Chapter 351 – Keeping it in the Family
Ella
I’m the last one to the conference room – baby stuff but when I come through the door I’m very surprised to see that it’s just family gathering today.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, holding Rafe close to my chest so that he peers over my shoulder. He’s a very curious baby – he likes to look around, even though he can’t see much yet. I move over to the table where Cora, Roger, Henry, and Sinclair sit, all clearly waiting for me, all with faces which are …drawn. Concerned. And turned on me.
“What,” I breathe, freezing before I can sit down. “What’s wrong? What is it?” “Sit, Ella,” Henry says, waving to the open chair between him and Sinclair.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, the word falling out of my mouth before I can even think. “No way this looks… this looks like bad news.’
And some part of me knows that I’m being ridiculous – that it won’t be good news miraculously if I don’t hear it but still. Fear stripes through me – I really, really can’t handle more bad news now, not after the few days we’ve had. And not if it, apparently, all focuses on me.
“Ella, please,” Sinclair says, looking at me with gentle eyes and pulling the empty chair out. “I promise it’s not as bad as you think.”
“Do you all know?” I ask, going rigid.
“Henry told us before you came in,” Cora replies, leaning forward towards me across the table, Roger’s hand on her back. “He just wanted us to be prepared, so that the focus could be on you when we told you.’
“Oh my god,” I whisper, slowly moving to the chair and sitting down.” Is it me?” I ask. “Did I did I do something?”
“Not at all,” Henry says, shaking his head at me. “I’m sorry, Ella – – I may have gone about this in the wrong way. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just – it was convenient that you were last, so I told them first so that the focus could be on you now, as I believe that this news will affect you most.”
“And where ” I ask, looking around again for the members of the team who went on the mission yesterday. Some of them, I know, would be well enough to attend now, if they were wanted. ” Where are the other researchers?” I ask, knowing that Henry has been working all day and night with his own team.
“This is…” Henry continues, hesitating, “a family matter, Ella. Those who don’t know will be briefed soon. But I wanted to talk about this together, with the main parties involved.” Henry’s eyes drift, now, to Rafe in my arms, and I go tense.
“Okay,” I say, drawing my lips together in a thin line. “Let’s get on with it then. What’s wrong?”
Henry looks towards Rafe now, nodding to him, apparently giving him permission to talk in some kind of pre- arranged pattern. This, contrary to what they wanted, somehow makes me more nervous, that they’ve rehearsed how to tell me this news.
Is this some kind of intervention or something? What did I do? Feeling my tension, the baby starts to fuss, and Sinclair takes him from me tucking Rafe into the crook of one elbow before draping his other arm warmly over my shoulders. I feel at once calmer, and start to wonder – ridiculously if Sinclair isn’t just the baby whisperer, but the Ella whisperer as well.
“Ella,” Roger starts, and I turn my entire focus to him. “Yesterday, when we were fighting the priest, he said something…strange.”
I don’t say anything, just clench my teeth and stare at him, willing him to continue Fast.
“We had him pinned – he only got to whatever…I don’t know, whatever magical powder allowed him to really fire bomb us, by accident, and when he realized that he was going to be able to use it – I think he slipped.”
“Slipped?” I ask, confused. “Like on ice?”
“No,” Roger replies, sighing a little at his inability to be clear. “I mean, slipped on his words. Messed up. Because he said: ‘the master will have his boy.”
“The master will have his boy,” I repeat, glancing down at Rafe sitting contentedly curled in the crook of Sinclair’s arm. He’s gotten a hand free of his swaddle and is clenching it and opening it, apparently fascinated by the movement of his fingers. “Do you are we assuming that the boy is Rafe?”
“We are,” Henry confirms, drawing my eyes towards him.
“But the master,” I say – and as I talk, I know I should just shut up and listen, but I can’t help myself. “Did he mean – did the priest mean the God of Darkness?”
“That’s where it gets complicated,” Henry says carefully, speaking slowly and calmly and watching my face to make sure I’m following along. I’m grateful for it because even though I’m not stupid, I’m panicked enough now that my mind feels like it’s in three different places at once.
“You see,” Henry continues, “I had my team working all night trying to parse this phrase, trying to figure it out. And we’ve done a great deal of research, so far, on this Monastic Cult of the God of Darkness. And never, in any of our materials both from centuries ago and today – have we ever seen any of the priests or acolytes ever refer to the God himself as ‘master.” Instead, he is always God, Father, Dark Majesty things like that.”
“Oh,” I say, my eyes going wide. I understand but I mean, I don’t get it. Not yet. Not in the same way that the rest of them do, apparently, judging by the worried looks on their faces as I look around the table. “What what does that mean?”
“It means,” Sinclair says, picking up the thread, and I turn my head to look sharply up at him. “That…there is someone else ordering all of this to happen. That they haven’t done this merely to serve their god, or at his orders but that, instead, there seems – to be someone else, a mortal to whom they are responding.”
“What?” I breathe, and then I groan, closing my eyes and leaning my head back. It was so much simpler when I thought it was just a situation like that between the Goddess and my birth mother Reina, just a person-to-diety contract that really involved the two of them the God and his priests. But now finding out that there’s someone else involved, who a powerful priest is calling master? Someone who is directing all of this fighting, who planned the insemination?
My family gives me a moment to process this and they’re all waiting for me when I sigh and open my eyes, looking around at them again. “Well?” I ask. “Do we know who it is?”
“We have…a lead,” Henry says quietly, and I turn my attention back to him. I keep my mouth shut now, though, exhausted by this already – just wanting to hear the news. “I’ve had some of our more clever men working through the dark web, trying to find any trace of the members of the modern cult. And while they were unable to trace precisely who was doing the talking, they were able to discover a sort of…hub. For the communications. A location to and from which a great number of the messages were being transported.”
“Oh?” I ask, encouraged. “Where?”
“It went to…” Henry hesitates here, taking a deep breath, as if he doesn’t know how to say it.
“Just tell her, dad,” Sinclair snaps, his voice irritated, probably because he can feel my tension coming to its breaking point down the bond.
“It is difficult for me,” Henry says, irritated himself now and shooting his son a little glare. “As I am not…
detached from this development.” But he shifts his eyes to me, then. “Ella,” he continues, “the team did a great deal of reconnaissance on this location and I have to admit that I was shocked when they told me what they discovered. That the man living in the residence… I had long assumed that he was dead. Or at least, so separate from the world of influence and politics that he may as well have been. It is my fault,” he sighs, hanging his head, “for overlooking him.”
“Who?” I breathe, my whole body locked with tension, my breath coming short. “Who lives there?”
“His name is Xander,” Henry tells me, his voice grim. “He was…a Duke, when his brother – your father, Xavier – was King on the throne.”
