“Because mortals weren’t locked out,” I announce like it’s a revelation, but my tone is more exasperation than fact – and sleepy.
Come on, Roarke! Sometimes your own overthinking brain gets in the way of the most simple of logic. Logic – I need sleep. Logic – stop muttering in a book so I can sleep. Logic – the egg came first then the chicken, or in this case, the Seed came first then Silva was born.
“Bloody Aeons, why didn’t I think of that before?”
I roll my eyes and shift, so I’m partly hanging over the other side of my horse’s neck with a view of Killian, rather than Roarke. Killian looks like he’s asleep sitting up.
“When Silvari OriginSeeds lived among mortals, before the Mortal Wars and the great fire, they would have fallen in love with mortals and gifted them a Seed to co-exist since a mortal-Saber relationship would always end in death. Always,” Roarke begins, not hearing me groan through his babbling. “Enough to become intimate and bear children? Children born with the Seed of their mother or their father? Or both?”
“Why does this matter?” I ask.
“Because I can’t solve Kitten’s mystery, and I feel the need to solve something. With threads that bind, branches can reach. Trust can connect in a way none can teach and will a Seed to settle, ignite, and grow.
Entanglements bound and dared to make whole, what others lack, lovers can bestow.
And in these hands Silvari depends. To weed, plant, and nurture. What was one Seed will become a forest.
What evil has done, good can undo –”
Blah, blah, blah. “Don’t you already know this?” I cut in.
“It makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re making sense now,” Killian grunts – so the guy is awake.
“The last Origin was a bird person,” I offer. Silence, which I take to mean they’re both looking at me with confusion. I’m not a hundred percent certain though because they can both eat worms if they think I’m sitting up for this conversation. “I don’t know, their name was pigeon or eagle or –”
“Hawk?” Roarke cuts in.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Could it be Haryk?”
“I don’t know. Is there a ‘y’ or a ‘g’ in hawk? I feel like it has a ‘y’ or a ‘g’ in it.”
“No, Seth. No there is not. There is a ‘y’ in Haryk. How do you know the last Origin’s name anyway?”
“Used to draw on the walls in Mother’s study.”
“Oh,” Roarke says, like I both make complete and absolutely no sense both at the same time.
“Haryk is her father, undeniably so,” Roarke says.
Now I sit up and stare at him with droopy eyes but a pounding heart. All three of us pull our horses to a stop.
“She’s…” Killian begins but doesn’t finish.
I take it by our silence that none of us have a single argument to deny the fact that Vexy, our little mortal, is in fact the daughter of an OriginSeed.
Roarke rubs at his chest, hard, the same as he did after almost connecting his Harmony with hers. Killian has gone stiff in the shoulders, barely even moving to breathe. Me… all I can feel is the kind of buzzing excitement that doesn’t know well enough to be frightened.
She’s an Origin.
She’s ours.
Undeniably, completely compatible with all of us.
“Even if there is only one Origin left, that one has the power to save our entire race,” Roarke mutters.
Oh, come on. We just learned that, once healed, once at full strength, we can hold her and love her and won’t kill her, and Roarke is already volunteering her for a job. Nope, we’re bundling her up and locking ourselves away on the furthest mountain for at least a hundred years. By then we should have caught up on some of the intimacy we’ve all been craving.
Maybe two hundred years.
Then we can do all that other stuff like saving the world.
No one says a thing though. All of us spur our mounts into as fast a gait as the animals can survive and race into the night with one thought on our minds.
Sex.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Okay, so maybe there are two thoughts on my mind. Sex, and that somewhere in her shattered soul, Vexy has the power to save us all.
The sealer bitch saunters into Uncle’s private dining room between entree and mains. Her hair’s braided back, and her lithe figure looks relaxed and at home in our lavish Black Castle, but she’s in leather riding breeches and currently pulling her cloak from her shoulders – so she just arrived.
“I have news,” she announces.
Uncle stands, so by protocol I stand, but I continue to tear chunks off my bread roll and devour them.
“Jada,” Uncle greets.
Jada pauses, dipping low into a curtsy with an amused smile painted across her bright lips.
Focusing on those lips begins to get me hard, just like that. One look, one thought, and all the blood in my body is redirecting. I pop the last of my roll in my mouth and adjust myself. The servants cleared our entree dishes but haven’t returned with mains yet, so there’s nothing left on the table for me to occupy myself. Instead, I follow in my uncle’s shadow, moving around the table to the woman.
She walks straight into Lithael’s arms, embracing him warmly. His lips press to her cheek, and she blushes – too bright on her pale cheeks.
“You’ve been gone long enough for your mission to have been successful,” Lithael states.
“More than. Everyone is in position. The ambush couldn’t be more perfectly set. What will be now lies in the hands of your army and the gods themselves.”
“Then what’s your news?”
“I heard rumors on the
