Nym's Arc

Chapter 36 of 41

They flew until dark, then landed to rest one final night before the mountain. Titus built a fire inside a ring of stone slabs. The pegasus grazed at the edge of the light, its healed wing folded clean. Nym sat close to the flames and poked the coals with a stick. Tomorrow they would reach the arch. Tonight she wanted an answer she had never dared ask her mother. She lifted her hand. White light flickered from her fingers and made small figures dance in the fire. A horse. A tower. A man she had never seen. She watched the shapes twist and fall apart in the smoke. Then she let her hand drop and looked at Drasila across the flames. "You never speak of my father," she said. "I don't even know his name." Drasila went still. The white streak in her dark hair caught the firelight. For a long moment she only watched her daughter. Titus rose quietly and moved to the pegasus, leaving them alone. "He was Fae," Drasila said at last. "A prince of Zeroth. The whistle was his gift to me before our last meeting, though he never thought it was goodbye." She pressed her hands together, hiding the rune marks. "I loved him. More than the Keepers ever let me love anything." Nym leaned forward. "Then why did you leave him?" "Because I was made to seal Zarool, and that was my whole purpose." Drasila's voice stayed low. "I went to the stone ring to lock the evil away. I did not know the door would take me too." She looked at the fire. "I never told him I carried you. I left his kingdom before I knew myself." "He doesn't know I exist," Nym said. "No." Drasila's pale eyes met hers. "And there is more. He was promised to a princess. A match his father arranged before I ever came. We had no future, even without the war." She swallowed. "So I let him go. I meant to seal the dark and return. Instead I vanished for three hundred years." Nym's throat tightened. "Is he alive?" "Fae live long, and Zeroth is magical the magic slows time.” Drasila said. "He may still rule in Zeroth. He may not remember me at all, or he won’t even be there.” Nym stared into the coals. Tomorrow the arch would open with her light. Beyond it lay her father's kingdom. She had thought she traveled only to practice her power. Now she knew a living father might wait past that mountain, a father who had never heard her name. "Then I'll find him," Nym said. "Whatever he chose. I want to see his face or at least touch his grave stone if he doesn’t live." Drasila reached across the fire and took her hand. "Then we open the arch together." She held on tight. "But be ready, Nym. He may turn you and I away." Nym looked toward the dark mountain. The question that had haunted her whole life had shifted. She no longer wondered who her father was. She wondered whether he would want her and if he even lived.