"You never answered me." My mother said, her words still charged with anger. "Is the baby a vampire?"
I couldn't contain the anger that boiled up inside me anymore, and I unleashed it, letting it flood over her like the water we'd just escaped.
"It's your grandchild!" I screamed. "Who cares if it is a vampire? I'm sad that you hate them that much that you have to take it out on an unborn child because of your hunter shit or whatever, but I don't care!"
I was so angry that my fists balled at my sides.
Gavril tried to step between us, but my mother shoved him away.
This time she looked more concerned than angry.
"Is that what you really think of me? That I could shun my own grandchild just because it’s a vampire?"
"Or it could be a demon, or a witch, or a mermaid." I mumbled, my anger simmering.
The look on my mother's face was priceless.
If I wasn't so committed to being upset, I would have broken down laughing at how white her skin had gone.
"Scarlett, I don't think that you understand the severity of what's going on. Do you even understand what you are?"
Before I had time to even contemplate what she had asked me there was a rumbling of rock gliding against rock and my eyes shifted to the dead end behind us. A series of rocks spiked stabbed out of the wall, and it started moving closer to us.
"This is touching and all," Gavril rushed us. "But if we want to live to find out what the baby is, we need to run, now!"
The wall picked up speed, going from a crawl to near sprint speed.
Shit. The universe really couldn't give me a single break.
And this time I wasn't surprised in the slightest.
We all ran as fast as I could, and I could honestly say that my lungs were just as shocked as my legs at the sudden cardio.
" Holy shit, Holy shit!" I screamed as we ran.
The spikes were so close that all it would have taken was one off step for us to all go spiraling to our deaths.
Up ahead there was an opening that was filled with light. I didn’t care where it led, I was going to throw myself into it like there was no tomorrow. Because if I didn’t, there wouldn’t be one for me.
The doorway emerged and I jumped into it. The others followed me through just in time, and the spiked wall slammed to a halt in the doorway.
I didn’t even have time to catch my breath before my watch beeped reminding me that we were running out of time.
I pushed myself to my feet and examined the room around us. It was filled with mystically shimmering gold. Treasure chests filled with it littered the room, and when I took a step it was like trudging through a sea of gold coins.
But it wasn’t the gold that caught my eye, or even its mystical shimmer. It was the thing that lay in the middle— a silver sword.
I didn’t know a single thing about swords, but I knew that one called to me.
Its handle held three red jewels that shone almost as much as the gold did.
“What is that?” I asked, instinctually walking to the middle of the room and reaching toward it.
My mother slapped my hand away, pulling me from my trance.
“It’s the sword of truth, and it’s mine.” She smirked.
With both hands she grasped the swords handle tightly and pulled it from the ground that it was deeply embedded in. It glowed brightly as she held it in her hands.
The watch beeped again.
“So this is it? This is what you needed us to come back for? What god locked away?” I was both over– and underwhelmed.
“Whatever it is, we need to go. Now.” Colt’s voice was faint, and his complexion was pale.
He looked like he only had a few seconds left in him.
I quickly grabbed my mother’s hand with one hand and Colt’s with the other. My mother grasped the sword with her other hand and Gavril laid his on top of hers.
“We’re ready Colt.”
Colt forced a faint smile.
There was a rush of wind and suddenly I was back in the castle.
“We did it.” I smiled, staring at Colt across from the bed.
Colt’s eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out, his body crumpling to the ground.
There was a flash of light and suddenly my sickly mother wasn’t lying in the bed anymore. Instead the younger version of my mother stood in front of me, her hair blowing in the breeze.
She was dressed differently too.
Instead of her plain clothes, she wore a woman's metal suit of armor and held the gleaming sword in her hand.
I stood in awe, staring up at her when suddenly a pair of glimmering wings that were as white as snow spiraled from her back and stretched out wide, creating such a powerful wind that it blew us all to the ground.
My jaw hung open at the sight.
“I told you, you didn’t understand who you really are.” She smiled.
Chapter 22
I was frozen by my own shock. So frozen, in fact, that I didn't even notice that Gavril had appeared too.
Mostly because my mother's damn wings were a showstopper.
"Wait a fucking minute!" Xander blurted out from the floor beside me. "You never said that your mom was an angel."
He laughed in disbelief, but all I could manage to force out of my mouth was a pathetic whimper disguised as an awkward laugh.
An angel? That wasn't possible.
Asher noticed Gavril first, scrambling to his feet just to throw himself back down on one knee out of respect.
"My king." He bowed his head.
"Ass kisser." My words were meant to come out as a mumble, but instead they came out as a full volume sentence.
Asher scowled at me over my shoulder, but Gavril smiled at the comment.
My mother crawled down from the bed, finally forgoing her overly majestic pose to help me up off the floor.
There were so many damn questions. So many things rushed through my mind that they all melted together like a low hum inside my head.
She pulled me up by my arm like it was effortless, and again I wasn't used to my mother being so strong.
Asher took another look in my mother's direction and dropped to his knees again.
"Verena." He said her name like it was golden.
I squinted my eyes at the foreign word and shifted my glance to her. One look and I knew that she'd been using a fake one for my entire life.
"Do I even know anything about you?" I asked, the feeling of betrayal creeping up slowly in my chest.
She reached out for me, but I took a step back and a look of hurt spread across her face.
"Honey, you're emotional. Probably because of the p–"
"Pretty exhausting mission!" I yelled overtop of her.
Finn and Xander both looked up from checking to make sure Colt was okay to look at me strangely.
I laughed far too loudly and pulled my mother into the hallway, being sure to close the door behind us.
She raised a brow knowingly.
It was still strange looking at such a young version of her, let alone the fucking wings strapped to her back.
"Those are the demon, the witch and the mermaid then." She nodded. "They're all yours?"
"More or less." The words fell from my lips so quickly that they bunched together. "And I'm not ready to tell them yet. The world up top is burning and it's all because of me. Now that we have Gavril, we can stop the governors and release the world from the spell–"