Chapter 13

Sylvana

 

As I sat in the shadows, Kin’s singing slid under my defenses and tried to pull my most bittersweet memories out into the light where I’d have no choice but to look at them. His fingers slid over the guitar strings, tweaking them into notes of both sadness and mourning. This was a man who had known loss.

I knew plenty about loss. First, my father went out for the proverbial pack of smokes and never came back. Then my mother, well, that was a complicated story, but I hadn’t lost her so much as thrown her away, and Lexi along with her. All for the love of a god among men. Literally.

Oh, and did I mention he left me, too?

Only now was I coming to understand the price might not have been worth it, but even so, my heart craved him, and here I was, with no idea my daughter was experiencing similar pain, staring at her with an ulterior motive for getting my man back. Could I be any more pathetic?

“What are you doing here, Sylvana?”

I nearly jumped out of my seat when a mini tornado deposited one of Lexi’s faeries in the second seat of my shadowed—magically enhanced shadows no less—booth at Driven.

“Vaeta, right?” Made sense, given the flair of her entrance. “Aren’t you worried someone might have seen you popping in like that?”

She waved a hand and cocked an elegantly shaped gray eyebrow at me. “Please. With the glamour you’re casting over this table, I could have ridden in on a rainbow-farting unicorn and no one would have batted an eye.”

I’d always considered my glamours impenetrable, so her seeing right through one was disconcerting. “Well, I had to do something. Back in my day, bars were darker, smoke-filled places. Easier to go unnoticed.” My twenty-five years in a cage had seen a lot of changes ushered into the world.

“You didn’t answer my question. I know you’ve been following Lexi around, and I’d like to hear your intentions.” Her magic raised the tiny hairs on my arms, tickled across the back of my neck, and tingled across my tongue.

Well, two could play that game, so I pulled up a little power, channeled it into the palm of my hand, and let the witchfire flicker into a marble-sized ball. Deliberately, I held Vaeta’s gaze and played the ball across my knuckles, letting it grow larger as it rippled back and forth.

“And what exactly did you see? Nothing nefarious, because all I’ve been doing is keeping an eye on my daughter. Making sure she’s safe.”

Vaeta shot me a skeptical look, nipped a stale peanut from the bowl on the table, and said, “Your intentions haven’t been honorable thus far, so you’ll excuse me if I seem skeptical. We’ve been the ones looking out for her, and we’ll continue to do so even if it means removing you from the equation.”

The threat chafed. Lexi was my daughter, but these faeries seemed to think they had the bigger claim. The worst part was I couldn’t even be pissed off about it. They’d taken her in and protected her when I couldn’t. Owing debts to faeries is tricky enough business when there’s time to hammer out ironclad terms. Even then, a person could end up needing to pay the proverbial arm and a leg in actual arms and legs if a deal went wrong.

So far, the godmothers had asked for nothing in return, but that didn’t mean I had to like them. “Cool your jets. I’m trying to help Lexi. No ulterior motives, I swear.” Mostly truth. My motives were a little more complicated, but that was none of Vaeta’s concern.

Still, telling an air faerie to cool it down was a bad idea. She did, and I shivered in the frosty results of her magic.

Crooking her finger, Vaeta called an empty glass from behind the bar and poured a beer from the pitcher I’d ordered but barely touched. “And how did that work out for you last time?” Had to give her credit for the level of snark in her tone. Really top notch. I could probably like her if I didn’t hate her.

She sipped, grimaced, and blew on the beer as if it were hot and she wanted to cool it down. An icy ring formed around the rim of the glass. A handy talent.

“Okay, I made some bad choices.” An understatement. Bad choices seemed to be my default. “But I’m trying to make up for my mistakes, so cut me some slack.”

The chill eased along with the set of Vaeta’s shoulders and I let my gaze travel back to where Lexi sat across from the man I didn’t think was good enough for her. But what did I know? My love life ranked right up there on the top ten list of tragic failures.

“Was he good to her?” Needing to ask was a bitter pill, but I had to know. I might not have been there for my daughter when she needed me most, but I could feel the pain of his loss inside her now. Whether because I’d lost my own love, or because she was my flesh and blood, I couldn’t say and I didn’t care. Under the collected exterior, Lexi’s cries echoed in my heart. “Tell me what happened. I know Diana Diamond was to blame, but I’d like to hear the rest of the story.”

