Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Ninety-ThreeSage

Chapter Ninety-Three

Sage

F ire flew over my head as I slammed the Vasi with his hand around my wrist to the ground, ripping out his heart.

I didn’t need to look up to know that it was Lauden’s.

But when I did stand, craning my neck to see that the fire originated from three ships to my left, with the whole of Rominia rising in front of me, I saw him.

For the first time since I left Mortithev.

And likely, for the last time.

Or at least that’s all I could assume, as I watched Evaline sprint across the platform of the ship toward him. Saw her face twist with hatred, watched her tackle him into the Madierian Sea, and watched them both disappear.

I clenched my jaw.

Inside an instinct, an old and withering instinct, was to help him. To portal over and pull them off of each other.

For all his faults, for all his manipulations, he was in my life for nearly half of it.

And I had loved him.

Once.

But the instinct died below the surface, just as I knew he would.

She would take him into the water, and only one would come out.

And it would not be him.

And despite knowing this, my eyes stayed on the splash of sea where they’d sunk. Holding my breath, waiting to see who came up for air.

Before either did, before the ocean did much of anything but churn below us, a sear of pain ripped through my mind—through the bond—at the same instant I heard Dean’s scream.

My head swung, heart racing, and eyes wide, looking for him.

We’d lost track of each other in the battle—I’d lost track of everyone—but now I saw him. Two ships to my left.

On his knees.

One Vasi held back his arms so hard that he pulled one from the socket, from the looks of it, while the other reached for his head.

I was acting, before I was thinking.

I threw a portal down onto the deck below me and jumped through it. Landing behind the Vasi who braced his hands on either side of my mate’s face, I struck my hand through his heart.

The Vasi fell away, and I was half aware of the look of awe, of relief, on Dean’s face as he looked up at me, as I struck out a hand just above his head, where the heart of the Vasi standing behind him was enclosed in his chest.

Pulled his out, too.

I felt movement behind me, knew another was coming. Saw one approach behind Dean, and threw myself over him, opening a portal below us.

“Are you okay?” I croaked out as we landed, sliding myself off of him as he kneeled below me, hands finding his face and pulling it toward me. Sliding them down to his neck, feeling there, making sure it was still intact.

He had a deep gash across his cheek, another across his shoulder, and one up the front of his abdomen.

I realized he’d been blocking his pain from me through the bond, or at least had tried to before he was ambushed by the two Vasi.

The wounds weren’t healing, but you’d never know from the way he slid one hand up and into my hair, wrapping around my neck.

“You saved me,” he said softly, looking up at me.

I nodded, looking all around us to make sure we were safe.

I portaled us to one of the rear Kova ships, hoping to take him out of the fray.

“Of course I did,” I said softly, sliding my hands over his shoulders to hang onto him.

When he winced, I remembered his shoulder, remembered the cuts all over him that weren’t healing from too many wounds, all at once, and slid my wrist over his mouth.

I looked toward the Vasi on the deck of the ship below where we kneeled on the platform, making sure we were safe.

I shifted my weight, uncomfortable with my back toward the battle behind me.

Dean drank as I looked around. Grant fought two Vasi a few ships to my right. I continued looking left, around the circle that was the Kova fleet’s formation to see Nash ripped into the neck of a Vasi with his fangs before decapitating him. In the distance, on a frontline ship, Charlotte and James fought back to back on the deck.

My heart hammered in my chest. My breathing quickened until I couldn’t control it as I watched the carnage all around. Watched Kova die just as often as Vasi. Watched the latter tear Sorcerers from their platforms, and rip out their throats before dumping them into the sea.

Watched the way the ocean turned red beneath us.

My eyes were wide as I continued scanning until I was looking just past the first few Vasi ships. A few lines deep, where the ships were emptier than here, as Vasi ran to our decks.

Dean stopped drinking at the same time my eyes landed on the next ship in the Vasi fleet.

I slowly stood on shaky legs.

Straight in front of me, a thousand paces away, through the gore and the spray of water and the splintering of wood—I saw him.

We locked eyes, and even from here, I could tell that he saw me. That he knew exactly who he looked at, just like I did.

Saw his eyes twinkle with amusement. Saw his chin lower toward me, in acknowledgment.

We were here because of him. All these people were dying, because of him.

I didn’t think through what I was doing as I ran forward. I didn’t pay attention to Dean’s shouts as I jumped off of the rear platform I stood on, and threw a portal on the deck below me, maintaining eye contact with the enemy until the ship’s front platform rose over me.

I pulled my feet together as I jumped down, into the portal, and as I did held my arms out.

I knew exactly where I’d land.

And before my feet ever touched the ground, before they had to for me to know where I was, I was wrapping one crooked arm around his throat from behind his back. I locked my grip on him my other hand, and when my feet finally landed on the deck, his upper body cocked back at the height difference.

“Hello, daughter,” his throat vibrated against my arm with the words.

I didn’t speak, didn’t trust myself to past the lump in my throat.

Even after everything he did to me, my mother, to Evaline, to Maddox, and to all these people here today—he was my father. I’d grown up only knowing a life with him. It had been tough and it had been cruel, but at the end of it all, he’d been the one constant throughout all those years.

“I’m not angry,” he said after my silence. I felt his hands rise, felt his fingers on my wrists, and pulled tighter against his throat. “I just want my daughter back.”

My eyes widened, and the moment of distraction was all he’d needed.

It was probably why he said the words in the first place.

His hands slid up to my elbows, tightened, and at the same time he threw his body forward to fold, he pulled me right along with him until he was flipping me over his head, and my back was slamming onto the deck of the ship below me.

He kneeled above my head and leaned down, his forearms braced on his knee so his hands dangled just above my head.

