Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Seventy-FiveEvaline

Chapter Seventy-Five

Evaline

T he events of the night before—all the blood and violence and terror—hit me at once as I woke. The sun outside streamed in and I groaned as I realized we’d slept half the day away already. I rolled to face Maddox, to find that he was still asleep.

I dug the side of my face against my pillow and smiled as I watched his eyes flutter behind his lids, and the rise and fall of his chest. He faced me, too, one arm tucked up beneath his pillow and one resting on the sheet in the space between us.

Maddox almost always woke up before I did, or at least at the same time. His better hearing usually meant that he heard me stir and it woke him up. But the more slow breaths that passed, I realized he was in a deep sleep.

I didn’t want to touch him, because I didn’t want to wake him up, so I let my magic reach for him.

It recognized him, and when it stretched out and caressed an invisible tendril over his cheek, I held my breath waiting for him to stir, but he didn’t.

Last night, at our first stop in Correnti, I knew he’d watched me use my magic through the bond. I could feel him there. Not in the way I felt my mother when Vasier tried to join our minds. Then, it’d felt like an intrusion. An invader that did not belong. But with Maddox, with our bond, I only felt his warmth. As if my mind swelled with a familiar, cozy, heat as he stood inside my mind with me.

And as I laid here and thought about that, and how he’d felt my magic through my own senses, I remembered my gift from Rominiava. I could use the bond to send Maddox strength. I’d tried to do it when he was locked away in his own mind, the Vasi ruling his actions. But it hadn’t worked.

But now that we had more time, now that we’d defeated this part of Vasier’s plan, maybe we could test what the gift could really do. Maybe I could send more than my strength, maybe I could send my magic. Maybe Maddox could use my Terra, Air, Wind, and Fire just as I could, if I used the bond to help him. Maybe he could use the magic from all of my gifts.

I had to ask my mother if she knew—

My spine straightened as I realized the very first gift I wanted to test.

Maddox’s excitement brightened his face as he stood on the opposite side of the bed. When he’d awoken, I’d told him my plan. What I wanted to try. And he’d jumped at the chance, excited to see this side of me, to share it with me, and to see the Night for himself.

I needed to talk to my mother anyway and wanted to test my gift from Rominiava. To see if I could pull both Maddox and myself through the veil, into the Night.

We’d dressed and ate breakfast. I wanted to make sure I was plenty fueled in order to give us the best shot at success.

“Ready?” I asked Maddox, staring at him from across the bed, both of us standing on the edge of our individual sides.

He nodded. “Fuck yes.”

I snorted at his anticipation, and we laid down together. We kept on our boots and our everyday clothes. I wanted to show him something before I found my mother, and I wasn’t sure how much walking it would require.

We shut our eyes, and I pushed down the bond for Maddox. I didn’t know whether I should be down the bond to him, or whether he should’ve come to me, but I figured since I was in charge of using the magic, I should try to be the one in control.

I swept down the bond, felt myself in his mind, and felt his warmth. I grasped onto it, held tight, and then did what had successfully gotten me into the Night each and every time I needed to. Both when I knew what I was doing, and when I didn’t.

I thought of how desperately I needed to see the Night. How I needed to see my mother, and how much I needed to see my father’s grave. Even if it was in the Night, and not the true place I laid him to rest. I thought of my devastation the night he died, and how I needed to be close to him, before this war heightened further. I needed to ground myself into who he raised me to be, the fighter he forged.

Maddox gasped beside me, and I opened my eyes to see that we were standing in the woods, in the middle of the night, even though our physical bodies lay on our bed, bathed in sun.

“Holy shit,” he whispered as he looked around, and I smiled.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said, breathless.

He turned to me, picked up my face in his hands, and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Of course it worked. You’re remarkable.”

I only let the praise swell through my chest for a moment, before I got back to the plan. I looked around, and my smile faltered for a moment as I saw where we were.

Not where I buried my father, but further down the path. I knew when we continued to walk down it, we’d see the spot where the Vasi bit me, where I killed it, and then further, to my father’s grave.

