Page 87 of Guardian of Exile

“Let him go,” Connell said gently. “Or it’s going to do worse than drive you into poverty. It’s going to kill you.”

“I can’t.” Tears spilled down Belas’s face. “You don’t understand. He was so little when they took him. And I let them take him. Do you know what I said to him? I told him to go with them. I told him that he would be okay, that he would be safe. I told him—” She broke off, swallowing hard. “I told him to be brave.”

Connell took a step forward, but he stopped just shy of reaching for her. “It’s not your fault,” he said gruffly. “They had all the right credentials. They knew all the right things to say. You thought he was going to the Council.”

“What does it matter what I thought?” She wrapped her arms around her stomach. “He’s gone. My baby’s gone and I can’t live with that. I can’t—” She broke off again, tears spilling don her cheeks.

Tristen stepped forward and this time Nyx let him, dropping the Hiding that covered them both.

He shoved the hook of his cloak back from his face. He sounded as broken as Belas when he said, “Mom?”

She froze when she saw him, hope and fear and desperation mingling in her gaze. Connell drew his sword with surprising swiftness, the tip at Tristen’s throat before anyone could move.

“Stop!” Belas shouted. “What are you doing?”

“They were inside earlier. Which means they followed us out,” he said calmly. “They heard everything you just said. This isn’t your son, Belas. This is just another person preying on your desperation.”

Tristen canted his head at Connell, the same look in his eyes that had been there right before he’d tried to kill Nyx in Central Park.

“Tristen,” Nyx warned.

Belas’s eyes went wide, but Tristen continued to study Connell. “Over the course of your life you’ve broken you right arm three times, your left ankle once, and shattered your right kneecap so badly it’s impressive—and painful, I’d imagine—that you manage to walk without a limp.”

The expression on Connell’s face flickered. “Anyone can find that information with enough research.”

Tristen lifted his eyebrows, then slowly raised his left hand. Connell tracked the movement as Tristen reached out and placed a single fingertip on the back of Connell’s hand. A swift, potent punch of magic surged from Tristen. An audible crunch filled the air as Connell’s right knee bent and jerked, as if something had been shoved forcefully back into its proper place.

Connell dropped the sword, stumbling back. His eyes widened as his right foot landed. Carefully, he transferred all of his weight onto his right leg, squatting one-legged for a moment before rising back up, his eyes astonished.

Tristen turned to Belas. He reached for her hand, another wave of magic surging from him, this one softer, gentler. Nyx didn’t know what it did—what he’d fixed in her—but it removed any cautious doubt Belas had managed to cling to. She threw her arms around him, more tears flowing down her face.

For a moment Tristen just stood there, as if he didn’t know what to do. Then he closed his eyes and hugged her back. When he opened them again, he was looking at Nyx.

“Take your time” she said softly. “We’ll be waiting.”

Nyx and Connell trailed Tristen and Belas to his mother’s apartment, because Nyx didn’t want to leave Tristen unguarded, and Connell clearly felt the same way about Belas. If anyone had given him the opportunity, he probably would have insisted on going inside with them, but Tristen and his mother deserved to have their reunion in private. There was a perfectly serviceable cafe across the street from the dwelling, so Nyx and Connell settled at a table with a window view of the apartment’s front door.

Nyx was thoroughly sick of sitting in eating establishments, but she ordered tea for both of them and, after Connell stopped being utterly weirded out by the lack of pain in his recently repaired knee, convinced him to tell her the story of Tristen's mother.

Belas Veld had been married off young to a much older man, who'd died before Tristen was born. Her late husband's financials had not been awe-inspiring, but she had been a decent manager of funds, and it had been an adequate amount to allow her to raise Tristen.

She hadn't realized what he was until he was eight. Most Shamans were discovered because they happened to be in the vicinity of some life-threatening injury, and they healed it instinctively. Alternatively, they healed every tiny scrape or cut a family member had, which could simply mean a child had a future as a Warlock, but was also the point at which most parents took their child to the nearest warlock or medical establishment to see if they were a Shaman. One minute around a patient on the brink of death, and Shamanic magic couldn't help but out itself.

Belas, like most mothers, had thought her child was special. She hadn’t put together that the migraines that had plagued her since she was twelve had disappeared with the birth of her child. She had noticed that cuts and bruises seemed to heal quicker than usual, but as she'd never felt any magic coming from her son, she had never attributed this fact to him.

As she would later learn, this lack of recognition was because her son had been healing her since the moment he was born, as the birth should have killed her. She hadn't been sensitive to magic anyway, so the magic she did feel afterwards only felt, to her, like her son. She’d found out the truth when a friend had come over and tripped going down the stairs of her house, fracturing her ankle. Tristen had been there, and a few minutes later, Belas’s friend hadn't had a broken ankle anymore.

What she had had was a lot of anger. She'd belonged to a religion that believed speeding the body's healing beyond its natural limits was against the edicts of their god. She had agreed to keep quiet about Tristen only because she was afraid that if her husband found out what he’d done, she would be punished for allowing it to happen.

So Belas had kept her son’s talent a secret for another year, before another incident occurred, this time one that couldn't be kept quiet. People—supposedly representatives from the Enforcers’ Shamanic branch—had arrived on her doorstep mere days later. They had had the correct identification to convince her they were who they said they were, but the thing that had leant them the most credence was that they’d had a Shaman with them. One who could explain things like how Belas had nearly died in childbirth, and how her son's magic worked.

Still, despite all of their warnings that Tristen would be safer with them, Belas hadn't wanted to let her child go. Then someone had tried to steal him, and nearly succeeded. Because of that event, she had been convinced that she could not keep him safe, that she could not teach him everything he needed to know. She had signed the papers that allowed the Council representatives to take him.

Then she had waited. She was supposed to receive updates—pictures, letters, an address where she could send her own letters. When nothing came, she wrote to the address she’d been given in the event she had any questions. She had written them once before, to verify the identity of the people she was handing her son over to. That letter had been promptly answered. This one had received no response. So she’d written another, and another, and another

Finally, she went in person, only to be informed that her son was not in the Enforcers’ Shamanic division, nor had his name ever been entered into their registry as a potential candidate. She could, if she so chose, file a missing persons report with her local authorities, but as the Enforcers had no proof her child was a Shaman, the matter was not a problem for them. It was then she’d understood that she had not given her child to the Council at all.

She hired investigators. When her money ran out, she worked and hired more, until the money ran out again and she either saved up to do it all over, or found something else of her late husband's worth selling.