I knew some of the details, but what I’d heard had come from an unreliable source, so I wanted to hear what happened from another perspective.

Before she answered, Vaeta downed her glass and poured another. “He broke her heart, but it was none of his doing. The man lived for her and would have died for her, I’ve no doubt. Nearly did, thanks to you.”

Because there was no defense for choosing the Bow of Destiny over saving Lexi’s man, I shrugged. Would I never live that mistake down? Would I make it again if I could go back and relive that moment of choice was the bigger question.

“That viper used one of her cards to turn Kin’s heart away from Lexi and focus his attention toward another woman. There was more to it, but the upshot is there was a curse attached, and even though Lexi broke the spell, she was too late and he doesn’t remember being in love with her.”

No wonder Lexi seemed so different. Not only was she nursing a broken heart, but she’d taken an ego bashing, too. I picked up my glass Vaeta’s chill had left dripping with condensation and stamped out a few rings on the paper napkin.

“This quasi date they’re on is how she’s trying to get him back?”

Vaeta sighed and the breeze from it smelled of meadow and gusted my hair back. “You don’t know your daughter at all, do you? Deep down that’s what she wants, but it’s not a date, it’s a matchmaking consultation. She’s going to try to find him someone else to love because she values his happiness above her own. Unlike you, there’s not a selfish bone in that girl’s body. Don’t you think it’s time you stepped up?”

I doused the ball of flame I’d been turning over and over in my hands, but before I could form an appropriately nasty response, Vaeta dropped a bomb on me.

“How much danger is Lexi in because of your history with Diana Diamond?”

A heated retort jumped to my lips, but I bit down on it because the question deserved honesty, and for once, I wanted to tell the truth. “Some. Maybe more than some, though from what I’ve seen, Lexi can hold her own there. How did you know?”

The faerie looked at me like she was considering how much information to reveal, and even though I wanted to be ticked off about not being trusted, I really didn’t have a leg to stand on. She finally shook her head and answered, “In Port Harbor, there’s a portal to a Nexus. I believe you’re familiar with it.”

“You know about the nexus?” My mother had imprisoned me in the space between worlds for twenty-five years, and if I ever found the person who’d managed to let me out, I owed them a debt of gratitude along with a slap upside the head. As much as I appreciated my freedom, the act of gaining it had also released the Darkest Heart back into the world. A woman otherwise known as Diana Diamond.

In clipped tones, Vaeta answered, “I do. It leads to the underworld—my unwilling home for the past hundred years, and when I finally escaped, it was through that portal.”

“Are you saying you’re responsible for freeing us all?”

She drained the rest of the pitcher of beer and signaled for another. “Not directly, but in a sense. I didn’t provide the ammunition, but I was the one who pointed the weapon. That’s a story for another day. Right now, I’m more concerned with how we’re going to work together to atone for our sins.”

“We? We’re a we, now?” No one who knew me would ever call me a joiner. I’d been an I, mostly by choice, for my entire life. Too stubborn to ask for or accept help. Yet, being considered part of a team, even a team of two, might not be so terrible.

In answer, Vaeta leaned across the table and let her glamour slip enough to show the faerie underneath. Terrible beauty is the best way to describe her face. Eyes blazing like the golden rim of sunlight around a storm cloud, her features refined down to a series of points, she bared her teeth at me.

“You’re a selfish piece of trash and I don’t like you. Let’s just get that clear right now, but I love your daughter, and I'm willing to work with you to help her. So if you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy, get over it, and when we’re done, we’re done. Clear?”

“Crystal.” I spat the word at her. “While we’re on the subject of who’s at fault for what, maybe you could tell me why you all let her close herself off the way she has. Look at her.” I pointed toward the woman who barely even looked like my daughter anymore, and certainly wasn’t acting like her. “I’ve spent enough time with her to know this persona she’s adopted isn’t healthy or normal.”

Vaeta had put her everyday face back on and now it registered pain. “I know. She’s compartmentalizing. Maybe helping Kin move on will let her do the same. We can’t fix it for her no matter how much we wish we could. The heart heals in its own time and fashion. All we can do is support her until it does.”

“So basically, you’re doing nothing.” Outwardly, I sneered while inwardly knowing they were probably right to let her work through it in her own way. But if anyone knew how she was feeling, it was me, and passive acceptance had never been the strongest Balefire trait.

