Page 34 of Whispers of Fate

Cade’s lips parted, and his head tilted to the side as if he were trying to puzzle it out. “Why would your father turn you over to Ryder, though? And why wouldn’t you want that if you were already in love with him?”

I glanced at Ryder, silently asking if he wanted to field this one, but he just smirked, so I turned back to our son. “The first question is a bit complicated, but to answer your second one, I didn’t know it was Ryder who I was being turned over to. He showed up in all his horde-king glory and collected me. It wasn’t until later that he told me I was pregnant, which, of course, I refused to believe at first.”

“And when you did, you still assumed it was only two of us,” Zander stated, holding Dristan against his shoulder and rubbing the babe’s back as if he’d done it a million times. “We hid Kahleena, and you didn’t discover her until they cut her from your corpse.”

Zander’s words made me wince before Ryder coughed and looked at me sheepishly, as if Zander’s words would have upset me. At least we could say they weren’t afraid to tell the world how they’d come into it, bloody and from my lifeless corpse. After a moment, I nodded silently, fighting the tears prickling my eyes. Ryder tightened his hold on me, kissing my head as he sensed my emotions churning.

“That day was the best and worst of my entire life,” he muttered. “I thought I lost your mother, but she left me with you three to heal that pain. Hours later, I found her standing by your cribs, and I almost ended her life.”

“He would havetried.” I grunted, but I ignored him. “I was a motherfucking goddess, and he’d have needed to pack a lunch to handle me.” I grinned at the memories. “The fact that I’d have wiped the floor with your face aside, I decided to play nice. He told me to prove I was me, but, really, how does one prove they are who they say they are?”

“So, what did you do?” Zander asked, waiting for me to continue.

“I did something I’d never done before. I gave up. I dropped to my knees, and I told your father that I surrender, and he knew it was me. After that, we spent hours, just taking in the most amazing creatures we’d ever laid eyes on. You guys were tiny and perfect. Then the realization came that the realm was rejecting Kahleena, and our world crashed down around us.”

“That was when you gathered the fae and led them to the tree. It accepted her, but then war came to Faery, and we were sent away to be protected,” Cade added, exhaling slowly.

“I need you to tell me what happened in the City of Gods, with Kahleena and the mansion,” I whispered, barely loud enough to be heard in the room’s silence.

Zander exhaled a ragged puff of air, and adjusted Dristan in his arms. “Destiny feared that Kahleena would be discovered, and stolen. The mansion hadn’t been opened, or used in over one thousand years, so she had been told. No one knew what waited within it, either. Like Faery and the human world, time moves differently in the City of Gods, and even more so in the mansion. For us, time was sliding by while we learned to fight, spent endless hours studying whatever Destiny wanted us to learn, and—” Zander paused, and Cade chuckled.

“Fuck, Zander. We learned to fuck gods and make them beg us for more.” He snorted, shaking his head while Zander peered down at Dristan. “He doesn’t understand a word we’re saying, asshole.”

“Obviously, dickwad.” Zander absently rocked his brother. “But, yeah, it was wild and shit happened. Add in the parties and the girls, and we fucked up. We let Kahleena down and never apologized to her for it.” He looked up, offering us a pained, apologetic stare.

“Destiny said she checked on her a few times a week,” Ryder corrected, thinning his gaze when the boys slowly shook their heads.

“I know we checked on her a couple of times, but time moves differently there. Shit, time moves differently everywhere we go. Faery is on one timetable, the City of Gods is on another, and then the mansion is on yet another. The mansion, though, we had no idea it was different. At least, not until we started noticing changes in Kahleena. She was reserved and didn’t act as she had when she entered that place. Plus, I spent a lot of time with Aphrodite, and she spun the time, which made it more difficult to decipher how long anything was or lasted.”

“You fucked Aphrodite?” Ryder smirked, and his eyes were bright with some kind of strange fatherly pride.

“She’s a needy thing. I don’t suggest anyone fall between her thighs unless they are prepared to end up ensnared there. When Spyder showed up in the City of Gods, he at least waited until we were done before asking where Kahleena was. Though, I could have done without his pointers.” Zander turned to fully face Ryder. “What the hell is a ladder, anyway? He said I should get one, but I don’t really see how a ladder would make sense—”

Ryder went from barely managing to hold back his amusement to being bent forward, laughing so hard I started to worry he’d pass out. “I’ll have him show you,” my husband said between breaths. I placed my palm over my lips, as if I could physically hold back the laughter. Zander looked between us, and then frowned when he realized we weren’t going to explain.

“Thanks. But, yeah, Spyder freaked the fuck out when I told him where Kahleena was. He left and pulled Destiny from some orgy Ares was hosting to demand she explain what she’d done. That was when we found out that one year in the City of Gods could be anywhere up to a few hundred years within the mansion but that there really wasn’t any way to track it.”

Blinking slowly, I creased my brow. “Destiny said that Spyder was with Kahleena for some time, it that correct? I swear, if she lied to me, I’ll carve her face with god bolts and make sure she feels every slice.”

Cade cursed, sliding his palm over his face. “It’s true that he went in to get Kahleena. Destiny wasn’t with us when they exited through. Kahleena was changed, and half-mad by the time she escaped the mansion with Spyder. They’d both changed. As if the mansion had altered their minds, and how they functioned or some shit? I don’t know. It wasn’t like they’d been gone an excessively long amount of time. In fact, only three years had passed, but he looked way different when he exited that place. Wild, with savagery and madness burning in his eyes . . . fucking hell, it made me almost shit myself. He had shadows leaking from his eyes and from his mouth when he spoke.” I felt my forehead creasing at his admission of only three years. How many years had it been for them? How many of those years had Kahleena been in trouble within the mansion without having known it?

“She’d gone mad,” Cade said. “She spoke, sure, but nothing she said made any sense. It was just gibberish. Once Spyder got himself under control, he explained that it wasn’t nonsense. She was just speaking in some strange, or dead language. Apparently, she’d picked up a few of them while she’d been inside.”

“Did he say how long he thought that was?” Ryder inquired, squeezing me tighter.

Cade rubbed the back of his neck and glanced to his brother before admitting, “By his estimation, she was probably inside the dimension for close to one thousand years, maybe longer.”

I chanced a peek at Ryder to gauge his response, only to find him doing the same to me. Swallowing the choice of cuss words I’d wanted to spit out, I opened my mouth, and then snapped it closed.

“Fuck,” Ryder whispered, dragging his hand over his face.

“Spyder has some explaining to do.” I rose, but Ryder placed a hand on my leg. “We need to ask if he can make sense of some of the stuff in those notebooks. I need to know what she meant by them.”

“No.” He shook his head before raking his fingers through his hair. “It’s late, and tomorrow is the winter celebration. We can’t afford to show weakness, and I doubt that whatever Spyder has to tell us will allow us to proceed in such a manner. Once we’ve conducted the lighting of the candles and hung the wreath, we’ll speak to Spyder in the war room.”

“He’s right,” Zander concurred, and then he startled when he realized his brother was no longer sleeping soundly in his arms. “That’s fucking freaky. Did we do that shit?”

I smirked at finding Dristan in his father’s arms. “Yes, and it wasn’t easy keeping you slippery suckers in your nursery. On stormy nights, all three of you would vanish from your nursery and hide in our bed between your father and me. But your father is right, it is late, and we could all use some sleep before tomorrow,” I murmured, standing to kiss their foreheads, uncaring if they found it awkward. I’d missed most of their lives, and I’d be damned if I didn’t cherish every moment with them. “Come, Fairy. Your queen wishes for you to hold her. So put your prince into his bassinet and come to bed.”

---