Page 90 of Amethyst and Iron
“We wandered further away than I’d intended that day. I got lost in being with my boy at long last, in listening to you speak. And you weren’t used to another wanting to listen so intently so you spoke a great deal to me. About everything.”
“And I just… trusted you?”
“Not at first, no. When I first spirited you away from those misguided youths, you were afraid. You didn’t know me. I was a stranger to you. I told you my name, but you saidcode namesare for bad men or those with dangerous secrets, and you insisted on knowing my true name. So I gave it to you. You’d heard your mother speak my name in her sleep, something I was not aware of, and you made the connection, also knowing of her alliances and friendships with vampire kind.”
“Hold up… you’re saying you revealed to me that you were my dad?”
“Yes. Although, there wasn’t much to reveal with you putting so much together on your own. You were a highly astute child, very curious, incredibly smart and gifted.”
“So, that’s why Mom insisted on wiping my memory of that day we spent together? She didn’t want us to have a connection? It scared her?”
“Not much scares your mother, but you knowing my name was one such thing. Not through any selfish agenda, or her own heartbreak over our fractured familial unit. But because of the burden it would put on you to know, to keep it secret from anyone you encountered.”
“Because of your work with The Shadowed?”
“That was just the tip of the iceberg. As I said, we’d wandered further than I’d intended that day. To the outer rims of the pack lands. And they were waiting.”
He started. “Who?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I am very careful whenever I emerge above ground. However, years of visiting you in secret, even I could not evade detection. There were vampire clans rising at that time, joining forces with the intent to take the power of The Shadowed for themselves. To usurp us, to have me fall also. That day, three hundred of them crowded the northeastern border of Vyrn Hollow. They’d put the pieces together and realized who you were to me. They intended to use that as leverage to force my hand. To useyou.Three hundredvampires hopped up on the blood of magic-wielders whom they’d taken captive.”
“What happened?” he asked, fixed on me so intently.
“I told you to run. You would not leave me.”
He flinched. “You were hurt because of me?”
“No.Theywere hurt because ofme.”
“You took on three hundred vampires high on magic?”
“I murdered them all.” I shifted my weight. “But their deaths alone weren’t enough to keep our secret safe, nor to safeguard The Shadowed against being exposed and threatened. I had to dispose of anyone they’d spoken to, all allies, potential allies, and everyone they knew and loved.”
He choked, a curse spilling from his lips. “Fuck… how many?”
Three thousand and seventy-two.
“Too many. Suffice to say, you witnessed enough horror as it was with my destruction of just those three hundred. Combined with you knowing my true name,Obliviscawas called for.”
“It’s also why you stopped coming by?”
I nodded. “And the point I am making is that all that unfolded because I allowed my sentimentality as a father to transcend everything. It made me sloppy. It led to hundreds of deaths. It had you witnessing horrors that would break most. Itreallyenraged your mother. So much was almost lost because I made a mistake. Because I was selfish. Because I wanted to know you as my son so desperately.”
He came back then and settled onto the bench again, this time not leaving a two-foot distance between us. “Mom was really enraged, you said?”
“She was.”
“So she dealt you a beatdown, huh?”
“Yes.” My lips quirked despite myself. “That was how it began, at least.”
He screwed up his face, catching on far too easily. “Lovely.”
He took a moment, then asked, “Without going into too much detail, how did it even happen? You and her?”
“Are you referring to our relationship, or your conception?”
“Both,” he responded boldly.
