XXI · It All Comes Down to a Witch's Garden

🎧 Back to Black by Amy Winehouse

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"Seraphina told me that my father has enemies in the Seven Hell Courts. Did he take you there when he made those enemies?" I sucked on my cheeks anxiously.

He pressed his lips together, "To his credit, he had transmigrated as a demon then, but the thing with the transmigration, at least what happened to him, is that the core of his soul remained as what he truly was in the very beginning, that is, a fae, a very, very strong fae, from an even stronger house for a matter of fact. However, not just that, as his core began to assimilate the power and essence of everything he became, he became… something else," his eyes seemed far away when he said that, and when they turned to meet mine, they were silver, consumingly so. "That probably played a part."

"Played a part?" I breath with a struggle under his eyes. "In what?"

"Birthing a void dweller," he whispered, "in the making of you."

For some reason, my eyes went to Sera, and there was a text on her.

[Kairos is right, it did play a part on it.]

"Did Sera say something?" His voice was curious.

"She confirmed what you just suggested. That dad's… change did play a part on him having me, and on me being what I am," closing my eyes frustrated, I sighed. "But that still doesn't explains how I'm… this."

"Maybe the artifact knows something else?" He suggested.

"Wait," I remembered something, eyes widening, "my dad didn't get to the human realm 26 years ago, Dorian, he got there 23 years ago. That was something Sera told me when I met her, damn it, and I totally forgot. Which means, I left Auradoom at 1 year old."

Frowning softly, he bit his bottom lip, "Then where did he stay with you, because his signature vanished from Auradoom. Believe me, I know that because I tried going after him, since the bastard left me with a simple message and then disappeared in a portal. But he was nowhere I could find, nowhere I could go at least, but he couldn't have been in the places I could not get to, because he would be in constant danger in those. Since the reason I couldn't be in them, was because of him."

"Sera, where did my day stayed before going to the human realm?"

[Hyacinth Garden.]

"Shit," I cursed, clenching my jaw with annoyance.

"I don't think Shit is a place he would go to, because that's in Hell."

"Well, it's worse than shit then," I groaned.

"Where did he stay?"

I inhaled deeply, dreading what was going to say about this, even though I already know in my bones what it is, "The Garden."

His eyes narrowed, going ruby, "As in Hyacinth Garden?" When I nodded, his eyes darkened, and I just knew he was going to bring that up to me. "I know you don't want to go there, or to talk about it, cherryling, but I think that, of we want to understand what happened and to get answers as to why your father left to the human world alone and not with his mate, we need to know just who his mate was. For that, we need to know where she was from, where your mother's from."

Avoiding his eyes, I clenched my jaw, "I don't want to know her."

Taking a deep breath, he brought both his hands to cup my face and make me look at him, and fuck, when I saw the bluest baby blue of his eyes it made me want to cry, and I'm not a crier. But it's not like he didn't see me cry twice already. I don't want to cry because of my mother, not again, I'm past that, it already hurt more than it should.

"I know that isn't true," he whispered, painfully kind in his words, "I know that deep down, there's a part of you that is craving to know who she was, why she left you alone with your dad in the human world, and that wonders how different your life would have been had you been raised by them both. Possibly even wondering if he would have stayed alive had she been there, since mates are unphantomably stronger together."

Lips shaking softly, I closed my eyes, holding onto the warmth of his gloved hands, the warmth of his body, "You think my mother might be from Hyacinth Garden?" My voice was nearly a whisper.

"I do," he brought me closer.

"But you said there's only one… one angry crazy witch in there."

After a pause, he said, "As far as I know. I only went there once."

Swallowing, I opened my eyes, my gaze crashing against his that're now back to silver, "But you don't think she's a nobody, do you?"

"A nobody wouldn't mate your dad at the peak of his transcendental power, cherryling," Dorian's words were careful. "I don't have a mate, and neither do I know if it's possible for me to have it, since I was… created by headmaster Morgan with the help of the artifact of life. But the headmaster did make me study about mating bonds, so, I do know that mates gotta be in a equal footing of ppwer in some way, they can't overwhelmed the other by being insanely stronger."

"The mating bond is all about balance, cherryling, about being with someone, who, in a sense, mirrors yourself. Because, you will cancel each other's powers, each other's lethal traits, as a mate cannot harm the other. The strongest you are, the stronger the mating bond will be on both parts. Besides," his eyes went black, "even if they are far apart, a mate can feel if their twin heart is dead, and some kinds can also share emotions and all that they feel through the bond, such as pain and… well, love and everything."

His words made me feel as if a light bulb had been turned on over my head, "That's why you want know who my mother is," I exclaimed. "You find hard to believe my dad is really dead, like you said, and you want to get the confirmation or the denial from his mate."