I swallowed, and Maddox seemed to understand as he caressed a hand down my back.

I wanted to see my mother, and in an instant I closed my eyes to call for her. Before I even opened them, I heard her voice.

“You wanted to see your father’s resting place?” My mother asked, but then

she seemed to notice Maddox.

Her eyes widened and she looked past me, to him.

“Hello, Alannah,” he said, coming up behind me and placing a hand on my back, extending one out to shake hers. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said with a smile.

But instead of taking his hand, my mother reached up to wrap her arms around him too, and my heart lurched with happiness at the smile he gave me as he hugged her.

“Thank you,” my mother whispered. “Thank you, for taking care of her. For getting her out of Kembertus, and Mortithev.” She shook her head. “For showing up for her when her father and I weren’t able to.”

Maddox’s brows furrowed as tears pricked in his eyes and he nodded.

“Of course,” he said back, voice hoarse. “I’ll do it, always. Until the day I die.”

She pulled apart from him and shook her head.

“How is your father?” she asked, and Maddox’s eyes widened. Mine did too, neither of us had expected her to bring Kovarrin up. “I’ve tried to watch over him,” she said. “But it’s been so, so long since we’ve seen each other, my connection to him is thin. I only had a few brief glimpses before I lost the ability to find him at all.”

Maddox nodded. “He’s well, as well as he can be with the threat from Vasier. But he has my mother by his side, and she does her best to help him through it all.”

A wide smile brightened my mother’s face.

“I’ve heard her voice,” she said, nodding. “When I could reach him, I heard her.” She shook her head. “She is lovely, and exactly the kind of woman I always knew he’d find.”

Maddox nodded, smiling. “She is.”

My mother turned to me. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

I shrugged, opened my mouth to tell her about the Madierian Kingdoms, but before I could, Maddox straightened.

“What is it?” I asked, looking up at him.

His head cocked toward some sound, and he shook his head.

“I hear your voice.”

My eyes widened and I looked to my mother as hope and fear and doubt shifted behind hers.

We started walking down the path, toward where Maddox said it came from, before my mother and I began to hear it too. It was so soft, but Maddox was right.

It was mine.

“No, not that one,” my voice sounded, and Maddox turned to look at me, brows furrowed. It was not the same voice I had now, but younger. Like when I was a child.

“If you buy that one it’ll be too big for me,” my voice pressed aloud, and my heart jolted as I recalled the memory for myself. Remembered where and when this voice came from.

It was one of the days my father and I had gone to the market when I was a little girl. I had helped him to pick out a dagger just like we did every week.

Maddox stood on one side and my mother on my other as tears filled my eyes. I looked around the empty wooded path.

“I don’t understand,” I said, looking around. We were in front of the centuries-old oak, the one I’d buried my father at the base of. I looked down at the dirt, where I held him for the last time, where I heard his voice for the last time. But there was no one here.

My mother shifted too, frantically, looking for the source of the sound.

“Sometimes souls don’t show themselves, even after they’ve awoken,” she said, turning. “Because they want privacy, or they don’t know how.”

Another voice broke through the trees.

“Well, Gods, Evaline. If I purchased every dagger with the intent to give it to you, I’d have none for myself.” My father’s playful voice echoed and I fell a step back, heard my mother do something similar, and gasped.

“Trust me, Pa. You have enough of your own,” my young voice sassed back, and he laughed.

“Father?” I called out loud now. “Pa?”

“Wallace!” my mother cried out, tears overtaking her as Maddox held onto my hand.

And just like that, the voices of the memory fell away. The Night grew silent again, save for the whisp of the wind, the murmur of the shadows, and mine and my mother’s ragged breaths.

“Wallace!” she called again, tears falling down her face.

“Allie?” his voice sounded behind us.

The three of us spun, and my eyes were wide, stung from the prick of air against them but I refused to blink. I needed to see him. I needed to know that this was real.

My mother’s sob sounded in the air, just before mine did.

Because he stood there, in the same outfit he’d died in. That cloak he’d offered me for the cold, his same big brown boots, and his usual holster and scabbard, empty now, swung at his hip.

