Portal: A Nina Decker Novel Part 8

Dani calmly said, "Honey, I don't want to argue but just take a look around. You saw all the fae lords of the kingdom in all their power. And Princess A'Lona defied the lot of them. Why? Out of a whim? There has to be more to it than that. Does your version of events really add up?"

"You don't know what you're talking about." I balled up my fists. I didn't want to admit it but Dani had a point. All my life I'd only ever been with my dad. I'd seen the terrible cost to him. For the past ten years I'd watched him slip slowly away. The brilliant, funny, strong man who had raised me had become frail, helpless with a child's mind. And that was my mother's fault.

I still believed that. I had to. But standing there in Nightfall it was impossible to ignore the other side of the story. I'd just seen with my own eyes what my mother had given up. In my mind I couldn't deny it. But my heart wasn't ready. There was still a lifetime of anger and resentment inside me and I felt it all well up. If I didn't get away soon I'd start throwing things.

She shrugged. "Maybe not."

"Is it clear?" I asked.

Dani popped the window open and looked around. "You're golden."

She helped lower me down to the ground on the other side. I'd calmed down a little bit. "Dani, I'm sorry I snapped at you-"

"No worries. I understand you've had it rough."

The tower was easy to spot. There were no guards about. But then again there was still the wall crowned with silver and iron. Even if I had free run of the palace I was still largely a prisoner here.

"Do you know how you're getting past the guard at the tower?" Dani asked.

I had to admit that I didn't. Even if there were no guards on patrol there had to be one watching over Severin.

"Do you have any advice?"

"Just the LA standard, fake it until you make it."

I hiked up my flowing skirts and headed towards the tower. Every step my heart beat faster. What would I say to Severin? What would he say to me?

I saw many brownie servants running this way and that across the palace. None of them stopped me or even questioned me as I reached the tower. That's when I met one lone guard at the tower door. He was in half armor. He had a breast and back plate on and leg guards but her wore no helmet or arm defences.

"I demand to see the prisoner," I said trying to sound as regal as possible.

The guard sputtered for a little. Dani's advice was working. This fellow was used to being the authority figure. I turned it up a notch.

"Don't make me fetch my grandfather, open the door," I said between clenched teeth.

That jolted him into action.

Inside a spiral staircase wound up the center of the tower. I followed the guard up several floors until he brought me to the cells. Severin was the only prisoner. He sat chained to the stone wall with silver. He was naked.

I briefly thought about releasing him. I had the guard shaking. He might open the cell. But then I remembered the wall of iron and silver that ringed the palace and the town. I might have bluffed this one, but there were hundreds more who weren't as gullible. If I let Severin out he'd have nowhere to run. He'd be trapped in here with a bunch of people who had reason to hate him. And I'd be trapped right along with him.

"Leave us," I told the guard. My voice was quaking. My resolve slackened. I really didn't want to hear anymore. But I had to.

The guard left us alone despite my wavering confidence. After the door shut behind me I approached the cell.

Severin glanced up.

"Look at you, a faery princess," he said while standing up. My eyes drank in his form. I wanted him next to me more than ever.

"I see they've been treating you well," Severin said. His smile was wide. Ordinarily that smile lit up my soul. But now it just made my heart ache.

"Is it true? About your mate?" I asked him.

The smile dropped. His face became very serious.

"Shana," he said softly. "So they told you."

"I heard their story. Now I want to hear your side," I said.

"What do you want to hear? I loved her and she died. That's all the story I care about," he said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

He didn't answer at once. "You wouldn't have let me get so close to you had you known," he said. "You wouldn't have let me come along. I needed you to trust me."

"Why are you saying this to me?" I demanded.

"Nina you can't be this naive. Our kind has been at war with each other for centuries and I just happen to fall in love with Wolfstriker's granddaughter? I only got close to you so I could get revenge on the man who killed my mate."

Tears welled in my eyes. I tried to stop them but there was no point. I had suspected this betrayal but it still cut deep.

"I don't want to believe it."

"Well, do. I'm Severin the betrayer, Severin the scoundrel, Severin the villain. I did it all just to get back at the man who killed my mate!"

