Page 9 of Returned to the Vissigroth
In the beginning, I would visit her shrine three or four times a cycle. That tapered off to three or four times a moon phase, but never less. I would sit at her shrine for hours and tell her about everything that was happening in Hoerst, a fight I had with Myccael, or a drought, anything. I never stopped. Not until… until Thalia returned to us. Too much had happened since, that I just hadn't had the time… or maybe I had been too much of a coward to go back there and tell her that she had been right, and I had been wrong.
From the moment we knew she was pregnant, Daphne had been convinced she was carrying a girl.The first seffy vissy the Fourteen Planets have ever seen, she said. And I indulged her. Because what was the harm when she was certain she was carrying a girl? I should have known better. I should have known that, despite the common knowledge that vissigroths only fathered males, my vissy was right. Knew better. Bound by the sacred bond between mother and child, she knew more than I ever did.
Unable to stop myself, I blurted out, "Daphne, you were right. So right. I'm sorry." Her expression mirrored only confusion. I looked down into her mesmerizing eyes—eyes I never thought I’d see again. They were as green as Hoerst in the spring, framed by a darker ring that made the brightness at their core almost otherworldly. Around the strange human pupils, faint golden tendrils branched outward, fracturing the intense hue like sunlight through leaves.
A dark thought entered me. "Do you know who Myccael is?" I had to clear my throat in between words; this situation was too unreal.
My gut twisted when her expression clouded, mirroring the same kind of melancholy she had experienced ever since Myccael's/Thalia's birth. The melancholy I knew that had killed her. Fear reached for my heart in an iron grip. I could not lose her again. Not ever again.
She started to fade after Myccael's birth. Claiming again and again that he wasn't her baby. That somebody had taken her baby girl. The pain was as sharp now as it had been then. Healers were called, as well as human seffies—midwives. All of them assured me that Daphne was just not herself right then because of the birth, that what they calledhormones, were playinghavocwith her system, distorting her reality. And fool me, believed them. Trusted them. As a result, I failed the one person I should have never failed. My mate.
Despite Daphne's claim that Myccael wasn't our son, she loved him. Took care of him as if he were her own. But so many times I caught her staring into nothingness that, in time, it seemed almost normal. She lived, she breathed, she cared for Myccael and me, she even laughed now and then, but I watched her soul slowly dying, and there was not a thing I could do about it. I hadnever felt that helpless in my entire life. I pleaded with her not to leave me, and she had only smiled, saying,I would never leave you.
Now I wondered if she came back to apologize to Myccael, for not loving him enough, for yearning for the baby girl she knew in her heart was taken from her. Was that why she was here?
"Do you know who Myccael is?" I carefully repeated my question, readying myself to tell her about Thalia
She shook her head. "I need to talk to him. He needs to stop the magrail." I wasn't sure what I had expected her to say, but not this. Beseechingly, she looked at me, "Will you help me?"
That question was easy. "I'll always help you, Daphne. Always."
He asked me if I wanted some water, and I declined, before I realized that I was, in fact, thirsty. My voice—was it my voice?—sounded so broken and dry, it shamed me. The male, the one who called himself my husband, moved so gently about the room, I wondered if he was used to living with ghosts. I watched his every movement, the way his broad frame filled the room, his large hands steady even as his long fingers trembled when he handed me the glass a servant brought. As if it were the most precious thing in the universe. I took it from him because he seemed so proud to present it. It tasted like nothing, which was a relief; a memory, or maybe just a longing, told me I hated strong flavors.
I drank the whole glass at once, knees pressed together, hands shaking so hard I nearly lost the grip. The male—Mallack—sat across from me, forearms braced on his knees in a posture of patience. His eyes were darker than I expected. All black, as black as the void of space. But not as cold or emotionless. Ney, not even a little. They shone like they had seen it all.From immense happiness to unimaginable heartbreak. It was those eyes that got to me the most. They filled my chest with… warmth? Zyn, that, but there was something else too. Something I couldn’t define.
Instead, I focused on his larger-than-life body. His shoulders were so wide, they diminished the generous inside of the cabin. His torso was naked, save for the leather strap over his shoulder that held his sword. The word for it came to me effortlessly: baldric—I hated how easily it came to me, when I didn't even know what my face looked like. The baldric held a sword he hadn’t taken off yet, and that should make me uncomfortable. Instead, it felt almost… homey.
I could see the defined lines of his muscles, each one standing out like a map on his skin. The taut curves of his biceps and triceps, the rippled valleys of his abs. So defined, they seemed to have been carved. Leather breeches stretched over the muscles of his legs and… ney, quickly I averted my gaze from the bulge in between. Very predominant because his legs were spread wide open.
I swallowed and tried to regain my composure, “Thank you,” I cleared my throat, holding out the empty glass. He reached for it, and my hand brushed his for a second—the touch was electric, almost painful. I jerked my fingers away and watched him flinch as if I’d hit him.
Another memory tried to surface. I battled to bring it forward, but it dissolved like smoke in the wind. “You said…” My throat clicked, and my voice still sounded all wrong to me. “You said I’m not Thalia?”
He held my gaze a long time. “You are Daphne. My mate. My wife.” The word tasted odd on his tongue, borrowed from a language not his own. “Thalia is our daughter.”
“Our daughter?” I repeated, the words blooming inside me with a cold, brittle terror. “I have a daughter?”
He nodded, and for a moment the marble mask cracked. There was so much sadness there, I had to look away.
I didn’t understand, “But why did they call me Thalia? The guards. The servants?” Everyone had called me by that name.
Mallack stood and paced, one hand running through his short obsidian hair, streaked with silver. His voice, when it came, was flat and nearly toneless. “It’s a too-long story, and you have been… away. Absent, for many rotations. There were lies told. Names switched. Our family was…” He trailed off, made a bitter sound, as if language itself had betrayed him.
I didn't reply. I didn't know what to say. I had a daughter? Shouldn't I at least remember that? For some time, the silence pressed against us, thick and full of all the things I did not know and that he seemed unable to tell me. I stared at my hands, hands that still looked like the hands of a stranger—a stranger I still wasn’t used to. I noticed a fine scar running along the top knuckle of my thumb. I rolled the skin between my teeth until I tasted copper. Had that always been there? Where did it come from? I felt like an alien in my own skin.
Mallack returned to his chair, folded his hands, and made himself smaller for me. “You must have questions. Ask.”
It sounded abrupt, but somehow, I knew that he didn’t mean it that way, that this was just the way he was.The way he was? Was it true, then, that he was my husband?
I tried to list them in my mind, but there were so many. I didn't know where to start. Finally, I just blurted, “Why do I remember nothing?”
An indescribable pain moved over his features, and I felt like I had slapped him. I flinched. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
He waved me off. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He rubbed his chin, “I just don’t know how to tell you all this. Any of this. What do you remember?”
The glass coffin and the golden light. The cave. I didn’t like those memories and shuddered.
“Vissigroth, we’re ready for takeoff,” came a disembodied voice through a flat, round thing on the table.A palmtop. The word came to me with such ease that anger sparked in my stomach. Why could I remember stupid things like this? When I didn’t remember the man who claimed to be my husband? Or the daughter, he also claimed we had?
