Chapter 26 - Sam

A cold shiver coursed through Sam’s veins, shooting straight into her heart and freezing it before its next beat. Panicked, she inhaled sharply, afraid of forgetting how to breathe.

The knowledge that Danata had lusted over her sister’s post as Regent seared in Sam’s mind and sent her imagination into darkness, conjuring a barrage of scenarios, one worse than the next.

For weeks, after fleeing with little more than her life, thanks to Greg, she’d pondered over the possibility that Bernard and Roanna were her parents. But if that was the case, it meant her mother had been the Regent and was still the rightful owner of that title. It can’t be. She didn’t want to believe it, even if that would finally explain Danata’s hatred toward her. It was just too much.

Sam looked around the room, wondering if this would be the place where she would finally learn the truth about her past, if Fate had brought her here to confirm or deny her suspicions.

And they had thought they were escaping, running away from danger and their problems. Fat chance.

Well, there was no other choice but to grab this stubborn bull by its horns. Mateo didn’t seem happy to be talking about this, but he was willing, and she wouldn’t shy away from the answers he offered. If she was to figure out what she was meant to do with her life, she needed answers. All of them.

“So she wanted the Regency and, obviously, she got it,” Sam said. “I think Greg and I can both guess by what means.”

Mateo nodded. “From what you seem to know, I think your guess would be correct. I tried to dissuade her.” He bit down on his lower lip in frustration. “I couldn’t. Once she made up her mind and set her heart on the prize, there was no turning back. I have never, in all my years, sensed a need so great from anyone. She turned into a force of nature to be reckoned with. Her aimlessness disappeared and was replaced by a purpose so strong that everything else became irrelevant. Decency, morals, filial attachments, nothing else mattered to her but power.

“I don’t know how she hid her black heart from me all that time. I had thought she was a good person, but there isn’t one grain of decency in her. She just hadn’t had a goal to direct her ambitions toward until then.

“She had the gall to ask for my help. I refused, of course, told her I would denounce her treason, if she didn’t give up her deranged schemes. But it was a mistake, it only served as a warning and gave her time to turn my very best friend, Veridan, against me.”

“Veridan?!” Greg exclaimed. “The Sorcerer? He was your friend?”

“I take it you’ve met him.”

“We’ve met, all right. He tried to kill us. More than once.”

Mateo’s eyes drifted from Greg to Sam. “Kill you? Why?”

“I guess because Sam wasn’t good enough for Ashby. I don’t know. All I know is that he does all of Danata’s dirty work.”

“That, he does,” Mateo agreed, his expression growing impossibly sadder. “It’s hard for me to understand why. I know she helped him, helped his father and mother when they were going through a rough situation. But that hardly justifies his involvement. There must be more to it.” He looked truly puzzled. “He was a good man.”

“Pshaw!” Greg didn’t try to hide his disdain for that opinion.

But the conversation was getting derailed. “What happened next?” Sam asked, determined to get her answers.

“She took Ashby and threatened to hurt him if I interfered.”

Sam hugged herself, hating the pain in Mateo’s eyes, the brimming tears that wavered there. Yes, she needed to hear this, but what of this poor man? Reliving all these memories seemed to be splitting him in two.

“I know she would have hurt him. Her lust for power was greater than any type of love she’d ever felt. She should have never been a mother. There is a reason why it is the job of Companions to hold the family nucleus together, but I dared feel smarter than Fate, at least for a while. In the end, I only played the fool.”

Sam pushed to the edge of her chair, eager to learn what she could about Roanna. “Bernard, he was Roanna’s husband, right?”

Mateo nodded. “Her Companion. A Dual, really. He was also a Sower, loved to work in the garden.”

“He is,” Sam corrected, unsure why he was talking of the man in the past tense.

“Glad he’s fine.” Mateo pronounced the last word with a hint of doubt.

“We can’t be sure,” Greg said, mussing his own hair. “I mean, he was fine last time we saw him, but there’s no telling what happened to him after we left. We had to leave in a bit of a hurry.”

“Do you know where Roanna is? Bernard was there, at Rothblade castle, but we never saw his wife,” Sam asked.

