Page 79 of Seized to Sacrifice
She began to cry anew.
Nyx held her, sitting down gently in one of the chairs and pulling her down with him.
She wrapped herself around him and cried into his chest.
‘Go on,’ Thorne said tersely, and Nyx gave him a look.
‘It was Ceres,’ she said.
‘Ceres? Was he the one you left us for?’ Thorne ground out. ‘You never even told us our replacement’s name.’
‘Yes … No.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘There’s so much she didn’t tell you. She loved you. She loved all of you, didn’t want you to be involved with Ceres. The Light Realm washersto protect; the humans and the fae too.’
‘Was?’ Rye voiced Nyx’s question.
‘I’m not really her.’ She winced as she looked down at her hands. ‘I mean I sort of am, but I’m not.’
‘What about Ceres? Who is he to you?’ Thorne asked.
Elle sighed. ‘Gaila and Ceres were everything to each other once. They’d come into being almost at the same time, but he changed. He wanted her realm. He saw that it was more powerful than his own Dark Realms. When Gaila wouldn’t give him her power, Ceres tried to take it. By then she’d found you and he knew she cared for you. He began making trouble for her, created the Horde to attack the Light Realm. That was when the Brothers were formed. She put the wards in place later to keep the worst of the Dark Realms out. But he threatened you. He did something …’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know what. She made you forget that it had happened, I think, but she was terrified you’d be taken from her.’
‘But that doesn’t explain why she—’
‘He was going to kill you,’ she burst out. ‘Kill you so you’d stay dead. He wasn’t as strong as her beck then. She was the First, not him. Don't you understand?’
She scrambled from Nyx’s lap.
‘Gaila knew it was only a matter of time before he found a way, so she made a bargain with him. In return for your lives, she couldn’t come to the Light Realm, her source of power. He ensured she was cut off from it so that she would grow weaker than him in time. If she even set foot here, all three of you would die.’
‘But why put us here then?’ Thorne asked, staring at her as if he hadn’t truly seen her before. ‘Why imprison us?’
‘I don’t think she meant to. You were all supposed to be together, but he betrayed her. He attacked and by then he’d ensured that she wouldn’t win in a fight against him. He came for you anyway and she had only moments to act. He can’t set foot here either. That was part of the agreement, so this was where she hid you. She did it to save you.’
‘Why didn’t she come back for us, open a portal for us at least?’ Thorne practically shouted.
‘The bargain would have been broken, and he would have been able to come here.’
‘But you’re here now.’
‘I’m not truly Gaila,’ she said again. ‘That’s how she got around the rules.’
She shook her head and, putting her head in her hands, she began to cry anew. ‘She was so alone. She lived in a tiny fold with only the Mount to visit when the isolation became too much, but that was all for so long. She had a window that she could see this realm from, and she’d stare at it for hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of you here.’
Nyx tried to go to her, his mind reeling from what she was telling them. Could they really have been so wrong?
But she backed away from him.
‘This was what you weren’t telling me,’ she said.
Her eyes narrowed through her tears. ‘You spent all these years hating the woman who loved you enough to give up everything for you, complaining that all you had was this life. You had each other. She had no one.’
‘Meanwhile, Ceres became the most influential fae lord in the Dark Realms,’ Rye muttered.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a fae lord. The most powerful of the gods.’ She sat down hard at the table. ‘I only know what Gaila put in the vessel, and it’s been waiting here a long time. I still don't know how I came to be here or what happened to me … her.’
Elle stood again, pacing the tent as if she couldn't relax before sitting on one of the beds and lying down, turning her body away from them.
‘Leave me please. My head aches.’
