Page 224 of The Lands Defying
“We did not.”Shock vibrates through me, stunning me into silence.“Cazier and I would never create something so foolish. To be forced to be joined to another against your will, never.”
“But…” I trail off, and she tilts her head at me.
“A Vihnarn is different, we will get to that.”I nod, feeling so confused.“Bloodmates were created by those that enhanced their power. A single touch, a spell here, and suddenly, you find your bloodmate. It was all,”she scrunches up her nose.“People made.”
I think back to the story of Solvier, how he was going to run away with his chosen mate when all of a sudden, he found his bloodmate.
My eyes snap up to Zahariss. “They knew of his plans, and they thwarted them.”
“Who’s plans?” Darius asks as my heart breaks for the golden-eyed wolf.
“Solvier,” I reply, and recognition lights his eyes, causing his jaw to tick.
“Continue,” he says to Zahariss, and I think she will refuse his command but she doesn’t .
“Solvier was meant to mate another to tie two packs together, as was his mate. The moment when that came to be because of a bloodmate, it was only the beginning of more of them. Many more power moves and deception sinking deeper into packs. They grew hungry, they grew greedy. And with that, they caused so much tragedy and pain that it threw the lands out of balance. The king and his mate were the start of the lands downfall after that.”I grip my hands between my legs, eager to hear more.“The King refused the advice of his council to take on more mates, and he was too powerful to be swayed by a bloodmate, as he was Cazier’s Heir, though he or anyone else didn’t know that at the time.”
The king was Cazier’s Heir!? I look at Darius in shock at those words, and he looks just as surprised.
“So the king and his mate, who he loved dearly, bore a child.”
“Your Heir,” I say, and she bends one of her front paws, seemingly to get more comfortable. “Was she born a pup? Darius and I weren’t.”
“She was not, but a lie that was told to protect Heirs. The King’s mate also had the gift of sight. Though all she felt was danger, not from who or where it would come from when she was pregnant with her babe.My first,”she tells me, and my mind whirls at the lies told for protection.“She was a brave little thing,”she continues.“I was excited to see her grow and try to create some balance in the lands. Cazier and I thought with two Heirs, it would work.”
“But the King and his mate were murdered,” Darius fills in. “And the daughter went mad.”
“Grief took her. She didn’t know how to control the power I gifted to her, she had no balance within herself and in her pain, innocents died.”
“And the Highers used that to instill fear of Heirs,” I say, my anger rising.
“You know how it feels to have lost those you love, you both do.”My hand slips into Darius’s as he tenses, but under my touch, he slowly relaxes again.“So of course, the Highers took the opportunity to capitalize on grief when they formed, and the people, who were lost and scared, held on to the false hope they spewed. With seeing all of this unfold, Cazier and I knew we needed to give more power for our Heirs to be stronger, as we could not intervene any other way.”
My brows furrow. “Why couldn’t you have just bitten their heads off?”
She huffs out a laugh, but I’m dead serious. If she had done that, those who were killed would be alive, my family would be alive…
“Do not think like that, Heir of mine.”My head snaps up to her, and sadness fills her eyes.“We may be Gods, but we couldn’t interfere like that. There are laws that even we have to abide by, that is why we tried other ways.”
“Heirs,” I sigh, understanding.
Another nod. “If we could create Heirs, they could restore the balance, right the wrongs.”
That phrase again.
“Many have tried and failed,”she says sadly, and I can tell she grieves every one of them.“My Heir, I know you have been through more than most,”she says, and I tense.“I couldn’t stop what was going to happen to you, though I did try.”Her eyes go behind her again.“And we were punished for it.”
“Punished?”
“I saw what was going to happen to you many years before they came true. I saw the sheer amount of pain you would endure by the hands of evil. I just couldn’t bear the thought of it. I couldn’t put another one of my Heirs through that. But for trying to stop it, we have been locked in here. We can send power out only into Heirs, and sometimes, a little more if we really focus hard, but for the most part, we are just here.”
“You were a seer, like my mom?” Darius wraps some of his power around my wrist, the cool of it soothing against my skin.
“I was, am. Though I have been cloudy since the day we came here,”she says sadly.“Anyway, the night when Cazier and I tried to go into another soul to end this madness, the laws of the other saw fit to punish us, as it was prohibited.”
“You couldn’t overrule?” Darius growls, no doubt thinking about what I had been through.
“Even Gods have a hierarchy,”she tells him, eyes softening.“My punishment was to be banished here, and Cazier’s…”she trails off, sadness coating her like a second skin as she stands and turns.“He knew how much I loved the lands we created, knew how much joy it brought me. So he tried to fight against them, to help me be free…”
