Adam cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with Tristan’s familiarity with his aunt. “So Orpheus knew you were alive?”
“Yes. He helped me escape to Europe when it became clear my life was in danger in the States.” Tristan shook off his sadness and switched back to business mode. “But I’m afraid after a time, circumstances dictated I cut all ties. It was safer for everyone that way. My biggest regret is that I never had time to explain everything to Orpheus before he died.”
I clenched my teeth. Nice that his biggest regret wasn’t abandoning Maisie and me.
“What circumstances?” Adam asked.
“We’ll get to that in a moment.” Tristan shook his head. “Nyx told me what you said about how Cain broke my spell.” His expression tightened into anger and I had a feeling it was mostly directed inward. “I had no idea he was accessing the Liminal through his subconscious. If only I’d figured it out sooner, Orpheus and Maisie would still be alive.”
I sighed and moved closer. I didn’t want to feel bad for my father. Not when the promised explanation hadn’t arrived. Not when it was indirectly his fault Orpheus and Maisie were dead. But he suddenly sounded so… defeated. “Look, I’m the last person who wants to excuse you. Trust me on that. But ‘if only’ won’t change anything.” I paused. “All we can do now is move forward.”
Adam shot me an ironic look. I paused. Huh. Maybe I did need to take that advice myself. I certainly had done my share of that kind of talk since they died, too.
“You’re right.” Tristan cleared his throat and stood straighter. “So you asked how Valva saved me. But to get to that, I have to admit some uncomfortable things.” He paused and took a deep breath. “After I escaped the assassins who were sent after me, I went to California to find your mother. But Phoebe wasn’t in Los Angeles.”
I nodded. “Lavinia hid her in Muir Woods near San Francisco.” I’d met the faery midwife, Briallen Pimpernell, who’d hosted my mother during most of her pregnancy.
Tristan nodded. “By the time I found that out myself, your mother was already dead.”
“Wait, you went there?”
He nodded. “Yes. Briallen Pimpernell told me what happened.”
My mouth fell open. Adam was similarly shocked. “Wait, Briallen knew you were alive?”
He nodded. “You have to understand. I was inconsolable when I found out Phoebe was dead. I’m… not proud about this, but I threatened the fae. Told her if she told anyone I was alive, I’d come back and murder her.”
I pictured the plump, friendly faery and frowned. I’d rarely met a more gentle spirit than the midwife, and the very idea of Tristan threatening her like that lowered him even further in my opinion. “Did you ask her about us? About Maisie and me?”
His eyes shifted left and he shook his head. “Honestly, I was so insane with grief I didn’t care.”
My gut twisted. “Nice.”
“Sabina, I know how it sounds, but it was a long time ago. Besides, she did manage to tell me that my mother and Lavinia had each taken one of you. I figured you’d be well cared for.”
I snorted and crossed my arms. But I didn’t want to get into a discussion about my shitty childhood. I didn’t need his pity or his apologies. I just wanted answers.
“When I left Briallen, I asked Orpheus to help set me up with a new identity in Europe. I had to get as far away from Phoebe’s memory as possible.” He shrugged in a self-deprecating way. “I became the cliché of the self-sabotaging mourner. I drank myself silly. Got into fights. Almost got killed a time or two. Then, once I’d move past my anger, I went into a deep well of depression.”
“How long did all that last?” Adam asked.
“About five years.”
My jaw dropped. A year I’d understand. But five? Jesus. “So what happened once you recovered?”
He looked up then. Dark memories haunted his gaze. “What makes you think I’ve recovered?”
I looked away. I didn’t want to consider that my father was still in pain. It would be harder to maintain my distance then. “Anyway, you were saying?”
“Five years after your mother died, I decided to try and access Irkalla through the Liminal. I figured I’d just go down there and either steal Phoebe or stay with her.” He shrugged self-consciously. “Like I said, I was a little… off. Before I met Phoebe, Ameritat—your grandmother?”
I nodded to acknowledge I knew of her.
“She and I had been experimenting with my magic in the Liminal.”
“Yeah, Rhea found Ameritat’s journals. She seemed to think you abandoned the experiments because your mom thought it was too risky.”
