Page 127 of Gift from the Source
“I should’ve told you what would happen. If I’m being completely honest with you, though, I didn’t think much about it. My blood sang with the instinct to pass my bestowing on and I did. To me, it was incredibly natural. Like the dragons pass their communal knowledge on to a hatchling, when a vampire baby is born, both parents will pass on what we call a Claim of Protection. Think of it as a ward around you to keep you safe as you grow up.
“Once you reach a certain age or a certain level of maturity, your parents’ Protection will fall away. At that point, a father will bestow upon a son. A mother upon a daughter. That bestowing is a piece of their power, passing to you. If you had been a vampire, it would’ve just made your abilities that much stronger.”
“So since I’m not, they’re pretty much just coming along like new gifts?”
“That’s what I’ve observed. I believe and Tanith agreed with me, it seems your fluency in the language more than likely comes from both of us.”
That makes sense.
“When did you get your father’s bestowing?”
He snorts, looking over the books lovingly. The look soon clouds with a guilt I’m not sure I understand. “You all take on far, far more responsibilities at such young ages than we do back in the Keep. You’re twenty-eight years old. That is still a baby back in my realm. I was five hundred when my parents’ Claim of Protection fell away and my father passed me his bestowing. I then left the realm to start my travels and trials for my ascension to rule.”
Damn.
You know, I’ve never really thought about his age much. I mean, he looks maybe twenty years older than me, but when he just says it like that…
I got an ol’ granddaddy daddy.
I snort at my own joke. He narrows his eyes at me.
“Sorry.” I chuckle, then cock my head to the side as the math starts not adding up. “Wait…if you didn’t leave your realm until you were five hundred, how did you even leave? The portals were closed.”
His eyes widen. “The Adored didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Well, in all honesty, she didn’t tell me either, Tanith did, but she got the information from your beloved. Whether that was from a conversation or her feeding, I’m not sure. The day we went to check on all the realm’s portals, she could detect how long they’d been closed. She found out the Keep closed nearly right after the two of us passed through.”
“What? No, it had to have closed right up there with all the other ones. That’s what we’ve always known.”
“I’m not sure why your history was written like that, or the truth was hidden, but no, it closed one year after we came through. Followed by the nonmagical realm.”
The guilt tinting his tone confuses me. Well, I’m kind of confused about it all now.
“Little wanderer…”
“Yeah, dragon.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about when the Essemist Keep portal closed?”
“Oh…”
A knock at my door sounds, explaining why she went silent mid-word.
“Come in,” I call.
She’s wearing a guilty look on her face too…
“Am I interrupting?”
The little tone has me pulling her into my arms and kissing her on the head. “No. Just trying to put some pieces together here.”
“I can help, if it’s wanted,” she says, but she’s not looking at me. She’s staring at Keeper.
“It’s fine, Adored.”
“It is true I found out when the portal truly closed the day of our mission. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t understand why it was almost last to close and also, I was a little overwhelmed with everything else. But I’ve pieced it together now between talking to Tanith and well, just taking everything I’ve learned and putting it together. Keeper wasn’t supposed to stay in Elementra as long as he did. He was supposed to move on from here and go to the nonmagical realm. Then the next and so on.”