“You’ve turned,” he acknowledged, but I was trying to catch my breath from his slam. “Of all your betrayals, this is the worst.” His voice strained as he spoke, but he quickly let a smile slide over his face and tilted his head. “But it’s okay,” he breathed, then nodded in front of him as I slowly unclenched my fist at my side. Silently pressed my palm to the deck below me. “Take one of my Sorcerers. Drain them, come home, and join me. Truly join me this time, Sage.”

And his voice, it was earnest. It was sincere.

Or maybe he was only good at fooling me into thinking it was.

I refused to fall into it again.

The portal breathed to life below my hand, and swallowed me. I was already turned, letting my legs fall so I could land on them.

And when my feet landed on the deck behind him, he was standing.

“Very good,” he chuckled. “You’re much faster now. A perk of the immortality, I suppose.” He started to turn. “Of course, it will only become enhanced once you finish your turn. Once you join me, and become my daughter, in the very most important of ways.”

As soon as he completed his turn, as soon as he fully faced me, we locked eyes.

His widened as he felt my hand begin to dig into his chest.

Mine narrowed as his fingers closed around my throat.

I forced steel into my voice. Forced it to come out every bit as strong and consistent as I wished it had in the past when I faced him.

“I will never join you. And you have never treated me like a daughter,” I bit out against the constraint on my throat.

His eyes sparkled.

“You learned more from me than you would’ve if you’d stayed with your mother.”

Rage burned my eyes and I couldn’t help the growl in my voice as I spoke. At the accusation I needed to make.

“But we’ll never know! Because you killed her.” He set his jaw. “You killed her, and you made me think she abandoned me. You made me think she didn’t want me.”

He raised his chin. “I did what I had to do, to make you strong. To help you come to your full potential, and to right a wrong from centuries ago.” I opened my mouth to snarl back, but he continued. “I didn’t kill your mother. It was a lie I told Evaline. I stole you when I heard about your portals. But I didn’t kill her.”

The words I’d been ready to say only came out in a shuddered breath as I took in his confession. Saw the clarity in his eyes. The set of his jaw.

He was telling the truth.

Or maybe I just wanted it to be true.

“I took you in, I made you what you are today,” he filled the silence, and it broke me from my trance.

My left hand curled into a fist at my side.

“You built me into what you needed. You used me. You manipulated me. And still, I wasn’t enough,” I bit out, and tried to ignore the tears that sprouted in my eyes. “You may call yourself a father but anyone that knows you—truly knows you—knows that you’re incapable of earning the right to the title.”

His eyes softened for a moment, flicked between mine, and he shook his head once.

“You’re wrong. You are my little girl. You will always be my little girl.”

And that.

That awoke something again.

Different than when Broderick said the other trigger phrase.

This one, this phrase caused the memories to flash forward harder, faster. Memory after memory of hearing those words. That trigger phrase.

Hearing the compulsion.

And each time, the words were the same.

When he was tucking me into bed when I’d first arrived in Mortithev as a girl, acting out the voices of the next chapter of the adventure book he read me each night. Or when he’d smiled at me the first time I mastered my portal during a lesson. Or when he bid me goodbye, off to Rominia for my mission there, with a kiss on the forehead alone in his office.

Or the countless other kind, loving moments a father shares with his daughter throughout her life.

Moments that had not existed only a moment ago, but that now burst into my mind, having always been there, but having been hidden.

And each of those memories all ended with the same variation of words. With the same compulsion to end them all.

“I love you, Sage. I love you and that is why I have to make you strong. Make you hard to the world so that you’ll never be hurt. So that you’ll never give the power to hurt you, to someone else.” His eyes flashed with the pain that always did when he thought of Alannah. When he spoke of her. “Someday, you’ll know. You’ll know that I love you with all of my heart. But for now, I need you to be strong. Because life is too hard to be anything else.”

And then the compulsion would come.

“Now forget all of this. Forget every happy moment you’ve had with me. Forget any time I’ve made you smile. Forget, until I, and only I, tell you the truth. That you are my little girl. That you will always be my little girl.”

And now, standing on this ship with him, each of us poised to kill the other, my eyes widened. And the tears fell.

His hand shifted on my throat. Not to kill me, but to place it on my cheek.

“From the moment I found you, I knew you were special. You always have been. You’ve always been enough. But the only way to make you stronger, to make you better, was to make you work for it.”

My chin trembled, and I shook my head.

I didn’t know what to say.

I didn’t know what to think.

He’d become so masterful at manipulating me that I didn’t know whether this was another tactic. He could’ve placed false memories into my mind through compulsion, he could’ve forged this very moment.

But a part of me, deep down in my gut, knew it was true. Knew the tears that misted his eyes now were authentic.

What he’d done was wrong.

The lesson he wanted to teach was not worth the pain it caused.

But maybe, to him, it was. Maybe in his mind, his logic was sound.

Maybe he’d lived too long, steeped in his hatred for so many centuries that it warped his mind until it truly was impossible for him to understand what love was .

And as his eyes flicked over my shoulder, as the tears dissipated in them and were replaced by steel, I understood that it had.

Because he let go of me, pulled himself away from my hand that had still been buried in his chest before I could stop him, and walked past me.

And when I turned, I saw what he had seen. Who he had.

His twin brother.

Storming across the ship decks, body covered in blood and gashes from the undoubtedly dozens of Vasi that went after him, to try to deliver him to Vasier themselves.

And Gods, if I didn’t feel my heart sink. If I didn’t feel that little girl inside, the one that desperately wanted his love and approval, the little girl I thought I’d buried, wake up, only to wither away again at the sight of him walking away from me, for this fight.

The one he’d waited for, for centuries.

Maybe Vasier did love me.

But he loved his revenge more.