City Of The Damned (Darkly Devoted Series, Book 5)

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Melody!" Ian nearly jumped out of his chair in alarm. I had meant to watch from afar at first, but the fallen leaves cracked under my heels. Here. In the quiet shade of the South Garden, without the sound of the river, I had forgotten to conceal my movement. Now, he saw me, and the tender moment was shattered.

Fear. He was afraid of me.

It wasn't the kind of fear that I was used to seeing in strangers. No, he wasn't afraid that I would burn him alive. Rather, he was afraid of something quite different.

He was afraid I still thought of him as my son, that I wanted to embrace him as my child and make him one of us. As though I didn't know by now that he had spent the last eighteen years running away from his father and me.

I raised my hand for the boy to sit back down. Ian had a bandage wrapped around his entire neck, but I could tell the worst of it on the right side. I saw that his right arm was in a sling even though the staff had draped a jacket over his shoulders to conceal it. Ian used the wheelchair for support as he stood up because he was still weak from his wounds. As I studied him, he backed away and seemed to push the chair between us as though to use it as a buffer.

It wasn't unusual for people to flinch as they glazed into my pale eyes. However, I wished my long-lost son would greet me with an emotion other than fear. I would have preferred his anger or even his hatred. No, it seemed that the dread of this encounter dwarfed all those other emotions.

"I'm s-sorry," I started but didn't know if my words were any use. I should have left so he could return to enjoying the sight of the tangled vines and the chirping birds. He was practically cowering behind that wheelchair like a scared animal.

"I'm going to go," I looked away. "I didn't come to hurt you. A friend told me you were here."

"Wait!" Ian yelled as I started to turn. "Stay."

I tentatively took another look at him. He had a mass of tangled black hair like mine. Yet the way he furrowed his eyebrows and seemed to command the space around him, those gifts came from his father. I wondered if seeing what was different from oneself was human nature. When I looked at him, I saw so much of Blake. He was almost the spitting image of his father when we first met in this very forest.

The silence stretched on and on between us. Ian slowly, unsteadily, lowered himself back into the wheelchair. He took care not to bang his injured arm against the armrest. It was more than the neck wound and the arm. He looked frail, pale, and unhealthy. I had seen blurry pictures of him from Nivarrin, taken from a great distance. He had been emaciated back then, and now somehow, he looked a little better. He was still skinny, but at least he didn't look like a strong gust of wind could knock him over.

Ian ran his fingers through his inky-black hair. It was strange looking at him, and I tried not to stare. As I continued studying him, I also saw bits of myself. Maybe it was his lack of weight, but he seemed to have my sharp chin, my deathly pale skin, and even my widow's peak. His eyebrows were thick and wolfish like his father's, but they were a stark raven black.

There were brief glimmers of auburn red when the sunlight beat down on his dark hair. He had a bit of his grandfather Sebastian's coloring. That was something my husband never had. Blake would have been amused.

This boy here was a splitting image of the two of us, yet, he was a stranger to me.

The minutes ticked by, and Ian did not attempt to start a conversation.

It was starting to dawn on me that I was an unwanted guest in my own home.

"I'll come back another time," I offered in my most chipper nothing-is-wrong-at-all voice. "Rest. I'm happy you're home."