My Dearest Daughters,
I have failed you in so many ways. I didn’t know how much until Ezekiel came into my life. How frightened I’ve been. How failed by my own mother. This is not the legacy I would bequeath to you. I know that now. I know what I must do. Reynard has found me for the last time. He intends to destroy Ezekiel. I must seek help from a man I don’t fully trust. But I do trust Ezekiel in spite of his daemonic nature. We’ve been so wrong. So misled. Daemons aren’t damned. They’re different from us. More different than our human beliefs can describe.
I can only assure you that Ezekiel loves me as I love him, and he loves both of you although you were fathered by one of the monks who mercilessly hunt his people. No beings that love as fiercely as daemons love can be damned. I won’t believe it.
Your biological father was as misled as we have been. He cared for us as much as he was able to care once the Order had corrupted his heart.
Please remember that when you think of him. He was not an evil man, but he followed an evil man, and for that reason and that reason alone he had to die. I will stop Reynard once and for all without help if I have to. Ezekiel doesn’t know what I intend to do. If he did, he would try to stop me and the Order would have him. I can’t distract him from his duty to his people. He’s their leader now. I know it seems a horror for me to be in love with the Prince of Darkness, but I promise you that it isn’t horrible. I’ve seen true darkness in my life. I’ve seen it always in Reynard’s mad eyes.
Please know, if I fail you yet again, that I also do this for you. I can no longer justify running and hiding. I must make a stand.
My only consolation in this long, dark life has been my love for you both. You and the music have saved me. When we sing and play, I feel the love of Ezekiel around us. That sustained me for many years.
But now, I must step boldly into the shadows and meet my fate. If I succeed, we will be free. If I fail, you must continue the fight without me.
Love always,
Mother
Going back in time was messy. Especially when it revealed how others perceived you. Kat read all the letters, not only the final letter meant for her eyes. Her mother’s words to Ezekiel, the daemon she’d loved, described her daughter as quiet, withdrawn, guarded and always alone. Her cello was her only friend.
It hurt.
But she’d come to l’Opéra Severne to help Victoria in spite of those things. She was stronger than her mother had known. The true revelation was about her mother’s tragic past.
She’d loved a daemon, and she’d been forced to let him go. Their father had been one of the monks in the Order of Samuel, but their mother had never loved him. She’d been forced to marry him. Forced to have children the Order could use. She worried that one day they’d be forced to do the same. Ezekiel, in his letters, had promised to rain hell’s fire on the Order’s heads if they tried to hurt them.
They’d been loved.
In the great darkness of Anne’s life, having children to resist the Order by her side had been a comfort to her. Time and again she spoke of her love for them in spite of everything.
They had never known.
They’d been told their father had died fighting a daemon to protect their mother. She told a different tale. About how her true love had tried to save her and how he’d killed their father when he wouldn’t let them go.
Reynard had told them the same daemon had killed their mother, but her last letter revealed that she was going to try to save the love of her life from Reynard and that the obsessed priest might kill her if she got in his way.
What had Victoria thought of the letters? Had discovering Reynard’s betrayal frightened her into hiding? Had their mother succeeded in saving the daemon she loved?
The letters raised more questions than they answered, but they also revealed that Anne D’Arcy was braver than Katherine had ever imagined. She prayed that they had that in common.