Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (37 page)

I raised a sceptical brow at that, folding my arms.

“Do you remember when we spoke in the Garden of Lilith that day, and I asked that you wear the emerald stone of Anandene’s?”

“Hm. What about it?”

“I was relieved that you declined.”

“Why?”

“Because it was spelled—with the same kind of incantation I used on your bracelet.”

“If you spelled it, why would you be glad I refused to wear it?”

“It was not I who spelled it.”

“Safia?” I studied his eyes for confirmation. “She wanted to watch us?”

“Hear you, yes. And I acted as her agent to deliver it. Had I refused, she would have caught on that I was working against her.”

“Why didn’t she just plant it somewhere—?”

“The evil in her meant that you were safe at Loslilian—under Lilith’s power, with the Stone and its purity to ward off her tainted soul. But out here, safety is an illusion, and she
can
reach you if she so desires. There is a possibility that she has already spelled a talisman with a listening spell and placed it somewhere inconspicuously.”

“Okay, I’ll be careful what I say.”

“Good, because if she were to find out about the child, pain will not be the worst you will suffer.”

“She’ll take the child from within me,” I said. “And threaten everything my dad loves so he’ll transfer the soul. I know.”

“No, Amara, she will force
you
to transfer it,” he said, smiling as if he’d seen right through my attempt to cover up what I knew about my own powers. “I told you once that you would one day have the power to bring a man back from the other side—”

I nodded.

“The same pathway your Cerulean Light creates for a soul is the same pathway you yourself walked when you left your last body.” He picked up my hand and nodded to it. “Once you create the pathway, you can leave your own body and enter another. You do not need Lord Eden.”

That just made this so much scarier. “How long have you known the baby is not Anandene?”

He cleared his throat. “A very long time. Perhaps as long as I’ve known the boys were switched at birth.”

“And… how long is that?”

“Since I told Elizabeth to switch them.”

My jaw dropped. “You sneaky bastard!”

He laughed. “Never underestimate me, Amara. I thought you knew that by now.”

“I just…” My mind ticked, rushing back and forth over the past like a pendulum, trying to fit this new information in with everything I
thought
I knew. “Wow.”

The forest woke with the sound of his laughter then, birds chirping suddenly in the trees. Until he sobered himself. “However, this is not what I wanted you to know before I am gone for good.”

“Okay, so what else is there?”

“My father does not know I too hindered the efforts to resurrect Anandene—he, like Safia, needed to believe I was on her side. And it could not just be an act. Like a commitment to a character in a film, I had to play my life like a role—wholeheartedly—undoing things from behind the scenes, leaving only for the audiences’ eye what I needed them to see.”

“So, are you saying you did other things to mess all this up, or are you trying to ask me to forgive you for everything you did to me?”

“Rose, when she was a teenager,” he said with a slight pause on each word, “met Jason—”

“My mother met the pure soul?” My eyes widened; holy crap! Jason could have ended up being my
father
. “Did they connect?” I asked, feeling a bit sick. If they connected, then they would have fallen for each other. And that would mean the man I once had
sex
with had also been in love with my mother. “Did they have… sex?”

Drake laughed. “No. But they did feel the connection of their souls. However, formalities meant that Jason could not just whisk her away and make love to her as a stranger. He was curious about what he felt for this young girl he met on the street corner that afternoon, but before he could see her again, she was already with child. And so, he backed away.”

“That was lucky.”

“I do not believe in luck.” He grinned.

“You set it up?” I realised. “You made sure she met my father?”

He nodded once, taking a small step closer, and he gently grasped my arm, leaning in. “I did not just make sure she met your father, Amara…”

I rolled my face up to read his eyes, his grave tone filling my heart with worry.

“I am your father.”

My skin left my body and my past fell away with it, leaving behind a raw and cold rush of emotion. “No.”

“I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but it is true,” he said apologetically.

As it all engulfed me and ripped my mind open with clarity, the only thing I felt was disgust. “You mated with your own niece!”

“
Very
distant niece, Amara,” he said sternly. “There was nothing incestuous about it. Lilith was my
half
sister, and Rose was the diluted blood of generations of genetic interference. You carry
traces
of the blood of Lilith, but… you mostly carry mine.”

“But…” My teeth chattered in my mouth, making my lip quiver. “No. That would make me more vampire than human, but I’m—”

“No. Only if you were born of my Created. But you were born of an original vampire and a human, just like my sister Lilith.” He grabbed both my arms, stepping closer again so he stood over me. “You are not a descendant of an original Lilithian, Ara. You
are
an original Lilithian, and it is through
me
that you inherited your incredible Cerulean abilities.”

I pushed away from him, my hands shaking as they shoved his chest hard. “It was you—all those years as I was growing up. You were the creature in the dark corner of my room; the man that I always felt behind me. You were watching me?”

“I let Safia believe it was to ensure you grew to childbearing age but, in truth, I just wanted to see my daughter grow.”

“Then Morgana?” I took a breath so deep my shoulders lifted. “She was my…”

“Sister.”

My lungs seemed to collapse then and I let myself cry, the fat tears flowing in threes down my cheeks and into my mouth. David didn’t just kill Drake’s daughter. He killed my sister.