"You're lying."

"Look in my eyes and tell me if you see any lie."

I didn't look. Instead I ran out of there. I flew past the guard and fled back to my chambers as fast as I could like a coward. I tried to pull myself together as I walked back towards my room but it was no use. I was falling to pieces. I reached the open window. A hand reached down for me and I took it. I wiped the tears from my face as I climbed back into my chambers. But the person who pulled me back into my room wasn't Dani.

It was my mother.

Chapter 12.

I pulled away from her grasp. "What are you doing here?"

"I had to see you," she said.

"Where's Dani?"

"She outside distracting the guards," my mother answered.

I heard voices out in the hall. There was a lot of laughing.

"Is she in danger?"

"Only her reputation and modesty. And that girl doesn't place much value on either."

Just a few days ago I would have stormed out of the room. Or I would have grabbed the nearest knife and held it to my mother's throat. I would have been in a rage about Dani leaving me here with her. But my encounter with Severin had left me emotionally drained. I was utterly spent. I sat down on the four poster bed while my mother paced around.

"You wanted to talk to me, so talk already," I said.

"You should have stayed away. Why did you come here?" she asked me.

"To get my father back," I said. "And where is he by the way?"

"Jason is safe."

I laughed bitterly. "With you? Here?"

"Yes, he is safe with me."

"He's dying because of you!" I yelled.

My mother fixed me with a firm gaze. "They would have killed him if he'd stayed on Earth."

I remembered how all this had started. I had come home from work to find my father unconscious after being attacked by a vicious pixie. A few days later something had come through the pond in our garden, the one I had made by accident when I buried one of my mother's gifts in the garden. That pond had been a portal to Nightfall. I hadn't realized how dangerous that was until a pair of hands reached out of the water, grabbed me by the neck and tried to drown me.

"Who sent the pixie?" I asked.

"Someone in the palace. I haven't found out who yet," she answered.

"Where is da?"

"He's in a brownie village far from here. They'll never find him."

"I want to see him."

She laughed. "That's problematic seeing as you are stuck here in the palace. You want me to take you to him. I'll just have my father arrange a nice little outing. What do you think he'll do to Jason?"

"Why couldn't you leave us alone?" I demanded. "We were fine without you."

That hurt her. I saw her face break. It was the first time I'd ever seen her upset.

"I know. That's why I left, they said they'd leave you alone. They said all would be forgiven."

She was talking about the treaty she had broken. What Dani said about my father started to nag at me.

"They said they would leave you and Jason alone if I went back to Nightfall and fulfilled my duties as princess. So I went. And it was the hardest thing I ever did. I never told you the truth and I made Jason promise to never tell you either. Because we both knew you would never be safe if you found out about Nightfall. And now you're here and in the middle of this cesspool."

She made it sound so n.o.ble, what she did all those years ago. I wanted to throw it back in her face. But I held back. I was still tired and my mother was more worked up than I had ever seen her before. She was so desperate and troubled. After so many years as a nurse, my instincts went against my nature to harm someone who was clearly suffering. Then I thought about what Dani had told me. I was still angry but I had more questions.

"Why did you do it?" I asked. I couldn't think of any other way to put the question.

My mother understood and she composed herself. "I'll tell you. I've always wanted to tell you."

She smoothed out her dress and sat next to me. She tried to hold my hand but I pulled it away.

"N'Lina you may think you know what it is to grow up in a house without love, but you really don't," she said. "You know how my father came to the throne?"

"He overthrew the king. Though according to Dani no one objected that much," I answered.

"Oh there were people who objected quite vigorously. They were the former king's immediate family including his only daughter, Princess A'Rissa. My father felt he needed to cement his position so he forced Princess A'Rissa to marry him."

"Lady Wolfstriker? Your mother?" I asked. I had felt more malice coming from the queen than from anyone else at court. Maybe it wasn't just directed at me.

"Yes. She married the man who deposed and killed her father. And she has hated him ever since. He on the other hand never saw her as more than a political tool. That is the house I was born into. That is the family I grew up with, both parents at war with each other."

"At least they were both there," I muttered. The words just slipped out. Even as I said them I regretted them.

