Page 277 of Scarlet Wars
He barked a laugh, loud and joyless. “The True Bond isn’t about love Emma, it’s about power.”
He leaned back slightly, his expression unreadable. “When you reach a certain age, loneliness becomes one scary beast to face. Julius and I bonded long before I met Lucia, and we stayed off each other’s continent until one of us felt the need to…collaborate.”
My mouth curled in disgust. “You used him.”
“We used each other. Such is the nature of the True Bond. Power drawn from power.”
Gordon’s gaze darkened, his tone lowering to a dangerous hum. “I gave him something of mine, and in return he gave me something of his. And now both our magic runs through you.”
I dragged a hand over my face. “Which is how you, as a Healer, can open a blue portal. Here, and back in New York…because Julian was a Specialist and his translation runs through your veins.”
My father smiled with pride in his eyes. “Exactly.”
My mind flashed back to Julian’s proposal at Cyclos, right before he’d faked the bond with me. “Which is also how he knew,” I said slowly, “he could form a True Bond with more than one person.”
Gordon shrugged. “It’s rare, but it’s absolutely possible.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’tthinkpast the buzzing in my ears.
“So, you being my father…” The words trailed off again.
“Julius tried to replicate his success with you in the years that followed,” Gordon added softly. “Experimented as often as he could. He failed every single time. The only conclusion was that my blood—running through your veins—was what allowed your body to accept it.”
Click. Click. Click.
Every piece of information crashed into me and splintered my already fragile grasp on reality. My breath hitched, the weight of all thistruthpressing down hard enough to choke me.
“Then why let me be raised by my parents? If you had me with you long enough to force the True Bond, why give me back to them? What happened?”
Gordon’s expression shifted. “My own weakness happened, that’s what.”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “After injecting you with translation, my plan was simple: take you with me. Train you. Turn you into the most powerful person the world had ever seen.”
His mouth twisted. “But I made one mistake.”
His gaze drifted past me, as if he were seeing the memory unfold all over again. “I opened a window in reality,” he said quietly. “Only to look in on the hospital room one last time. I was holding you in my arms, watching your mother sleep through the screen.”
He still wasn’t looking at me. “And then someone came into the room, telling your parents you were gone.”
“Your mother…” Gordon paused, gathering himself. “She was the toughest woman I had ever met. But the scream she let out in that moment…”
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
“It was excruciating.” His voice roughened. “And I couldn’t handle it.”
I stilled completely.
“It changed everything.”
He sighed deeply, then shook his head. “I’ve done horrible things in my life, but the one thing I couldn’t do was make your mother suffer. I couldn’t let her live through that pain. Nor could I wipe your existence from her memory without alteringtoo much of who she was. It was the one miscalculation in my plans.”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “I made your powers dormant, put a temporary damper on your haze, and allowed you to be raised as human. I returned you to your parents, making the staff acknowledge a simple mistake.”
“You’d only been gone half an hour, no one exactly cared where to, when you returned safely. I gave you back to your mother and figured, with your endless lifespan, it didn’t really matter when I would retrieve you and take out the damper.”
Jesus Christ. How was I ever going to digest all of this?
No weakness, Emma. You’ll figure it out. You’ve been here before, you survived, you’ll fucking survive again.