Drake wrapped his arms around me, holding me for the first time in this world of truth. Holding me for the first time as my father. My real father. And I let him. I wanted to push the monster and all the bad things that monster had done away. But a lot of those bad things, I knew now, were a lie. He’d protected me all this time, and anything he’d done in contradiction was also to protect me from a situation much worse.

Some things would eternally be unforgivable, but so much of it just wafted away as the truth sunk in.

“My dad—
your
dad…” I stood back from his arms. “Lord Eden said my father was a soldier, that he died…”

“Rose lied about her true lover,” he said gently. “She would not admit to anyone that an older man stole her heart for a night of true passion and then vanished. She was ashamed. And so her best friend at the time promised to stand in for her.”

“Does Dad know? I mean, does he know now that you’re my… my real father?”

“No. And he cannot know. No one can.”

“Not even David?”

“No one. I went to great lengths to keep this truth from David when he was searching for your true family. He came
very
close,” he said with a nervous laugh, “when he tested Vampirie’s DNA.”

“But the tests came back—”

“The test results were altered—tampered with by one of my best IT guys.”

I felt a little lost then, knowing how close we came to truth, so long ago. It seemed unfair that Drake had managed to keep us from it.

“My point is, Amara, we are safe here, in this circle of conversation—” he waved a hand around the air, “—Safia cannot watch us here because her power does not reign over this domain. Even she is not strong enough to stretch her enchanted ear that far. But once we step away from here, our words will reach any object she spelled—”

“But we’ve spoken openly—David and I. We—”

“Then you better hope she does not already know about the child, but, more importantly, pray she does not find out you are mine, because she
will
take you from me. And you would eventually die a horrible death just for the sake of my pain.”

“So it’s
me
you’ve been protecting all this time?”

He nodded once. “You are my greatest secret.”

I felt weak. Completely weak. I looked down at my fingertips and watched them shake for a moment, amazed by how the body could react to something as simple as truth. “If she’s so powerful, how come Safia didn’t know—when she touched my belly, how come she didn’t know I was carrying a soulless child?”

“How could she know that just from touching you?” He laughed. “She’s a witch, not a mind reader.”

“I don’t know. Can’t she, like, tell?”

“She can predict the sex of a child. She can sense if it’s well, or suffering. But she cannot feel a soul. No one can—until the child is born.”

“
We
can,” I said, showing my hand. “With the Cerulean Energy—”

“No,
you
can.” He smiled affectionately. “You are more powerful than I, Amara. And that is why you will one day be a Seeker—a freer of lost souls.”

I looked at my own hand. “Then how come I couldn’t sense that my child was soulless?”

“You did. However, you just didn’t know that was what you were sensing.” He reached down and laid his hand flat across my belly. “The love you have for her is one thing; but you do not feel a connection in the way you know you should. And that is not because you’re a bad mother, Amara. It is because the soul is what we connect to.”

I moved his hand off my belly. “Why did you tell me all this now? Where are you planning to go after the battle?”

“I will die before I let Safia hurt you; and that, my dear, is most likely what will happen when I do what I must do to take Safia’s life, because every minute draws us closer to the day of the child’s birth, and I will not see my only living daughter lose her firstborn.”

“You’re going on a suicide mission?’

“Yes.”

“Well… how are you going to kill her?”

“Lock us both away in a tomb spelled with magic—never to be opened. Perhaps, in time, she will die. And if not, then we will mummify together and remain that way for eternity.”

“And that’s the only option?”

“After centuries searching for a way, I believe it is.”

“Have you told Dad? I mean… your dad?” I frowned at myself. That sounded so weird.

“No. And neither will you.”

“Why?”

“Because he will try to stop me.”

“And maybe he should, I mean, this is madness. What if it doesn’t work? What if she kills you?”

“If she kills me, she will still be trapped, but I will not be made to suffer eternally with her.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“I am.”

“Couldn’t you just cut off her head?”

He smiled, his eyes moving to my belly. “Her entire body is protected by the same spell used to make your skin impenetrable—aside from her face, because it is renewed so often by magic.”

“Spell?” I put my hand over Bump—over the skin that could not be cut.

“Yes. Safia taught me the spell to protect one from all physical harm—a weaker version of the spell she uses, which means it fades every few months—but I cast it on you one night while you lay sleeping.”

“When I first fell pregnant?”

“Yes—to disguise the heartbeat as long as possible. However, I was not taught how to undo it. I’ve tried to undo Safia’s in the past, kill her, and each time she has met that betrayal with
thousands
of human deaths.” He scrunched his eyes to emphasise his grief.

“So you’ll lock her away? And we’ll be safe?” I asked, making a point of touching Bump. “We’ll never have to worry about the witch again?”

He touched his heart. “On my honour as a father, I swear it.”

So I’d lose a father I never knew I had, and gain my freedom. Sounded like a pretty good exchange. But for my heart—for the little girl inside it that had always wondered what was missing—I wasn’t sure I could let go.

“What about Lilith?” I said. “The original Lilith? Surely she knows a way to kill Safia?”

His lip edged upward on one side in a wistful smile. “I am no longer welcome in her realm.”

“But I am,” I offered. “She
will
see
me
.”

His eyes changed. “Yes, she will, won’t she.”

“When we attack Loslilian, David is sending me into the forest with Jason. I can speak to Lilith—see if she can think of a way to help us, and if she can’t, the wisdom inside that Stone, or perhaps the fruit, might.”