A nervous laughter escaped my lips, but it was quickly silenced when he stood and walked around to take a seat directly beside me. He took my small hands in his much larger, calloused ones.
“I need to make sure you know, that although we were unable to be in your life, we love you endlessly. We wanted keep you safe. We wanted to give you…a chance.”
“For years I just thought I was unwanted; a discarded burden that was un-loveable. I couldn’t understand what I had done to deserve that kind of fate.” I contemplated our hands, as his face crumbled at my pain and stifled a sob. “But over the last couple of months, everything’s changed. An entirely new world has opened up to me, and I’ve finally been able to learn who I really am, where I belong, and where I came from. As hard as my life was and as much as I had to go through, I came out on the other side stronger and more determined. And I know now, that I was wrong.” I met his eyes again.
“Every day I asked myself if we did the right thing by sending you away,” he divulged.
“Every day I lived that last day over and over in my head. The way you reached for me. The way you seemed to look right through to my soul. The same way you are looking at me now. But when I look at you now, sitting here beside me, I know for certain that it was never our choice in the first place.
We were only the beginning of your story. The rest has been carved out by your own strength and will, leaving the goddess I see before me.”
Tears filled with years of desolation streamed down my face; making way for the steel threads of a father’s love to mend some of the holes in my heart. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he held me in his arms for a long time. The same arms that had dropped me off so many years ago had finally returned to pick me back up. The conch shell in his room suddenly flashed in my memory. I pulled the conch shell Mom had given me out of the valise and held it up to him.
“The conch shell?” I asked. “I noticed that you had one in your room. Are they significant?”
“Quite,” he grinned from ear to ear. “They are enchanted.”
“The last time I held it up to my ear I could hear something in it. Somebody mumbling? Is it…alive?” I flipped it over in my hands curiously, but he chuckled at my hypothesis.
“It is a portal for sounds,” he explained. “Your mother came up with it before there were phones that you could carry around with you. When she was away, sometimes for months at a time with her duties, it would become excruciating for us to be away from each other that long. So she found these two shells and enchanted them. They each can hear the goings-on wherever the other resides. We could speak to each other. I could…hear her breathing as she slept. While in prison, I used it to mark the days on my wall.” His eyes dropped and I could tell that he was fighting back tears.
“That’s amazing.” I marveled at the bulky shell in my hands.
“I knew you wouldn’t find it until you came back, and even then you wouldn’t know what to do with it – but I always listened for you. Just in case. For years there was only silence. Then one day I could hear something. It was only voices in the background, but it gave me hope.”
“All this time I could have communicated with you, and I didn’t even realize it!” I charged.
“Conch shells don’t usually double for telephones, so it’s quite understandable.”
“Well that’s true,” I giggled, and a thought popped in my head. “Natasha knew who you were when we found you on the Isle of Slaves, didn’t she?”
“She did, but until then she was unaware that I was still alive.”
“Then why didn’t she tell me when you returned from Cyprus?”
“She is a loyal and trusted friend, indeed. She meant a lot to your mother as well. I instructed her not to say anything to you or Finn. I couldn’t allow my presence to hinder your training. You are my main concern. You and only you.” The fact that he was only worried about my well-being after being in prison for the last sixteen years while I had been free tugged at my heart strings.
“Why were you in that prison?” I questioned him carefully. “Did you commit a crime?”
“The only crime I ever committed was loving your mother.”
“That was a crime?” If that was the case, I was in trouble.
“In some people’s eyes, yes. It is a betrayal of sorts.” Nadia’s words echoed in my mind and I stiffened.
“What…kind of betrayal?” I pressed further. He took a deep breath and his face aged at least another ten years before he answered.
“I am human now, but I was not always human,” he delineated ominously. “I was once a part of this world. I was an Aura. I was a descendent of Selene, the Moon goddess whom you had the pleasure of meeting on the Isle of Slaves,” he explained with a touch of sarcasm.
“An Aura? Selene…?” I pictured the group of Auras we had seen at the restaurant in Paphos -
their silver eyes, pale skin, and dark hair. I tried to reconcile the fact that my father was a descendent of the tainted goddess that I had seen rip the souls out of hostages. The same one who had tried to kill me. “But if you were her descendent, why were you imprisoned? Why did she treat you so poorly?”
“Auras are very strict in their rule against mating with other Orders. They believe their bloodline to be the purest and the truest. Any mixing of essence would compromise that purity.” I watched as storm clouds gathered in his already gray eyes.
“And Mom wasn’t an Aura,” I deduced sadly.
“I love your mother dearly, and I was willing to give up whatever it took to be with her.” He shook his head in disgust. “Unfortunately, that meant being stripped of my essence and Aura bloodline.” A vision of the hostages’ essence leaving their bodies and colliding with Keto sent my blood boiling, as I understood what he was saying.
“Selene punished you by turning you human and keeping you in captivity?”
“That’s right. Our relationship was overlooked by Selene and the Auras until we had you.”
He squeezed my hand. “She saw it as an act against her and my ancestors. I had contaminated our bloodline, which could not go unpunished. I’m afraid that’s why she’s helping Keto try to defeat you.
She told me that my last punishment would be…to watch you die.”
Chapter 34
“I have a feeling that I’ve thwarted her plan so far,” I answered with a certain hollowness.
“Hopefully we’ll continue to do so.” The confidence in my voice didn’t make it to my stomach, which was doing somersaults right along with the rest of my internal organs. I looked around to find the nearest trash can just in case. He started to say something, but then stopped himself. Another revelation came crashing down on me. “So that means I’m…half Aura and half Tyde?”
“Fortunately not,” he winked at me. “You are 100% Tyde.”
“But how’s that possible?”
“Your mother.” He smiled, “She and Amphitrite made sure that whatever Aura essence you received from my bloodline was removed soon after you were born. With her ability of foresight, she was able to see things I couldn’t, and I’ve never challenged her ability to know what needed to be done. She wanted to do everything she possibly could to protect you.”
“Wow,” I breathed. Just when I thought I had everything about my past figured out, I learn yet another bombshell. As his gray eyes sparkled, I realized that they must have been silver at one time.
“Were your eyes once silver?” I inquired, and he nodded acutely. “We saw a group of Auras in Paphos and they all had silver eyes, dark hair, and these odd orbs hanging around their necks.”
“The orb, as you call it, contains a single ray of moonlight. It is given to every Aura at birth, since they are a product of the moon. It is essentially what your aquamarine gems and turquoise stones are to you and the Tyde Order.”
“That makes sense,” I contemplated. It seemed that whenever I got used to one new piece of news, I get sideswiped again.
“I imagine that this world can be quite overwhelming at times?”
“That’s an understatement,” I laughed. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“It appears that you have a very strong circle of friends who care for you greatly. That is important as a
