, so they forged their own to maintain the balance.”
That writing went all over the wall. Up, down, sideways and back. “And eventually, they all had it out.”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “That’s the problem with stockpiling weapons. Sooner or later, someone always pulls the trigger.”
Stacking his pillows against his headboard, he leaned back and didn’t mention to her that whenever she spoke about the primal gods, a strange light surrounded her. “You’re related to one of those primal gods, aren’t you?”
She averted her gaze. “What do you want me to say?”
“I’d like the truth, for once.”
Still, she refused to look at him. “I can’t give you that, Nick. Not where I’m concerned.”
“And that really bothers me, Kody. What if I did that to you?”
“It would bother me, too. But I would try to trust you and to understand why you were bound to keep secrets.”
He scoffed. “You say that because you’re the one holding the cards and I’m the one wondering if you really are here to protect me … or,” he paused on what concerned him most. People betrayed. Alan had taught him that when he stood over him and cold-bloodedly shot him for refusing to commit a felony. Kyrian’s wife, the woman he had given up an entire kingdom and his inheritance to wed, had ruthlessly handed him over to his enemy to be tortured and executed.
And he would become a Dark-Hunter in a few years because someone would bring about the death of his mother.
Was Kody the one?
“Are you here to ultimately harm me,” he finished, putting it on the table for her to confirm or deny.
Either way, she could be lying and he’d have no way to know for sure.
We’re all rats in a maze.
Truth isn’t known until we’re fed …
Or dead.
This time, she locked gazes with him. “Have I done
anything
to make you mistrust me?”
Not technically.
Nick tucked his arms behind his head as he eyed her. “Aren’t you the one who told me that omitting a fact is as good as lying?”
She shook her head at him. “Now I know why you want to go to law school. You’d make a great litigator.”
Yeah, but he didn’t really like arguing or confrontations. Not that he’d ever back down from a fight.
That
wasn’t in him. Still, he’d rather avoid conflict than seek it out.
If only other people would be kind enough to let him do that. Some days, it seemed like the entire world was on a quest to shove him as hard as it could, and not let him walk away.
“I want to go to law school, Kody, because I don’t like being pushed around. People use a lawsuit as the ultimate threat against other people. I want to be in the position to glare at them and say ‘come get some’ whenever they try it with me.”
She smiled at him. “You are ever, at your core, a warrior.”
And knowing he was the Malachai, it made sense. That was what his people had been created for. But why then, would he rather have peace than war?
“Why do you think my mother chose my father?”
Kody frowned. “What do you mean?”
Nick allowed his thoughts to drift to the one question his mother refused to answer. “I’ve always wondered why my mom, especially as young as she was, would do what she did with a loser like my dad. Why did she sleep with him? I just don’t get it. As beautiful as she is, she could have had anyone. Or better yet, no one until after she graduated high school. Or best of all, not until she got married.” It was his mother, after all. That’s what mom’s were supposed to do, and then only when they wanted kids.
As for himself, while his body was more than willing—a lot and especially anytime an attractive woman was near him—he had no intention of taking that chance while he was still a kid. He knew exactly how hard it was for a teenager to raise a child, and he had enough responsibility on his shoulders. The one thing his mother had drilled into him—
You bring an innocent baby into this world, you do whatever you have to take care of it and provide for it.
For that reason, he wasn’t about to sleep with
anyone
until he was mentally and most of all, financially, ready for the possible outcome of having a wife and baby to support.
“Do you really want the truth?” Kody asked.
“I certainly prefer it to a lie.”
“Then take an honest look inside yourself, Nick, and face the beast you don’t want to know exists. You know your mother. Better than anyone. What do you think happened?”
Nick grew silent as his thoughts went to a place he very seldom allowed them to go. It was so dark and so painful there, that he’d always told himself it couldn’t be. That surely, he was wrong to even suspect it.
But the words were there and they weren’t his. It was like they came from some kind of ancient prophecy or ordinance that had been handed down throughout the ages. “I was conceived in violence to do violence, wasn’t I?”
“The Malachai always is.”
Nick cursed under his breath. Well, at least now he knew what not to do to father his future heir and murderer.
But if that was true … “Then how can she stand to go near him?”
“He’s your father. To her, blood means more than anything else. Blood makes family. And I’m sure if you asked her, she’d tell you that he gave her the greatest gift of her life … you.”
Yeah, some friggin’ gift he was.
Sick to his stomach over the truth, he wanted to puke. His mom deserved so much better than to have been saddled with something like him. From beginning to end, he’d ruined her life.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at her.”
“You were hurt, Nick.”
And she wasn’t? His hurt feelings were insignificant when compared to what he’d put her through. What he had yet to put her through.
She’s going to die because of me.…
He blinked against the pain that was concentrated at the center of his chest. “That’s no excuse.” He cringed at the horrific reality of his conception. “How can she even stand to look at me?”
“You are her son, Nick. Her flesh and her blood. I told you, in her eyes, that means everything.” Kody raised her hands and formed a shadowy box between them.
Because of his scrying powers, he knew she was opening a window to show him events. But where he used his for the future, she was showing him the past.
He saw his mother screaming in the throes of labor. Just a baby herself, she was in the living room of Menyara’s run-down apartment, where they had lived until Nick was five and the landlord had tossed the guy next door out for nonpayment.
“Make it stop!” she screamed at Menyara.
“Push, Cherise. Push. You can do this, child. He’s almost here.”
She let out a cry so shrill, it echoed in the room, and made Nick cringe at the thought of the pain he’d given her.
Menyara laughed as his mother collapsed on the pullout couch. The baby made a weird gurgling sound, then screamed out at the indignity of being brought into a hostile world.
