Page 63 of To Tame An Angel

She stood and she seemed to be twelve feet tall as she stared down at me, her face reddening, showcasing more than she’d ever showcased. “Against the law.”

“Fuck the law! Look what it’s done!” I pointed to Tannor. “You bend so harshly for the law and all you’ve found is destroying your daughter’s life!”

Then mother’s face transformed, and she pounded on her chest, letting out a howl of pain I didn’t think her capable of. “I lost everything to keep you and your sisters safe. To keep my baby boy safe.”

Her voice was lost in a gasp, and she turned from me, clutching her forehead. I stared at her hunched figure, and I was too confused to truly register her tears. There was not a sound but for her low hitches of breath.

“It was his idea. We feared it but when you were born… we had no choice for you also brought your brother.” Her voice echoed against the stone walls. “If they discovered us, all of us would perish, including our daughters. But especially my angel and little boy.”

I took a tentative step towards her, my own chest pressing down as the confession I’d long suspected came forth. “You said my brother died.”

She paused and looked up, letting out a long mournful sigh. “He’s alive.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

NALLA

I gasped, clutching my chest and staring at her incredulously. “Is he in the pits?”

The silence lingered and still she remained unmoved but for a few shuddering breaths. Just the thought that he was there, when I’d been there, perhaps even passed him by, perhaps he’d knelt next to Tannor. So close that I could’ve saved him.

“Is he in the pits?” I cried.

“No. He’s not,” mother said and slowly turned to him. “Your father… Hale.” And she paused, as if allowing his name to linger on her tongue. Perhaps she’d not said his name out loud in so long she’d forgotten how it sounded. “Hale and I realized what his life would be like.” She met my eyes. “And we snuck him out. Freshly born, still trembling and wet. All I could do was smell his hair and –”

I shook my head, feeling a wave of emotions take over me.

“You helped him escape,” I realized. “Father didn’t die. He didn’t leave you. Didn’t leave us. He was saving my brother.”

Mother’s eyes dropped to the ground and suddenly she looked her age. A worn, tired woman, who’d kept so much hidden that it fell around her like dried plaster.

“He was saving all of us,” she whispered. “I was weakened by your birth. I’d lost much blood. And the cloak I’d placed over Hale was impossible to keep up.”

Trying to grasp all her words and implications dizzied me and for the first time I felt truly weak. Like I knew nothing, understood nothing, like my entire life was this massive lie, whose shadow I lived under.

“He’d sprouted his wings,” Tannor’s voice came from behind us. “Hadn’t he?”

I glanced at him, at his massive, caged wings then back at my mother, who stood staring at him with empty eyes. She didn’t deny it but how she’d manage to cloak father was beyond my scope of understanding. None of us had such power.

“I learned early on that my magic was different. I could do things with it that others couldn’t. But I didn’t understand the extent of my power until the night Zaya was born,” she said and the walls silently witnessed her crime. “Hale was so utterly happy, it was divine. She was divine. She came from our love. And when he held her, they just… came out. He loved her so entirely. He loved all of you. And I loved him. I did. My heart was so full when he was around.”

She met my eyes and for the first time in my life I saw my mother cry. Her lips trembled as she shook her head.

“They would’ve killed him. But I wouldn’t let that happen. I tried to use my magic to place them back inside of his body. To save him. To save us. Instead, I realized I could cloak them. It was draining so we spent much time locked in our rooms. In our little peaceful heaven.” She paced, back and forth as I stared at her in a mix of horror, my head light with imagining her living such a life. “Each time he would have to be seen by others, I had to use my magic. It began to wear on me so that each pregnancy was harder and harder. By the time you came along, I was depleted. Near death. He wouldn’t let me cloak him anymore.”

Mother stopped and took a step towards me but I moved back, shaking my head. She flinched.

“The day you were born was the worse day of my life,” she confessed. “Because I lost my lover and my son. Because I stood petrified on my balcony, barely able to stand, holding Hale one final time, knowing I would never see him or my son ever again. Feeling split in half. The last thing he said to me was ‘be strong for our girls.” She gasped and her trembling hand clutched her mouth. “Everything I have done from that moment has been to keep you and your sisters safe. I’ve made myself indispensable to the crown so that my loyalty could never be questioned. So I would be the perfect soldier and leader with daughters who would never, ever, have to live through the hell I went through. I wanted you to see men as nothing more than playthings. I wanted your heart hardened for I have known intimately what it is like to love and to lose it all at the same time.”

This time, when she moved towards me, I didn’t flinch. I simply stared at the woman who birthed me, who loved someone so fully that she hurt us in her desperation not to see us killed.

“But I love him,” I whispered. “The way you love father. Don’t destroy me in the same way you destroyed yourself.”

Her face shifted and she was filled with sudden pity. She cupped my face and three tears dropped from her eyes. Mother had never been warm or affectionate. For the first time in my entire life I saw she loved me.

“You look so much like your father.” She ran the pad of her thumb over my cheek. “I promised him I would keep you safe. Burry your love for this man now, while its still fresh and idealistic. Soon you’ll forget him, he’ll be nothing more than a memory.”

Our gazes remained locked on one another, and I trembled as she spoke. But I wasn’t as strong as her. I couldn’t live the rest of my life pretending Tannor was never in it. Emotionless in my couplings like she was.

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