“I tried. I really did.” Kody started forward, but Xev stopped her.
When he spoke again, his tone was like that of a patient parent to a beloved child. “This isn’t on you, little one. This started long before you were sent here to kill Nick. Long before you were recruited to your cause. Don’t let her put her sins on your innocent shoulders.”
His eyes flashing bright red, Xev curled a furious lip as he neared Menyara. “How could you do such a thing to them? Have you learned nothing over the centuries about tampering with human fate and free will? About playing with lives when you should leave well enough alone?”
Looking up, Menyara met his gaze without flinching. “We had no choice. You’ve no idea how powerful Adarian had grown. How incredibly dangerous he was to everyone and everything he came into contact with.”
“And whose fault was that?”
She ignored his question. “We couldn’t control him anymore. He’d been unleashed on this world. An unstoppable monster. We had no other way of even finding him. Everything we tried, failed. He was becoming such a threat that at any moment, he could have come for us and won. Torn out our throats and laughed about it as he drank our blood from his own fists. It was our only hope of fighting him. The only way we could think to even slow him down long enough to put him back in chains.”
“By making his powers stronger? Who thought that was a good idea?”
“It was meant to negate his powers.”
Xev scoffed angrily. “You had no right to involve an innocent life without telling her what you were doing! Without asking her permission!” He paced the floor like a caged beast looking for a way to attack its taunter, who in this case appeared to be Menyara.
“We had every right to do whatever it took to protect all the innocents of this world. One sacrifice for millions of others. It was an equitable exchange.”
Still, Xev denied her logic and clung to his steadfast argument. “It wasn’t your place to make that call.”
She ignored his fury. “Mankind couldn’t stand against the u?umgallu centuries ago when they knew about them and were prepared to fight them. Now… they’re completely helpless against the Malachai and his allies. They don’t even know of them. Never mind raise an army to fight him, or use magic and the elements to bind him! What would you have had us do? Stand aside and watch all of you mow the humans down for your sick pleasure?”
Slack-jawed, Xev froze in response to her question as if he’d just realized something. His breathing labored, he met Menyara’s furious glower. “Her father isn’t Verlyn. He can’t be. I would have sensed it instantly were we siblings.”
“No. Azura keeps him sterile for fear he will father a child who can kill or enslave her.”
“Rezar?”
“Has been missing for centuries. No one knows what happened to him.”
Absolute horror washed over his face as he turned toward Nick. He looked at him as if he’d never seen him before. As if he was looking at him through new eyes.
His gaze fell to Nick’s mother and for a moment, Nick thought Xev might actually kill Menyara.
Or toss his cookies.
“You chose a warrior of light for the task.” It was a flat, whispered statement, not a question.
“There was no one else. We needed a father born directly from the Kalosum Source powers. He was the closest to them who could still father a daughter for the cause.”
Biting his lip, Xev winced. “They’re people, not disposable pawns for your selfish games, Cam.”
She glared at him. “No one knows that better than I. Everything I’ve ever done was for the protection of others. For the protection and benefit, and my love of this world, and all those who dwell in it. I was the one who stayed here in this hole, to watch over and protect. To be here every step of the way. For them all.”
And still Xev’s gaze condemned her for her actions. “Does he even know he’s a father?”
“Of course not. It would have been a disaster on multiple levels had he ever learned the truth. His daughter was conceived, delivered, and raised under the guise of a completely normal, orphaned human, and appears so to all. No one has ever suspected that she is more than she seems. She never even knew she was an adopted orphan. For all she knows, her adoptive parents are the ones who birthed her.”
Xev laughed bitterly. “And yet you did it without his knowledge or consent. You broke every supreme law we once lived by. Used him and her mother. Did the mother ever know? Did any of them?”
“No. We couldn’t afford for them to have any idea. They could have tipped off Adarian if they had. The mother met him one time… in a bar, and took him home. As far as she knew, he was a human, just passing through her town for the night.”