From her own brother.
“Sofia, we are here to help you,” he said in an effort to placate her so that she would tell the group what was going on with this contract she had with her brother.
“Well, you are,” Oliver said while rocking on his heels. “I would actually like to speak to the Daughter of Light.”
“Darius took her, Sofia, I’m sure of it,” Griffin said, clutching her by the biceps.
“No,” she whispered, but there wasn’t much conviction in the word. She knew it, she was just afraid to face it.
“We can get her back. If we understand the why of it.”
“Can’t we just go search for her?” Sofia pleaded. “Without discussing the reasons behind it?”
Ketu said, “We’ve been trying to track down Darius for almost a year now, with no luck. I wouldn’t know the first place to look. We need something—advice, clues, something.”
“H-he might be in Hammond. North of Lake Pontchartrain,” Sofia blurted.
Ketu furrowed his brow. “How would you know that?”
Sofia swallowed thickly, and Griffin ached to reach out to her, to offer comfort, but he was afraid she would reject him. He sure did spend a fair amount of his life fearing other people’s rejections. And what had that ever gotten him? It seemed most of the time when he second-guessed himself and made a mistake, it was because he was afraid of someone rejecting him.
“This is true.” That’s what Nikki had said to him when he noted that everyone made mistakes. He’d been referring to Oliver’s decision to hire him, but now he suspected that had not been why she’d responded the way she did.
Because everybody did make mistakes. And the only way to learn from those situations was to accept it and try harder not to do the same thing next time.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said now to Sofia as he gave in to the need to comfort her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I do all the time. And despite that, the leader of the most powerful gargoyle brethren in the world asked me to join his team.”
Oliver arched his brow and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
Sofia let herself be pulled into Griffin’s side. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Well, a few reasons, actually, but let’s focus on the ones involving Penelope’s kidnapping first. We can go over the rest later, when everyone is safe and sound.”
She wrinkled her brow.
“We need to talk about Darius.”
Sofia darted a frightened glance at Trennon and shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“I know. That’s why I need you to tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Sofia, we can protect you. We will. I swear it.”
“It’s not me,” she whispered. “He…he’ll kill my mother.”
Antoinette handed Henri off to Ketu and moved to stand in front of Griffin and Sofia. “Are you saying Darius has threatened to kill your mother?”
Sofia’s gaze slid to Trennon again and then she nodded.
“Why does she keep looking at you?” Delilah wanted to know, looking to Trennon for an answer.
He shrugged.
Delilah cocked her head and studied him for a moment, then turned to Sofia. “Who is your mother?”
“She doesn’t belong to this colony,” Sofia said.
“Why does Darius care about what you do so much that he’s threatening to kill a dragon—I assume she’s a dragon?” Delilah paused until Sofia nodded. “So why would Darius threaten a dragon that isn’t part of this colony? What sort of dirt do you have on him?”
Sofia shook her head. “I don’t. I know as much as you all. He created dragon’s blood. He kept Trennon sedated and ran the colony in his name. He’s a terrible person. He’s a bully. He’s still bitter that his mother left him when he was a kid. That’s all I know.”
Trennon moved closer. “He’s bitter over his mother leaving? Really? How do you know this?”
Griffin could feel her shrinking into herself, and he willed her to be strong. For once, he was listening to his gut, and his gut said she needed to come clean about the secret she has been harboring for her entire life.
But Sofia straightened and said, “How could you not know this? You raised him. Didn’t you think a six-year-old would be devastated by his mother leaving him?”
Trennon coughed and wiped his hand over his mouth. “She didn’t leave him. She left me. And she wanted to take him, but I was the reeve and he was my only heir. I refused to let her have him.”
Griffin glanced down at Sofia, who was staring at Trennon as if seeing him for the first time.
“She actually wanted to stay after that, but truthfully, I still had feelings for her, and it was causing issues with her mate. So we came up with a visitation plan, and they finally moved out. Darius refused to visit her on the weekends after that. She tried for years to reach out to him, but he shut her out, refused to even speak to her.
“Eventually, she and her mate had their own offspring. That’s when Darius suddenly wanted to go see her, except he was so mean to his half-siblings that she finally forbade him from visiting.”
“He has other half-siblings?” Sofia asked.
Trennon nodded. “Three. As far as I know, he hasn’t seen any of them in decades.”
Griffin squeezed Sofia’s shoulder. He could only imagine how this must be affecting her. Trennon’s story was undoubtedly twisting whatever reality she’d believed up to this point.
“How do you know he was six when his mother left?” Delilah suddenly interrupted.
Sofia didn’t reply.