My mother and I froze in shock, unable to move as we looked at him. My father shook his head as if he was having trouble seeing.

“Allie is that you?” he called out again, hope infiltrating his voice.

“Yes, Wallace,” she said softly, taking a step forward.

His eyes settled on her then, as if he’d just now spotted her, despite the fact that she was right in front of him.

And it was then that I realized he must’ve only awoken in the Night recently, in the past few days. That perhaps he didn’t even know where he was, and if he did, didn’t realize he’d be able to find her, here.

“Oh, Gods.” His face crumpled into a look of pain and happiness, all at once, as she ran to him. She slammed into his chest, and his arms locked around her as he stumbled back. Tears welled in my eyes as their knees each hit the ground, but they didn’t let go. Only held on tighter and buried their faces in each other’s necks, and cried. “Is it really you?”

I heard his muffled voice.

“Yes, my love. It’s really me. You’re here with me, in the Night. You’ve finally awoken,” she cried out, and I saw her head shake against him. “I’ve been waiting.”

I covered my mouth with both of my hands, felt the way they shook there. I didn’t dare intrude on this moment, on this reunion. Not after so many years of watching my father suffer day in and day out without her.

Maddox’s hand moved to my shoulder, tugging me into his chest.

They pulled apart and my father looked down at her. Her face was hidden from me, but his was just as I remembered it. Those same green eyes. That same long and unkept brown beard, with the same amount of gray that had speckled it when he died. His seemed paler than I remembered, but perhaps that was only because I was used to seeing him in the daylight.

He smiled down at her, tears an unyielding stream down his face. He reached up, slid his hands over her cheeks. His thumbs cleared her tears away, and finally, he bent to kiss her.

And it was the most loving moment I’d ever witnessed in my life.

Her hands reached up for his shoulders, holding onto him desperately, tugging him closer.

“How long has it been?” he whispered when he pulled away.

She took a calming breath, her breathing still uneven. “Almost two and a half years since you passed,” she whispered, and he shook his head.

“So long?” he asked, brows furrowing. “I don’t understand.”

She ran a hand down his face and explained how the Night worked, that all souls were different.

“You must have just come to,” she whispered. “I would come back here to check on you. When I wasn’t with Evaline.”

His smile brightened at the mention of my name and I had to clench my eyes shut to focus on not making a sound, to give them this moment.

“You have?” he asked, a laugh of surprise bursting past his lips as a new round of tears came. He tilted his head. “How is our girl?” he asked, his smile wide.

And that was it, that was all I could handle, because the sob worked its way out of my lips, and my hands couldn’t control it.

My father’s eyes landed on me, he hadn’t noticed us back here in the shadows before.

“Who’s there?” he called, immediately pulling my mother to rise and standing in front of her in a protective stance.

I walked into the beam of moonlight that broke through the trees, and his eyes widened when he saw me.

But where I expected there to be happiness, love, there was only grief.

“No,” he muttered, shaking his head violently. “Gods, please. No,” he said, new tears erupting into his eyes as he turned back toward my mother.

“No!” she gasped, moving to stand beside him. “She’s still living,” my mother clarified, and I let out a breath, not having realized that had been his fear.

My mother reached over to take my hand and pulled me to them.

“It is her gift from Mortitheos,” my mother said, looking up at him.

Realization flashed across his face, and there it was.

That happiness I had been expecting.

“My silver haired girl,” he cried out, new tears falling, as he reached for me.

And Gods, I had cried so much in the last few weeks. In the last few months. In the last two years since I’d lost him.

But finally, the tears I shed for him weren’t out of sadness as he pulled me into his embrace. As he wrapped me up in his big arms, the same ones I’d grown up in. The same ones that’d picked me up when he’d beaten me in a spar, the same ones that had held me at night when the terrors came.

“Hi, Pa,” I said through my tears into his shoulder, and felt him shudder below me from a new round of sobs.

“You’re well?” he asked in my ear, and I nodded.

“Yes, I’m okay. I’m out of Kembertus. I left a few months ago.”

