Nym's Arc

Chapter 41 of 41

Cowan led them inside without answering the question in his eyes. The stone guards followed at a distance. He walked Nym, Drasila, and Titus through halls wrapped in purple ivy, past doors that glowed faint with runes. He gave them rooms. He gave them food. He spoke of the journey and the mountain, but never of Nym's black hair or the marks on her skin. She waited for him to ask. He did not. He seated them at a long table that evening. Drasila's hair neatly tied up. The white streak caught the candlelight. She and Cowan sat close and only looked at each other. Three hundred years pressed between them and neither wanted to break it. Nym stayed at the far end and kept quiet. She would not interrupt what her mother had waited so long to have. Titus sat beside her. He nudged her hand under the table. "He has to be told," he whispered. Nym knew it. Every hour Cowan did not know only made the telling harder. But it was not hers to say. Drasila seemed to hear the silence too. She turned from Cowan and looked down the table at her daughter. Her pale blue eyes softened. She lifted her hand and called across the candles. "Nym. Come here." Nym rose and walked to them. Her boots sounded loud on the stone. She stopped beside her mother's chair. Drasila took Nym's hand. Then she reached for Cowan's, spread open on the table, and pressed the two hands together between her own marked palms. She held Cowan's eyes. "She is yours, Cowan. I carried her after I left. I never told you. I could not because I did not even know myself." Cowan went still. His fingers lay in Nym's, and he did not pull them back. He looked from Drasila to the girl at the end of his blood. His eyes moved over the black hair again, the runes, and this time Nym saw understanding replace the doubt. "A daughter," he said. His voice broke on the word. "Your daughter," Drasila said. Cowan's hand closed around Nym's. His brown wings shifted at his back. A tear slid past the scar on his eye. "I have a child," he whispered. "All these years, and I have a child." Nym could not speak. She had crossed a mountain to be seen. Now her father held her hand and could not look away. But his face changed as he studied her. Wonder gave way to fear. "You carry the light," he said slowly. "Both of you carry it. That is why you came." He looked at Drasila. "You did not cross the mountain only to find me. You mean to face Zarool again." The table went silent. The truth was out, and now Cowan knew the price it might cost his daughter.