“I wasn’t born with magic. I had none before my first sip of Nectar ignited it.”
“You could not use your magic, but you were born with it all, every power the Legion can give you,” she told me. “Your light and dark magic sides—equally powerful—were canceling each other out, neutralizing each other so that you could use neither. That’s why you believed yourself to possess no magic.”
My mind struggled to process her words, to make sense of them. Light and dark in equal amounts, the opposite sides of the magical spectrum cancelling each other out. It wasn’t all that different from what Ronan had talked about.
“Your light magic side comes from your father and your dark side from your mother” Sonja continued. “It is divine magic.”
“Divine? So that means…”
“You are both god and demon. Your father is a god and your mother a demon.”
28
Light and Dark
I covered my shock with sarcasm. “Please don’t tell me this is where you admit to being my mother,” I told Sonja, rolling my eyes.
The demon laughed. “No.”
I expelled a deep breath of relief. The Demon of the Dark Force wasn’t very motherly. She was not cruel for cruelty’s sake like Soulslayer, but she also didn’t care how many people were used and misused along the path to her achieving her goal. Sonja firmly believed that her way was the only way, the only path, that it was best for everyone.
“Unlike your mother, I am not foolish enough to have an affair with a god.”
“Who is my mother?” I asked her. “And who is my father?”
“Your father was a mistake, a misguided affair. And your mother is the naive fool who fell for his charms.”
“Which god? Which demon?”
Sonja’s lips pursed up in disgust, and she returned her attention to her work.
“At least tell me if they are still alive,” I said.
“Yes.”
The gladness I felt wasn’t born out of a desperate wish to meet the mother and father I’d been missing all my life, and I harbored no delusions that my parents and I could be one big happy family.
No, I knew no such fantasy was possible. I had my real family, not in blood but in spirit: Calli, Bella, Zane, Gin, and Tessa. That was the family of my heart. I had no use for the cold, careless embrace of the gods and demons.
That spark of excitement was the curiosity burning in me. I just had to know who my parents were. I had to know where I’d come from.
“You have your parents to thank for your glowing hair,” Sonja said, absently touching the end of my braid.
“How so?”
“Your hair is a manifestation of their special powers.”
“What does that even mean? Glowing hair is not a magical specialty.”
Sonja pulled out a notepad and began quickly jotting down notes. She did not, however, answer my question.
I glanced at the complex patterns of symbols she’d drawn on the paper. “What happened to my parents? What brought them together? And what pushed them apart? Do they know I’m alive? How did I end up on Earth?”
Sonja looked up from her work, frowning. “Enough questions.”
She closed her notebook and picked up a syringe filled with dark sparkling fluid the color of amethysts. The demon grabbed my arm and injected the Venom into it. The dark magic surged inside of me, a flash of fire in my blood.
“This is Shifter’s Shadow,” Sonja’s voice echoed beyond the flames.
As the Venom burned through me, everything shifted inside my body. The two sides of my magic wanted to be one, to exist in total harmony. It was no easy battle, however, for two opposing magics to find balance.
I felt lightheaded, drowsy. A slow rock, like that of a boat bobbing on the ocean waves, drew me under, and when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in hell anymore. I was on the open sea.
I sat in a boat on a sea of beautiful turquoise water. Golden tropical sands sparkled across a nearby island. The sun shone down on me, warming my skin and bringing a smile to my face. It was comfortable and safe out here, so far away from all the conflict, the pain, the constant battles. It was a life without magic and all its baggage, a life without monsters and the immortal war between gods and demons. It was, quite simply, peaceful.
I stretched out my legs in the boat, wiggling my naked toes. They brushed against someone’s leg. I glanced at my brother Zane. He sat opposite me in the boat, facing me. He wore a light cotton shirt and beach shorts, and in his hand, he held a fishing pole dipped in the sea.
“We’ve been out here for hours, Zane,” I said. “Let’s give it a rest. The fish aren’t biting today.”
“Patience,” he replied with perfect serenity. “I’m about to catch one.”
“You can’t possibly know…” I stopped, my daze darting to his twinging fishing line. “How did you know?”
Zane got a firmer grip on the pole. “Magic,” he said with a wink.
I snorted. “There’s no such thing as magic.”
The memory of a battle flashed through my mind. I saw myself lifting a flaming sword in the air to fight a gargantuan monster. It was a daydream, nothing more. I shook my head, clearing the fantasy from my wandering thoughts.
Zane had already reeled in the fish and dropped it into the bucket. His line was in the water again. I must have dozed off.
“It’s a big one,” Zane said as the line began to twitch again. He was straining to hold the pole steady. “A little help here, Leda.”
“Why do you need my help when you have magic?” I smirked at him.
I got another flash, this time of an angel, his dark wings extended, magic crackling off of his skin, igniting the air around him. I cleared my head again, but the image of the angel lingered for a few seconds, an image burned into my mind.
I helped Zane hold the pole steady. I could feel something fighting and thrashing on the other end, resisting with everything that it had. Zane reeled it in. He dropped a second fish into the pan. It was even bigger than the first one.
It bounced against the bottom of the bucket, and I caught another flash of the angel. He was sliding the sleeve off my shoulder, kissing my skin. Heat flushed my body.
As the image faded from my mind, I saw Zane staring at me strangely.
“What?” I said guiltily.
“Nothing.” He was grinning from ear to ear.
I blushed, unable to shake the feeling that my brother could read minds—and that he’d just caught me red-handed fantasizing about a sexy angel.
“Do you believe in angels?” I blurted out.
“Do you?” Zane countered.
I was still considering my response when Zane’s line began to swing about wildly. Whatever he’d caught this time, it was enormous. I reached over to help him, but as my hands closed around the pole, a torrent of images crashed through my head. I saw myself fighting monsters, sparring with angels, battling the forces of hell. Magic shot across the battlefield like fireworks.
The images streamed by faster. I saw cities rise and fall and immortals being born. I watched gods and demons clash. Lifetimes of memories flashed by in the blink of an eye.
Then I was ejected from the memory stream. My mind spun, trying to make sense of what I’d just seen.
“You’ve tapped into the memories of the Guardians,” Zane told me.
The name ‘Guardians’ sparked something in me, and I recalled the Black City, where I’d first experienced the memories of the Guardians in dreams and visions. And then I remembered who I was. What I was.
I looked around at the boat, the beach, and the water. “This isn’t real.” I suffered a moment of profound loss, though I’d not lost a thing. You couldn’t lose a paradise that you’d never had.
“No,” Zane said. “It’s not.”
“And you’re not really here with me.”
“No.”