Chapter 105: The whole truth

BONNIE

I locked eyes with that silver gaze and forgot how to breathe. The color rippled, alive and ancient, like mercury came to life, and a sharp, aching clarity told me exactly what I faced.

"Why now?" The words tore out of me before I could stop them. I scrambled to my feet, my legs unsteady but my anger steady enough. "After all these years. Every single time I suffered. Every night I prayed until my throat bled and my voice disappeared. Where were you?"

Fia sat utterly still, that alien light blazing behind her eyes. Something flickered across her face. It looked like pain, perhaps, or the ghost of it.

"I was there." The voice came layered, Fia’s warmth wrapped around something vast and hollow, like wind moving through caverns deep underground. "In the corner. Watching. I wanted to help. I wanted to fix things. But there is a law I cannot break. An oath I swore because of your blood."

"My blood?" I laughed, but it came out broken. "My blood that you let spill? My blood that you let them take?"

I shook my head and backed away until my shoulder blades hit the wall. The wood pressed cold and solid against my spine, but it didn’t ground me. Nothing could ground me while those eyes tracked my movement, seeing everything, missing nothing.

"Then why are you here?" I spread my arms wide, gesturing at the room, at Fia’s borrowed body, at the whole rotten situation. "If you couldn’t break your precious law, then what makes now so special for you to break it?"

Selene tilted Fia’s head, but the motion felt off. It was too precise, heavy with the weight of centuries-old habits.

"I am breaking the law." She said it simply, as if she were admitting to taking an extra roll at dinner. "In a way. I also broke it then when you were dream walking."

I gasped. "That was you?"

"Yes, and it was a splendid way to reach out. Because the others will not catch on if you were dream walking, or if I was using another body. If they did, there would be consequences."

"Consequences." I tasted the word. It felt bitter. "For you. Not for me. You get to break rules when you feel like it, and I’m just supposed to what? Fall to my knees? Finally grateful that you bothered to show up?"

"Do not fight me, child." The temperature in the room dropped. Not much, just enough to raise the hair on my arms. "And listen to what I have to say. The things I am allowed to say because I am still bound by oath in this form. You might not see me again until you do what you were supposed to do."

I pushed away from the wall. My hands trembled, so I tucked them behind my back, hiding the evidence.

"I understand nothing," I said, flat and hard. "About who I am. About why you abandoned me. And now I’m supposed to do something for you? I don’t care if you’re divine. I refuse."

Selene rose. Fia’s body moved with a grace that belonged to someone else—fluid, terrible—and I caught the strain in the taut line of her mouth. She closed the distance in three strides, and I stood my ground, though every instinct screamed at me to flee.

"I cannot stay in this body long." Her voice had thinned, stretched tight. "Lest I break this sweet girl’s mind. She is stronger than most, but she is not a vessel. And she is not built for this."

"Then leave her alone." I reached out without thinking and grabbed Fia’s wrist. The skin was warm, human, fragile. "Get out of her. If you want to talk to me, use your own damn body."

Selene glanced down at my hand. An emotion flickered across her face, unreadable and fleeting.

"The reason I have never reached for you," she said slowly, each word careful, measured, "is because I made a vow to a god that I would never. You are not supposed to exist, Bonnie."

I released her wrist as if it had scorched me.

"But you needed to exist." She continued before I could speak. "To give those victims of circumstances a chance to be saved. When I cursed your father for what he did, the way out was so simple. A test of character. A lesson in humility. But I neglected the fact that he was a prideful man. For decade after decade, he let the suffering continue. He skewed history even. For what? To show that he would never bend the knee or his tongue. As long as he could keep that pride, he was fine with people suffering and dying."

My father. She was talking about my father. The word felt foreign in my mind, like a language I’d never learned to speak.

"He was supposed to end their suffering." Selene’s borrowed eyes flashed, and for a moment I saw the goddess behind them, vast and burning. "But he would not. He watched them suffer... He watched them suffer and did nothing. Until somewhere along the line, he fell in love. I didn’t think it was possible. Not for him. Not after everything. So I begged to edit something out of that curse. I begged the gods and the universe."

"You begged?" My voice sounded small. I hated it.

"Yes, and the consequence for that was I had to abandon you." She reached toward me, and I flinched back. Her hand hung in the air between us, unfinished. "It was what they wanted in exchange for letting him procreate. To see if you would become a mini him or another person, a good person entirely, without divinity involved. The caveats were clear. I could not intervene. I could not guide. I could only watch."

I turned away. My chest felt too tight, like someone had wrapped bands around my ribs and pulled.

"And you have persevered, child." Her voice softened, and that was worse than the cold. "You have become something neither of them expected. Something I did not even expect. But it is hard and nearly not enough. I had to try. Make moves and take moves because I believed you just needed a push in the right direction. Cornelius had to die."

I spun back around, ignoring what she had said about the late King and the dominoes his death caused for me. There was only one thing that mattered. "You know my father?"

The question hung there, heavy and sharp.

"Who is he?" I stepped closer, close enough to see the individual flecks of silver swimming in Fia’s eyes, which were supposed to be brown and not silver. "Is he alive? Why did you curse him? What did he do that was so terrible that you—"

She opened her mouth to answer.

The sound that came out wasn’t words. It was static, a buzzing crackle that made my teeth hurt, and I pressed my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help because the sound wasn’t coming through the air. It was coming from inside my skull.

"I didn’t hear." I lowered my hands. My heart was hammering against my ribs. "Say it again."

Selene tried. Her lips moved, forming shapes I couldn’t quite catch, and the static came again, louder this time, building like a pressure behind my eyes. It felt familiar. Too familiar. Like the dream place, that nowhere space where I’d almost been killed by that creature before it let me go and I was transported to what I believed was a memory, where words had slipped away from that female figure, and reality had bent.

She tried a third time, and this time she coughed.

Blood followed. Bright red and shocking against Fia’s pale lips. It spattered her chin, her hand when she raised it to cover her mouth.

She gazed at the blood staining her palm, resignation settling over her features.

"I can’t stay anymore." Her voice was barely a whisper, Fia’s voice, human and strained. "It seems the vow I made to the others is preventing me from breaking a rule. Even through a vessel. Even like this."

"Wait." Panic clawed up my throat. "You can’t just leave. You can’t just drop all of this on me and leave. Who is my father? What am I supposed to do? What victims? What circumstances?"

"Listen." She grabbed my shoulders, and her grip was iron. Not with Fia’s strength. Something older. "You do not need to fear your power. It is everything you need. It is everything you are."

"That’s not an answer." I tried to shake her off, but she held fast. "That’s just... I do not know... fucking poetry. That’s nothing."

"It is the only answer I can give." Her eyes were dimming, the silver receding like a tide pulling back from shore. "Do not fear the red. Do not fear the small miracles or your walk in your dreams. They are yours. They have always been yours."

"Stop." I was begging now, and I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t stop. "Please. Just tell me his name. Tell me what I’m supposed to do. Tell me anything real."

But she was already gone.

Fia’s body seized, her spine bowing backward, and I caught her just before she collapsed. She felt too light in my arms, and her chest hitched as she fought for a ragged, desperate breath.

Her eyes snapped open.

It was brown, warm, human, and confused.

"Bonnie?" Her voice was rough, scraped raw. "What happened? Why am I on the floor?"