Dorian sucked on his cheeks, "But what if he isn't dead?"

"I don't want to think about it, it'll give me hope, that's dangerous. If I start hoping that my dad isn't dead, but it turns out that he really did die, I'll break all over again, and I… I can't take that agony again, Dorian."

"I understand, cherryling, but we need a confirmation," he sighed.

Swallowing hard, I sighed back, "Sera, where's my mother from?" I closed my eyes, counting to ten mentally, before gathering the courage to look at the bracelet in my right wrist.

[Hyacinth Garden.]

A chill ran down my spine, "Sera said mom's from the Garden."

"So, my master spent three years away in Hyacinth Garden, where he was with his mate, a mate who is from there, and where they had you, as you were also born in there. However, they lived with you, let's say happily, for one year, before my master had to run away from Auradoom dimension, leaving his mate behind with two of his precious artifacts, while he took three with him to the human realm, where he stayed hidden away with you."

He tilted his head and kept going, "He must have been hiding there to run from something, from someone. So much, that when he got there with you, in your 1-year-old toddler self, probably the first thing he did was build this place you call Vault of Secrets, to bind and hide the three artifacts he had with him: Sera, Cora, and Pollux. Otherwise, they could get to him by tracking the energy of the artifacts, which does confirms that he was running from something dangerous."

"Dangerous enough to be a threat to him, consequently to you, as you were just a defenseless toddler then. But for my master to run, without the mate he tried so hard to find, something must have gone bad, wrong. In the worse of the hypothesis, she could have…" he swallowed, pausing as his eyes wandered in mine, "died in a conflict with whatever got to them in Hyacinth Garden, to make him run out of the dimension, cherryling."

I felt nauseous, "My dad never talked about her as if she had died."

"I just ran around the possibility, I don't think she died," he purred. "But that brings us to what could have happened. Which is," as he tilted his head, his hair followed sensually, "something extremely dangerous attacked them, and I say extremely dangerous because Hyacinth Garden is known as an impenetrabile fortress, even more so than the Nightcrawler Tower, and for my master to run from that safe and impenetrabile place, something got to have caught up to him, to them both."

"And since they has a baby daughter there, which was already a red flag, given how many people would go after your neck just for being their daughter, and mates defend their babies with their own neck on the line and without a care in the world, they definitely fought the threat. However, one of them had to be with you. So, maybe," he paused for second, caressing my cheeks.

I felt sicker, "Maybe…?"

"Maybe, your mother didn't go with you, not because she did not want to, but because when my master set Sera up to take you out of there, she couldn't get to you on time, because she was fighting the threat. She was the one holding it back so he could get out of there with you on time. Because protecting you was more important than anything," he pressed his forehead on mine, inhaling me, "given how unique and special you are."

But that… that would mean I… no. That can't be. "No, that… no."

"Cherryling," he whispered, and just like before, I felt his calling in my soul, I felt his magnetic body bringing me further to him, and as he kept cupping my cheek with his left gloved hand, the right one slid to my waist, his touch growing possessive, pressing me against him, his warmth igniting my own from the inside out, and as he nuzzled his nose on mine, I felt out of breath, "there's no record of a void dweller like you," he breathed.

Even keeping my eyes slightly open was a struggle, "How… so?"

"The only records existent of void dwellers, are animals or beasts. Some dared to experiment on void dwellers, to try stealing the fragments of the soul of those irrational beasts of the void that nearly never appeared in our world, and put them on people, to try making a rational void dweller, a person, but all that occasioned was bloodbath, and the death of those daring suicidal freaks who tried to do that, because their blood and their bite had the same consequence that you know as you killed my copycat."

Brushing his lips against mine, he went on, "The last time all that happened was seven centuries ago, before I was even born, it was monstrous and a beast, it caused a genocide before they managed to kill it. Dangerous in the highest rank a monster could possibly be, it took 40 people to kill it, the strongest beings in all Auradoom together, and it made them sweat, it was a fight that lasted nine days, and it turned the lande where the battle took place into a wasteland."

"Did… did my dad take part in it?"

"My master and the Witch of the West were two of them, together with the headmaster of the tower, the seven Princes of Hell, the Archbishop of the Underwater Temple, the Empress of the Storm Empire, the strongest beings of all the main races, the ones you were foolishly offered to be part of by Sera, and some other rogue folk of extraordinary power. But what's suspicious, is that out of all of them, only your father has supposedly passed, all the others are still alive."

"Mmmhm, very suspicious," I whispered, ending the distance that was between us and slamming my lips on his, done with the teasing.