Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Ch. 69 - Fauna - Graves and Spirits

"Mom?" I turn and look at Lance, finding the top half of his face pale and his eyes gleaming. He seems more hurt by my revelation more so than I am.

For cycles, I've obtained no memory. For cycles, I've had more questions pop up with every answer someone gives me, and this...I remember how I escaped. I remember killing Eleanor and Charles and the words they each managed to spit out just before the last drops of life left them, and I buried their corpses in the ground, feeling bad that they'll forever be remembered as traitors and murderers rather than two people who were victims of Xaxias's tricks. The only way to save them was to kill them, and they made their death worth it.

They slipped me the pieces of information they knew I'd need.

Your mother is the key.

Sing. That was Charles's last choked word, and it didn't make sense as to why that was supposed to help until I had Dee translate it.

Then it was just a matter of putting the pieces together.

The Ginerva never talk about my parents, so I naturally assumed they were both dead. That seems to be the case, but somehow, for some reason, my mother still lives on in a way. In Melody.

I never met the beautiful horse before, but something clicked earlier. A single image of the horse and someone saying her name. I pinned the voice as Darius's on the walk over here. He looks just as perplexed, and his power is falling in waves around him. My own answers to his, feeling everything that's trying to work its way through his mind at the moment.

It's his horse, the stable boy made that clear earlier as I stared into my mother's eyes and tried not to get lost in them. His horse that he's known for however long, carrying the last part of my mother that Lance and I might have.

Gods the questions I want to ask her. How did she die? When did she die? Why will no one tell me what I really want to know? Where is dad? Is he truly dead too? Is he happy? Was he a good father? Why can't I remember him? Why can't I remember you? What's wrong with me? What did I do? Why would Charles and Eleanor send me to you? And how did they know where you were?

So many questions I need answers to, but first, everyone else has questions for me for once and though it's all too satisfying to see them confused and not understanding a single word, I have answers for them. Or, some, at least.

"How?" Mak asks, still staring disbelievingly at Melody.

"I don't know," I answer honestly.

Víđarr moves then, dragging a paw on the ground in the center of our little group. When Aracely brought Melody to Dawn, hoping to give Darius one last hope, Dawn saw an opportunity to do the same for her own children. She inserted a part of herself into the filly, knowing that her death would come before she could see her children grow.

"Holy shit," Alex breathes.

"So that's how Melody knew where to find us," Nilsa concludes. "Because Dawn was the only one who knew where we were hiding, so she was the only one who would know where to go."

"So was every death we've ever witnessed a lie then," Vanya vents, throwing her hands up in the air frustratingly.

"Please don't tell me that someone else we thought was dead is still alive," Rohana says to Melody. She doesn't get an answer, the horse is too focused on watching both Lance and Darius's faces.

Darius's face is still unreadable, as it always is when he's too deep in thought to portray emotion. Funny how I know what he's thinking when he's thinking it, or at least, the general idea of what's going through his mind. With Lance, it's just as easy as reading a book, though that's probably because he's my brother, and my mind just naturally puts the pieces of him together like a nine-piece puzzle. It's unsettling considering that anywhere aside from when our group is in a secluded room, he's wearing that mask that covers half of his face. How can I possibly read someone when all I can see are their eyes?