53. Aurelia

Chapter 53

Aurelia

S cythe drives our SUV quickly through the dark. I sit in the back with Savage, who holds Eugene, while Lyle sits in the middle, clutching my mother safe in his arms.

I hold her cool hand in mine, never taking my eye off her, trying to mark the fine lines of her face in my memory. She lets in a shaky, rattling inhale once every few minutes, and although I know she doesn't have very long, something in my heart knows the regina in her is holding out for this one last goodbye.

I've covered our car in several shields, and Scythe sent Marduk away in his car with a lock of Mum's hair to act as a decoy if anyone tries to sniff her out. Even so, I know my shields won't work to stop my father from finding her. We just have to hope that Xander's diversion keeps him occupied for long enough.

After some time that I can only guess at, Scythe drives into the carpark of a quiet beach, and this late into the night, our only company are a few sleepy seagulls who watch the gentle breaking waves just as intently as we do.

Xander, who'd been scouting above us for the drive, lands on the beach, his mighty black dragon form sitting on his haunches, and turning his great head to keep watch over the road. He looks like a great tower of blue-tinted darkness, his twin orbs like moons that light up the endless dark of the sky. Lyle steadies my mother gently in his arms and gets out of the car. Scythe turns off the ignition and makes his way over the sand dunes towards the water while Savage leaves Eugene to sleep in the car and takes my hand so we can follow. With the stars twinkling above us, we join Scythe, standing where the water meets the land, his eyes intent on the horizon.

We don't have to wait long.

My mother's third mate arrives ahead of the low tide. Long, silver hair down to his waist sticks to a muscular body and the five lines of marine text on the left side of his neck. He cuts a striking figure as he prowls with that otherworldly grace and the sharp alien beauty all marine dwellers share.

But none of these things are what surprise me. It's the pair of white, glowing eyes that pierce the darkness almost exactly like Xander's. He comes to a stop three paces away from us, inhaling deeply as if carefully observing the air, and although he has no pupils I can see, I know his gaze is fixed on my mum, limp and pale in Lyle's arms.

A single tear falls, illuminated from one glowing eye.

"Eko is a Greenland shark," Scythe tells me mind-to-mind. "They live up to two hundred years, but often go blind from flesh-eating parasites that live in the northern seas."

The Greenland shark's voice is deep but whisper-soft with disuse. "A night with no moon is a night for weeping." Then he turns his head towards me. "I know your blood."

I'm sobbing now, covering my mouth and turning towards my mother, one hand on her knee as if I can tell her ‘look who's come to see you. Look what's left of our family.'

Eko steps towards me and slowly stretches a hand out. Savage growls softly in his throat, but I lean forward. Eko cups my cheek in one cold, wet broad hand. "I dream about a daughter with blue eyes like my regina," he whispers.

I take a shaky breath. "Did you try to help her? Did you ever?—"

A thumb strokes my cheek once before he drops his hand. "She bade me away. She bade me away with sharp, wounding words. My regina knew. We both knew I could never dwell on land, and she saved me from having to make the choice."

Now Eko only has eyes for my mother.

He takes her body from Lyle. Gently. Reverently. And carries her higher up on the beach, sinking onto his knees in the sand. He cradles her to his chest like the most precious newborn baby, gently rocking as he mutters a prayer in the strange, ancient language of his kind. Tears spill from his closed eyes as he kisses her dark crown. And then his prayer becomes a hymn, solemn and mournful, sung in an agony-filled rasp.

My heart breaks as I watch him for a moment before I too sink down onto my knees, digging my fingers into the soft sand and bowing my head, letting his melody seep into my grieving bones.

One huge movement, and three predator-silent movements, tells me that Scythe, Savage, Xander and Lyle have gathered around to form a circle, kneeling or sitting on the sand to watch Eko and my mother.

I absently notice a shadow of movement on a poisoned wind that tells me the fifth part of my soul is with me, carried through the ether by the grief of his regina.

The Greenland shark's power spins around the two mates in a whorl of tiny silver particles.

My mother's chest rises in a shuddering inhale and Eko looks down at her as both his song and time itself seem to stop. Every tiny hair on my body rises to attention as my mother exhales and the final dregs of her golden power fade away.

Eko clutches her body to his chest, tilts his head up to the stars, and lets out a mighty grieving roar. I clap a hand to my mouth, stifling my own sob before I begin crawling to them. My hands grasping and my knees scraping across the sand, I crawl to my mother and a father I never knew until I kneel at his feet. I lean in, burying my face in her hair, scenting her sweet, comforting smell one last time. I wrap my arms around her lifeless body, Eko wraps one around my shoulders, and I sob. Eventually, when time seems to start again and my tears slow to a trickle, I raise my head and brush the grief from my face.

Without speaking, we all stand.

Someone, likely Xander still in his dragon form, or Lyle, has made a makeshift hip-height funeral pyre on the sand. Eko carries my mother and places her gently upon it, folding her hands so they sit in a graceful position on top of her chest and wrapping the blanket around her.

Savage must have picked flowers from somewhere while he was waiting, because he comes forward, sniffing his tears away, to tuck the stems of a small bunch of wildflowers into her hands. He returns to me, sitting down by my feet and warming my legs with his back. Lyle comes forward with another bunch of flowers and lays them by her side, returning to stand behind me, forever my pillar of strength. Scythe places a beautiful little conch shell he must have found on her other side and stands a little way from us, as if guarding the pyre from the east.

I look around a little helplessly because I have nothing to give her.

Xander, who's been watching everyone the entire time from the opposite side, his wings tucked in tightly, turns his mighty head to look at me.

I do have one last thing to give her.

Closing my eyes, I feel the power that now roils in a hellfire storm under my skin. A dam built purely by my own will holds it from destroying everything around me. I only let out a whisper of it now. With my eyes still closed, I raise my hand and use my palm to direct the force towards the pyre.

Light and heat explode beyond my closed lids and I snap them open to see a furnace blazing up into the night.

Silently, I take Eko's impossibly big hand in mine. He looks down at me, the light in his eyes dimmed. I do not know him. I've never known him. And yet that primitive hatchling in me does. He is, perhaps, the only real father I now know.

He'd told me he knew my blood, and by the touch of his palm, I know his. Old and sad. Powerful and tired. Eko wraps his fingers around my hand in a firm and steady grasp and looks back at his regina.

I turn and lock eyes with Scythe, standing alone on my far right, his ice chip eyes turned into sapphires that burn with something worse than the bite of grief.

It is a torrential downpour of agony. It is a maelstrom of tragedy.

He sees us in my mother and Eko: an inevitable future laid out for us like paving stones that, once stepped on, fall away into an eternal abyss.