Page 142 of Gift from the Wing

I give her a tight smile, not questioning her decision, and I lace our fingers together, then pull her and Tanith into my memories.

Starting where I first saw Jamie and Nikoli outside the wing, I quickly move us through the motions of what all transpired to me getting through to her, to us arriving at Pyra.

I skip the part of us watching what was happening to Ry and San, because she doesn’t need to see that, but I do show us pulling them into the shadows and making our way to her.

From there, I let it all play out as is. I don’t hide a single second from her.

The influx of emotions passing between the two of us is astronomical. The wide range of my feelings at every turn was overwhelming enough at the time, but adding hers into the mix now is almost unbearable.

A smile does break out across my face when I feel her pride for me in the moment I killed Gima. An event I’m sure my men have been waiting and expecting to come up as if I’m ashamed of what I did, but I’m not. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I accept what I did wholeheartedly. She was an evil monster dressed in spoiled rich bitch dresses.

It’s a whirlwind from then on, navigating the absolute chaos that ensued while we tried to figure out a cure for her. I make sure to focus on her men’s effort, their love, devotion, and unwavering determination to be with her one way or another. When she finally snaps open her eyes, I switch course. Her confusion is stark, and she tries to withdraw herself from my mind, but I hold on to her and show her a brief snippet of CC’s and my conversation in the amplifier room.

I replay the moment I accuse him and Elementra of abandoning me and how he explains they aren’t abandoning me, but they can’t make the decisions for me any longer. Then, even though she knows this information, I show when I was being tortured and he explained for her to step in, it would bring about the destruction of the realm. Then I switch it again, to show her Jamie, explaining to me why it was critical that I was drained of my magic. How he could give me his, but I have nothing to give back to Elementra.

It’s a confusing mixture of information, I know, but as soon as I can explain what I believe to be the truth, she’ll understand.

She blinks rapidly when I cut the string in our minds and a puzzled look crosses her features. I wait her out, though, seeing if there’s anything she wants to say before I explain.

“My…my parents did that to me. They were willing to let me die,” she chokes out. She knew all along, but she needed to admit it out loud.

“I’m not trying to defend them, because fuck them for real, but they didn’t believe you would die. They did have every intention of allowing the Summum-Master to take your magic, gift, and element and give it to either Gima or Silvia.”

She flinches, looking at me with disbelieving eyes. “What? How do you know that?”

“Because your parents are locked in the dungeons. They were captured this morning,” I say honestly.

“How…who…that was quick.”

I quickly tell her how Tillman immediately sent a team to stake out her house as soon as we left Pyra, and they’ve been waiting there for their return.

Then I throw the guys under the bus.

“Sneaky bastard. I didn’t even know he got out of bed.”

“I didn’t notice the guys either. Granted, usually, I can, but typically only if they’re feeling some sort of negative emotion. I was cuddled up with a clueless as me Corentin, and Tillman came right back to bed, so I was none the wiser. Needless to say, Caspian and Draken were giddy at the prospect of going to retrieve them. Ry caught them. Then joined.”

Her snort, followed by a blushing smile, is short-lived as she whispers, “I don’t know what to do about them. Part of me wants them dead because what they did to me was so cruel, even by their standards. I understand I wasn’t the perfect daughter in their eyes, but nothing is wrong with me. I just don’t want to live by the higher society standard.”

“You’re completely right. Nothing is wrong with you. And you are perfect. Perfect to me, your men, our family, our real, chosen family. Nothing that happened is in any way, shape, or form your fault. Your parents made their own decisions.”

She wipes away her tears with the back of her hands before lacing her fingers together and looking down at them. “The other part wants them to live. Live out their punishment locked away forever. Death seems like an easy out for them, and they’ll never learn the error of their ways. They’ll just die believing they were right to do these things.”

“I know the choice well. It’ll be a tough decision,” I mumble softly.

“Decisions. They seem to be the primary theme of everything going on,” she says knowingly.

“They are. Elementra knows, millennia in advance, what’s to come, and she begins making her preparations. She lays the best possible paths forward without stepping across the line of balance. It’s taken me, fuck, I don’t know, Oak, countless puzzle piece by this point to put it all together, but there’s one thing she can’t always control. And those are people’s decisions.

“If she were to make every decision for everyone, it’d cross the thin line of balance. So everyone has choices to make on their own. From there, those choices present the consequences. The consequences determine whether she continues to serve you.”

“Continues to serve you?”

“Yeah. Elementra serves us as much as we serve her. It’s the foundation of the bonds, the magic, the power, her love, of everything. It’s the give and take relationship that she’s perfected. The people, namely for us in this generation, it’s the Mastery who has taken but is no longer giving back, so therefore, she no longer serves them. Their power is now corrupt, and she can’t, mostly won’t, recycle their tainted power back to us. With that, though, she’s lost the ability to push any decision onto them. They’ve forfeited their privilege of having a relationship with her.

“Their decisions have consequences that sometimes will affect us unjustly, but in those moments, we have decisions as well. She will always guarantee I have what I need to come out on top of the consequences caused by others because of the decisions I make. We can question her all we want. Fuck, she knows I question her daily, but I continue to serve her. I make the choices that are for the betterment of the realm. And in return, she serves me. She’s already blessed me beyond my wildest imagination.”

I release a deep breath and rub my thumb across Oakly’s hand. She’s most certainly one of those blessings I’m referring to.

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