Page 81 of Heiress of Fire

“I am not trying to manipulate anyone. This is the truth.”

“I’ve had enough of your accusations and ungratefulness. Get out.” Nico pointed to the front door.

“What?” Davina asked. Her eyes turned to her mother.

“Get out of my house!”

“Father, you cannot make her leave,” Micah yelled. She hadn’t realized that he and the girls had left his room.

“Yes, I can. This is my house, and you are no longer welcome in it. Now get out!”

How dare he?

“Mother, will you not do anything about this? Will you allow your husband to do this to me?” Davina questioned. But as she looked into Mae’s brown eyes, she had already decided.

Mae’s silence killed the little bit of hope she had for a possible happy future with her parents.

“You heard your father, you are not welcome here.”

Davina’s lips gaped as she looked at her with clear disbelief and heartbreak. That was when the tears finally brimmed her eyelids, after choking them down the entire night.

Her mother. Her own mother. The first pair of eyes that she ever looked into. The woman who carried her and nurtured her in her womb. The arms that she always wished to be hugged by. Was Mae truly capable of such a thing?

“No! You can’t do this!” Emmy yelled as she ran to Davina and hugged her.

“It’s okay, Emmy, don’t worry,” Davina whispered.

Genevieve followed after her. “Please, don’t go.”

Davina wanted to leave anyway, so why did it hurt so much to be forced out of her own home? The pain in the children’s eyes only duplicated her own. She slightly pushed through her siblings, who were choking out the air in her lungs with their tight embrace, breaking them away from her.

The Aurisan Captain felt like she was going to explode into a massive wildfire, and she wished to keep her siblings safe away from her. She removed their hands from her waist.

Davina marched into her room, grabbing her satchel and purse, and shoving in all the undergarments, kirtles, dresses, pants, and shoes that she could find. She kneeled before an indicated floorboard, ripped it open, and pulled out a clinking cloth bag of silver coins, hiding it in her satchel.

Nico and Mae stood still in the common room as Davina sped into it, the children in her trail.

“Are you happy, Nico? You’re getting what you’ve always wanted,” Davina questioned him.

“Actually yes, I am happy,” Nico chuckled as he set an arm around Mae’s shoulder.

“Let’s see if you survive without me,” Davina spat.

Nico scoffed and motioned for her to leave with his hand. Davina watched her mother, who refused to look at her.

Then she glanced at Micah, Genevieve, and Emmy. Micah shook his head, his eyes telling her not to go, for her not to leave them.

“I’m sorry, kids,” Davina whispered. She had to leave, she couldn’t handle it anymore. “I love you, always.”

She felt a need to say that because she was almost sure that Nico wouldn’t let her see them.

Davina ran out of the front door. Emmy’s screams and pleas for her to stay echoed in her mind as she ran up the cobblestone pathway that would lead her out of Auris and onto the Bridge.

TWENTY-ONE

Sitting above the log, she recalled a night she wished to forget. An evening where she was accompanied by the kindest soul she’d ever met, the essence of a man that seemed too good to be true.

It was impossible not to think of how he gently brushed away her tears when she had tried so hard not to let them fall before him. But now he was another reason added to her long list of sorrow.

---