After wiping him down, Menyara wrapped him in a blanket and handed him to his mother. “He’s beautiful, child … just like his mother. And as
perfect
as he can be.”
Tears flowed down his mother’s cheeks as she stared at him. “Hello, baby. So you’re the one who’s been making me eat broccoli and cheese with chocolate syrup.” She clutched him to her chest and held him as if he were the most precious thing in the world.
Menyara brushed a lock of hair off his mother’s cheek. “You want me go and call that adoption lady,
cher
? She say all you had to do was sign them papers and they’d be happy to find him a good home. They be plenty of parents willing to take him.”
Nick sucked his breath in sharply between his teeth. His mother had never told him that she’d ever considered letting him go.
“It makes him sound like pet to be adopted, doesn’t it?” His mother looked up at Menyara. “But it would be the best thing for him, wouldn’t it?”
Her eyes filled with nothing but love and loyalty, Menyara shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. For you, it would definitely be best,
ma petite.
Your parents said you could come home if you gave the baby up after he was born.”
His mom glanced around the room that was decorated with Egyptian artifacts and artwork while tears glistened in her eyes that were identical in color and shape to Nick’s. “I’m too young to be a parent. I can’t even drive yet. Can’t legally work or do anything except be a burden to you, and you’ve already been so kind to me. Above and beyond. I don’t know what I would have done had you not taken me in, Mennie. Thank you so much for being so kind and decent.”
And his mother hated being a burden to anyone.
“It has been an absolute joy having you here, Cherise.” She smiled kindly as she cupped his mother’s cheek. “And I don’t mean because you do me laundry and clean me house, girl. Yours is a beautiful soul, and I will support whatever decision you make for you, and for your son.” She dropped her hand to Nick’s head that was covered with dark hair. “The adoption lady say that they were always in need of little boys. There be a long list of parents waiting to take him in and love him like he was their own.”
“But he would never know
me,
” his mother sobbed. “I could be in a restaurant one day and he could be sitting beside me and I’d never even know he was there. Every time I saw a little boy his age, I’d wonder … is he mine?”
Menyara sat down beside her. “Don’t cry, Cherise. Births are always happy times. You have brought life into this world. Look at him, child. He’s perfect. Beautiful.”
She nodded against Menyara’s shoulder. “He deserves only the best in life.”
“All of us do, child.”
Licking her chapped lips, his mother brushed her hand through his hair. “What do you think they’ll name him?”
“I have no idea, sweetie. But, I’m sure it’ll be a good name.” Menyara reached for him. “Let me—”
“No!” his mother snapped. She buried her face against his chest as he wiggled angrily in protest. “I can’t do it, Mennie. I can’t. He’s
my
baby.
My
flesh and
my
blood. He doesn’t belong to somebody else. I’m the one who’s been talking to him and I’m the one he’s been kicking. How can I let someone else have him now?”
Menyara drew her brows together into a fierce frown. “Are you sure about this, Cherise? Life is hard on everyone. But you keep that baby, and it will stomp on you in ways you can’t even imagine.”
She lifted her head bravely. “It’s going to stomp on me anyway. And I want to be there when it hurts him. I want to be the one who holds him and tells him it’s going to be okay. I won’t be able to give him much. But I can give him a mother who loves him with all of her heart. One who didn’t abandon him the moment he was born so that her own life would be better. He deserves more than that.”
Menyara bit her lip before she spoke again. “You are condemning both of you to a life of poverty.”
“Maybe, but that could happen even if I give him up. My parents threw me out already over something I couldn’t help. What’s to keep them from doing it again? I can’t trust them. I know that now. When I needed them most, they turned their backs on me.” She curled her lip in anger. “You made your bed lie in it.” The way she spat out those words told Nick she was repeating what her parents had said to her. “But I didn’t choose this.” She cringed as if the memory was more than she could take.
“Are you sure about this, Cherise? That baby will always be a terrible reminder of the horrors you’ve been through. Will you not think of it, every time you lay eyes on him?”
She shook her head. “He’s a reminder to me of how strong I am. That I can survive anything the world throws at me. I won’t be a victim again and I won’t be defeated.” She sniffed back her tears. “Look at him, Mennie. That little baby head. Those baby eyes. How can you not love something so adorable?”
Menyara brushed the hair back from his mother’s face again. “He is precious. So what are you going to call him, then?”
His mother’s hand went to the saint medallion she wore around her neck. It was the same one she’d given to him at his confirmation. “Nicholas, after the patron saint of children. My Nicky will be my victory over sorrow. My little champion. And every time I look at him, I will see just how strong I am. Not for me, but for him.”
“And what other name will you give him?”
She smiled proudly. “Ambrosius.”
Menyara screwed up her beautiful face “Ambrosius? Child, why would you ever give him a name like that?” She shivered.
But his mother wasn’t swayed. “It was one of my grandfather’s favorite stories that he used to tell to me whenever I spent my summers with them. And those were some of the best days of my life. I want to share that with my baby. Ambrosius Aurelianus was an ancient Saxon warrior that my grandfather said they called the king of all kings. He was supposedly a sorcerer of great power who protected his people and united a war torn Britain. A real man that time has shrouded in mystery—that’s how my grandpa described him. Some say he was the older brother of King Arthur or Arthur himself or even Merlin. And the name means ‘immortal.’ Two strong, proud names for my perfect son. I can think of nothing better to call him. Nicholas Ambrosius Gautier.”
Menyara let out a low whistle. “Child, he’s going to hate you when he has to learn to spell that in school.”
“True, but at confirmation, he already has his saint’s name. So it serves more than one purpose. I think he’ll like it.” She smiled down at him. “You are going to like it, Mr. Baby. I insist.”