"But they weren't there," my mother said. "Neither of them was. I was never a daughter to them. At first my mother doted on me. We did everything together. But that was so I would be her p.a.w.n to use against my father. She thought she could hurt him that way. But my father kept me at arm's length my whole life. He's never shown me the least bit of affection."

"Why?" I asked.

"To protect himself. You can't be hurt if you don't care. When my mother realized this she stopped taking an interest in me. And so I was left with no mother or father even though they were both right there and I saw them every day. I swore to myself if I ever had a child of my own, she would know a parent's love. Then my father said I was to marry Tristan Coldiron."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"At first I thought it might be for the best. After all I'd be away from my family. I knew Linus Coldiron fiercely loved his family. I thought maybe I could be accepted into that family. I was formerly introduced to Tristan at a ball here at the Palace. He was young and das.h.i.+ng. Handsome. We danced and we spoke about the important things, the political things, but we didn't share much that was personal. By the end of the dance I liked Tristan, I thought I might love him in time. Then before the a.s.sembled guests we kissed but I felt nothing."

In my head I could picture the scene as she described it. I asked her, "What happened then?"

"I had one friend at court, D'Aniela's mother. After the ball we went to Earth and traveled together. According to the treaty I was going to spend half my time there after I was married. At first it was a dreary place that was full of metal and iron. We both got sick just walking around the streets of Chicago and New York. I began to lose all hope of finding any happiness in Nightfall or on Earth. I fell into such a depression I made a vow never to have any children. I wouldn't submit a child to the kind of life I saw lay out before me."

My jaw and stomach clenched at her words, at the despair I heard in them. My mother went on.

"We sought out the small pockets of fae who were still living on Earth. Some were eccentrics or stubborn fools who had refused to leave ages ago. Others had fled Nightfall for various reasons. Some were turncoats who had fought alongside the wolves. We avoided those fae for obvious reasons. We found a friendly group living in Ireland, in the village of Gailmadoon. They had learned to cope with the human's modern world and provided us with elixirs and potions that eased our sick bellies. That's when we met Dani's father, Seamus Moran. He was an alchemist who was the village apothecary. His potions helped ease our ills. But I was still depressed. That's also where I met your father."

"Da?" I asked. "What was he doing there?"

"Your father had a lot of pursuits as a young man, the one he was most keen on was paranormal researcher. He'd been looking for faeries his entire life and had wandered into the village convinced he'd found them. The villagers tried to drive him away with various tricks and pranks. They were having a fun time at your father's expense. I didn't join in. I thought Jason Decker a handsome man."

"He still is," I cut in.

"He most certainly still is," said my mother. She grasped my hand and this time I didn't pull it back.

"But I couldn't think much about him. My life was still closing in on me. I took long lonely walks out on the heather. I wandered about not caring if I got lost. That's where Jason found me that one day. I was walking through the mists. I must have been crying because he wiped the tears away from my cheek. He asked what was wrong. I told him nothing. He said I was a pretty bad liar. I laughed for the first time in weeks. We talked some more as we wandered the mists together. The conversation wasn't about anything important but that didn't matter. With Tristan I talked about the weighty subjects and at the end I felt more distant from him then when I started. With Jason we talked about nonsense and I felt closer to him than any man before or since. At the end he told me I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. As we exited the mists I heard him gasp. It was then I realized that my glamor had worn off. I stood there not in human guise but in my fae form. At first he was excited. But when I begged him to keep my secret he agreed. He'd been searching his whole life for proof of faeries. But when he saw it would hurt me to expose our kind, he swore to keep our secret. Then he kissed me." She sighed, squeezing my hand tighter.

"I still remember that kiss after all these years. It was the second most powerful moment of my life, a moment that still shakes me to my core. So that's why, when the time came, I didn't return to Nightfall. I went with Jason to Vancouver and became his wife. I knew what falling in love meant, we both did. Not only would it throw two people into chaos but there was danger for Jason. He swore he could hold off becoming fae struck using remedies and spells he'd learned. But we both knew he could only delay the effects for so long. It was a terrible price but in the end it was one we both paid. "

She gently rubbed my arm.