Mateo stood and started pacing behind his desk. “I wish I knew. I didn’t stay to find out. For the nearly four years we were together, Danata’s caste was a mystery to me. As incredible as it seems, she managed to keep it hidden from me. She feigned shyness and modesty. I never doubted her assertion that she bared the Regent’s crown and staff as her only mark. It was common knowledge among the council and everyone else. I had no reason to doubt her. I had no reason to suspect that she was a Dual, a Dual with an evil power kept secret from everyone.

“She tore Roanna and Bernard apart. I saw it happen. I saw them both fall to their knees and become little more than empty vessels. Their cares, their wants, their needs, which I had admired for so long, vanished in an instant. Roanna’s desire to serve her people ceased to be. I couldn’t feel it anymore. Bernard’s need to keep his wife safe and happy was still there, but it’d grown so faint, I could hardly sense it.”

Tears were rolling down Sam’s cheeks, even as she fought them. The images Mateo described so vividly had brought back the panic and pain of her last hour at Rothblade Castle. Her last glimpse of Ashby, alive. Of his black eyes as he held his mother by the throat in an effort to protect Sam, a set of eyes that now seemed to peer down at her from this man’s face. It was all too eerie, bringing back her Companion’s last seconds of life before he died.

“I almost fell to my knees myself,” Mateo continued. “I had allowed that to happen. Yes, to protect my son, but still. I tried to reason that no one had died. That even though Bernard and Roanna would never be the same, at least Danata hadn’t killed them.

“In spite of everything,” Mateo let out an unamused chuckle, “I was still willing to think there was some good in that woman. That was until her needs changed again. Not even ten minutes had passed after her awful deed when something more heinous took possession of her.

“You see, Bernard and Roanna had a daughter. Her name was Celestine. She was a beautiful child, liked to play with her big cousin, Ashby.” Mateo’s lips stretched as his eyes wandered to some distant memory of happier times, where children played without a care in the world.

Sam leaned forward and placed a hand on the desk to steady herself. A mixture of fear and hope weighed her down and kept her from running out of the small office.

“Numb as they were,” Mateo said, “Bernard and Roanna posed no threat to Danata. The child, though, she was an uncertain variable, an unknown. In thirteen or so years, the child would morph, only Fate knew into what. Danata wasn’t willing to take that risk. She had no intention of allowing Celestine to live. Not when she could grow to become a challenger.”

“So is she still alive?” she asked, her voice revealing a strange hope that made her feel silly. If Sam was Celestine, of course she was still alive. Duh!

Mateo stopped and stood by the corner of his desk. He let his eyes rest on a stack of papers as if he were reading what was printed there, but it was obvious he was far, far away. “I should have stayed and denounced her, exposed her for what she is. But fear for my son’s life made it impossible. I wanted to help Bernard and Roanna. They were always good to me. But I failed them.” Mateo’s eyes were heavy with the weight of his failure.

“You failed them?” Sam said in a low murmur.

What?! So Celestine is dead? He couldn’t even save their daughter?!

In the end, he had failed everyone, even Ashby. Because he had still died at the hands of his evil mother. Anger and disappointment roiled inside Sam’s chest. She wanted to shout at this worthless man, tell him he was nothing but a coward.

But if Roanna and Bernard are not my parents, then who?

“I let Danata break their bond and turn them into empty husks,” Mateo continued, unaware of Sam’s accusing gaze. “That failure still grieves me to this day. I tried to find comfort in having saved their daughter, but it’s not always enough.”

Sam gasped, her anger and disappointment dissolving and leaving her chest empty and numb. Questions crowded her mouth, but she had no breath left to ask any of them.

Greg, as always, read her emotions and said what she was too choked up to voice. “If you did save her, where is she now?”

Mateo looked at them, his eyes suddenly brimming with the same suspicion they’d held before this conversation started.

“If that is the purpose of your visit here,” Mateo defiantly said, “you are wasting your time. I don’t know where she is. I smuggled her out of England with the help of a Sorcerer friend, then left her in a hospital, so they could find her a home. Even if I knew where she was, I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

Sam stood then, even as her legs trembled beneath her. She was tired of this roundabout conversation, of this suspense, of this uncertainty about who her real parents were. These surges of hope were nerve-wracking.

She must have looked fierce, because Mateo took a step back and looked toward the door as if ready to bolt.

“That is not why we’re here,” Sam said. “Fate brought us to this place, as we’ve already told you. But there is a reason for our questions about Celestine. You see, I think . . . I think I might be Roanna and Bernard’s daughter.”