He nodded. “We did. Or rather, once I met your mother, I lost interest.” He smiled wryly. “Anyway, I got it in my head that I’d find the entrance on my own. I started going into the Liminal regularly. It was risky, just like we thought. I almost didn’t make it back a couple of times.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s fucked up.”
“You’ve been there?” He looked both surprised and impressed by this news.
“Twice. Once by accident and the other to find Maisie. It’s like an extended horrific acid trip.”
He looked at me for a moment. “Yes. That’s it exactly. It’s bad enough that the landscape constantly changes. But it also messes with your head. Mirages appear. Labyrinths.”
“Did you find the entrance to Irkalla?”
“No.”
My eyes widened. “No as in not yet or no it doesn’t exist?”
“No as in I stopped trying. I went into the Liminal hundreds of times over the years and never found it.”
“You just gave up?” I asked.
“No, I woke up. Thanks to Valva.”
“Explain.”
His face took on the intensity of someone looking deep into the past. “I was lost. Utterly and totally. There was this damned labyrinth. The walls were made of body parts—thousands of corpses. Arms jutting out, sightless eyes.” He shivered involuntarily. “I don’t know how long I tried to find my way out, but it almost cost me what remained of my sanity.” He paused, his eyes looking into the middle distance, clearly lost in the memory. “But then I turned a corner and there she was.”
“Valva,” Adam said.
Tristan nodded.
I tried to imagine my father, half crazed, lumbering through a labyrinth of bodies and then seeing a six-foot-tall golden demon standing there. It’s a wonder he didn’t just lose all his marbles right then. “That must have been quite a shock.”
He laughed a little. “It was. After she convinced me she was real and wasn’t there to kill me, she said she had a message from Lilith. She said that I was wasting my time looking for a door that I wasn’t meant to find. She also said I’d be reunited with my Phoebe eventually, but first I had a job to do.”
“What kind of job?”
He sighed. “She said that as the father of the Chosen, I had to ensure Cain didn’t bring about the end of the dark races before the Chosen had a chance to fulfill the prophecy.”
“So that’s why you’ve been so obsessed with Cain?” Adam said.
Tristan grimaced. “Not entirely.”
Judging from the reluctance in his tone, I knew I wouldn’t like the next part of the story.
He turned to me. “This might be hard for you to hear, but I need you to listen.”
I frowned at him. He made a move, like he wanted to take my hands, but I folded my arms against my chest. “Okay?”
His hands fell uselessly at his sides. “When I met your mother, I was in California on a diplomatic mission. Ameritat wanted to negotiate some new provisions for the Black Covenant with the Dominae. I went out with a group of Pythian Guards.”
“Was Orpheus there?” Adam asked. In addition to leading the Hekate Council, Orpheus had been the head of the Pythian Guards in the years before his death, but back then he would have just been a member of the special force that protected the Council.
Tristan nodded. “Yes. Anyway, the discussions were going surprisingly well. Lavinia and the others seemed open to the discourse. We’d been there about five nights when Phoebe arrived. She’d been away at one of the estates your grandmother owned, but that night she came home and we all met her. Her beauty struck me immediately. But she was the daughter of Lavinia Kane. I wouldn’t have dared incurred her wrath. Besides, I’d been raised to hate all vampires; the idea of becoming romantically involved with one didn’t interest me in the slightest, no matter how attractive.”
“But you were there on a diplomatic mission.”
“Sure,” he said, “but that didn’t mean I trusted them. Far from it. I slept with an applewood-handled knife under my pillow every night.”
“So you didn’t dig her immediately,” I said. “What changed?”
“It was odd. I’d barely spoken but a few polite words to her over the course of a few days. She seemed equally uninterested. But then, one night, after a large state dinner, we both ended up in one of the gardens at the Dominae estate. Maybe it was the way the moonlight hit her hair or the music coming from inside the house, but I suddenly found her quite beautiful.” He shook his head. “Then we started talking. About books, music, silly things. We didn’t have a thing in common, but we talked so long that eventually her maid came looking for her. Before she left, she asked me if I’d meet her again the next night to continue our discussion.” He waved a hand. “Anyway, that’s how it all began. Once we confessed our feelings for each other, I never questioned how it came about. Or why.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean? Isn’t that normal? You spend enough time with someone and feelings sometimes just happen naturally.”
“Sabina,” he said, his tone frank. “There was nothing natural about it.”