“What exactly have you been doing besides skulking around and watching her?” Vaeta shot back while I watched my daughter chase after a broken heart. Again.

Feeling powerless makes me cranky. “Trying to figure out what’s going on with her, and how to get through to her. Believe me or not, helping Lexi is my priority.”

I cocked my head under Vaeta’s scrutiny and pretended I had no other motive than love for my daughter. I did love Lexi, so it wasn’t a stretch, and I must have passed her scrutiny because she frowned and brought me up to speed with what Delta had learned of the beings who hunted Fate Weavers like Lexi.

“There are rumors that a Fate Weaver or two survived, but no verifiable sightings in at least two hundred years. For all we know, Lexi is the last besides young Kaine, and no one is left to provide answers about the Balmorrigan.”

She’d been sitting here all this time, judging me, and for once, I had information to share. Leaning back, I rested my wrists on the table, took a deep breath, and said, “What if I told you a Fate Weaver still lived a hundred years ago? And I can prove it.”

Vaeta pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“How could you possibly be able to prove something that happened long before you were born?” Vaeta tilted her head and waited for me say something stupid. I did not oblige. “This is too important for you to get her hopes up over nothing. Lexi has questions that need answers. About herself, but also about little Kaine.” A smile flitted across her lips as she said the baby’s name and her gaze went unfocused.

What was it about that baby?

She circled a hand to get me talking again.

“Twenty-five years is a long time to be holed up in silence, so Diana and I…well, we talked some.” Truth be told, I talked more than she did, but in my defense, I hadn’t known she was evil incarnate at the time. Still, she’d let some things slip, including the information I was about to tell Vaeta.

“A hundred years ago, at least one Fate Weaver helped build the portal to the underworld nexus in Port Harbor.” If I expected a smile or at least some indication the news I had was good, I didn’t get it. Vaeta only frowned, so I continued. “And I have proof because he dropped his wand near the prison bars. It’s probably still there.”

Not near enough for Diana or for me to reach it, but close enough for her to know it for what it was and rant about it on multiple occasions. If what Vaeta said was true, the Balmorrigan and Diana had one thing in common: hating Fate Weavers.

As if I hadn’t said anything and a new thought just now occurred, Vaeta said, “I don’t suppose Cupid ever talked about his other children.”

“He had plans for Lexi, but he didn’t share them with me or talk about his family much, and I never really pushed it. I figured we had more time and there were other things to do.”

Eyes rolling, Vaeta said, “There’s more to life than sex.”

If I have one downfall, it’s letting my emotions get the better of my magic, so Vaeta’s snark got under my skin and set free the beast. Her eyes flickered when she felt the sting of my power, but she continued as if nothing was happening.

“Delta’s most reliable sources all agree the Balmorrigan were out for Fate Weaver blood. If they’re back—and Delta’s convinced they are—we need to find a Fate Weaver with direct knowledge of what’s fact or fiction. It’s the only way to keep Lexi safe.”

Vaeta looked at me like she thought I might have one of Cupid’s other children locked up in my basement or something. Well, the joke was on her. I didn’t even have a basement.

“I’ve never heard of these Balmorrigan, but the solution is simple. If Lexi needs a Fate Weaver, why not go to the source: Cupid? Her father will have all the answers.”

Smirking, Vaeta raised an eyebrow. “Does your mind have any other track?”

I huffed and drew my brows down in irritation. “I can’t just pull a Fate Weaver out of my ass, Vaeta, as much as I’d like to help. It’s not like he ever took me to his family reunion.”

Vaeta leaned forward in her seat, a forbidding expression on her face. “Come on, Sylvana, he must have told you something.”

Not nearly enough, I was coming to learn. ”He said Lexi was the child of his heart, and that her heart would be her greatest gift.”

“That’s still pertinent information, Sylvana. You should have told Lexi about it.” Vaeta scolded.

I snickered. “Yes, well, when would you have liked me to tell her that? Before she reamed me a new one and took off with fire and brimstone in her eyes, or after?”

Maybe I was stupid to get involved with an elemental faerie—even one that had Lexi’s best interests at heart. We might scratch each other’s eyes out before we managed to help my daughter. But, what other choice did I have?