He nodded and I heard his sigh of relief before I heard my mother’s soft cry. He pulled away from me and wrapped his other arm around her, before pulling us both back into his chest.

“My girls.”

We stayed that way for a few minutes, before a sniffle sounded from the shadows. I smiled through my own tears as I felt it down the bond. The tears Maddox shed for us. How wholly and completely elated he was for us, how happy he was to see a family reunited.

To see me happy.

My father tensed, and we pulled apart, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “He came with me.”

My father looked down at me with wide eyes and then looked up to see Maddox emerge from the shadows.

His eyes narrowed, and his brows furrowed.

“Maddox?” he breathed, confused.

I noticed the tears in his eyes as he came closer until he stopped in front of us.

“Hello, old friend,” he said, smiling.

My father laughed incredulously and held out a hand for Maddox to shake.

“How have you been?” My father asked. “It’s been ages.”

Maddox nodded and shook my father’s hand, but his eyes landed on mine when he spoke.

“I’ve never been happier,” he said softly, and I took a step away from my father, and toward Maddox until the latter curled an arm around me and pulled me into his side.

“Father,” I started. His eyes watched the two of us intently. “Maddox saved me from Kembertus.”

My father nodded, looked as if he tried to look relieved, but still kept his eyes on the space—or lack thereof—between mine and Maddox’s bodies.

“That was how we met. And how we discovered that we were mates.”

My father’s eyes widened and he shook his head, turning to my mother.

“I don’t understand. She’s not Kova.”

My mother put a tender hand on his chest and shook her head.

“She’s a Sorceress, Wallace. She’s been blessed by the Gods. But it appears that her magic and her curse weren’t the only thing that the Gods bestowed upon her.”

My father’s eyes came back on Maddox and I, and I felt Maddox tense. Felt the fear wash down the bond.

“And you two…?” My father trailed off, eyes flicking between the both of us. “Are what? Married now?”

Maddox shook his head. “No, we aren’t married. Not that I don’t want to,” he said, and I felt a blush break out over my face. “I love her Wallace, with everything I have.”

My father’s brows furrowed, and he moved his gaze to mine.

I nodded. “It’s true,” I whispered. “One day, we will tell you all of it. The whole story. About each time Maddox has saved my life, and when I’ve saved his.” My father’s brows rose at that. “But for now, you only need to know, that I love him, too.”

My father swallowed slowly, then turned to my mother.

“It’s true, Wallace.”

My father looked back to me, his face still showed discomfort, but I took a step toward him and took his hand.

“That night,” I started in a whisper. “You told me that many Kova were friends to you and mother. You said that they were overwhelmingly good and reliable.” Maddox straightened at my side. “You told me to trust them, but only if I felt I could.”

Recognition flashed over his eyes.

“I didn’t at first, when Maddox and Wyott came to Kembertus.” My father’s eyes flicked up to Maddox at the mention of our friend, but I continued. “But that was only because I was afraid of opening myself up to new pain. To losing someone, again.” My voice cracked and I tilted my head to try to fend off the tears.

My father’s eyes fell down to mine again, and this time pain filled them.

“You told me to be happy, Pa,” I whispered. “Maddox makes me happy.”

My father blinked slowly, before nodding. A small smile stretched on his face, and he put a hand on my cheek.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Evaline.” He cleared his throat and looked up at Maddox. “I’m sorry for my less-than-enthusiastic reaction, it just came as a surprise.” Then my father rose his brows. “Clearly all of this has. It’s a lot to take in.”

Maddox nodded. “I understand.”

My father stepped forward, past me and my mother.

“But if you make my girl happy, and you’ll protect her no matter what,” my father trailed off, and Maddox nodded.

“With every breath I take.”

My father smiled at that and clapped a hand on Maddox’s shoulder. “Then that’s good enough for me.” He tugged Maddox into his arms, and hugged him.

When they parted, my father’s face grew serious.

“But if you ever hurt her, I will have to kill you.”

A laugh burst through Maddox’s lips before he said, “I would expect nothing less from the mighty Wallace Manor.”