“Should I cut the preamble?”

“Did you kill my mother?”

“Yes.”

Harlan knew he should’ve livid, but he didn’t know that woman.

If the only two people who he to judge her on were telling the truth then she was not a good mother, not even a good person.

“Why?”

“If you were brought up by that woman, you would be a tool. She only understood strength, she lost her family, with how she saw the world it simply broke her and there was nobody who could pick up the pieces. Does that sound familiar?”

“She was like me.”

“No, she was nothing like you. Your heart is still here, she smothered hers long ago. You are everything she wished she could be. You have a loving family, friends who you would die for, and they the same. If you changed places right now, she would destroy your life as you have it, because she never understood these things. That choice was taken from her when she saw her home burn at 2 years of age. If she was given the chance to forget everything, to be born as another person, she wouldn’t hesitate. Would you? Even with the pain you have gone through?”

“If I was born as somebody else, I would never have my family, everyone who I care about. Adina would be a slave to people who do not treat her as a person. Lugh and Balor would’ve never been born. The war would still be going on.”

“That is a good answer, you must understand and love yourself, see what you have done, the good and the bad, if you ever hope to be my champion. Shy not away from the light which shows your own atrocities, yet understand why they have happened, good and bad, how you have shaped this world to your own will.”

“My… half-sister, will you tell me anything about her?”

“Tell me, who is the father of your mother? And his forefather? If you understand these things then you will find her. But I am going to warn you now. She is just another person, good and bad, you understand what you were born from and what she might think about that.”

“That seems unlike you.”

“I see more of the you I hope you can be, I do not want to send you down another spiral of despair when what you hope for, another sister, does not turn out how you want it to.”

“What I come from, is that story real even? How much of what you’ve said to me are just pretty lies to get me here as I am?”

“The circumstances are not as I said, but they are no less horrific. She was not bound with steel chains, but rather her captors bound her mind. You have seen what your powers can do, now imagine what you could do in 10, 20, 30 years? She was not afraid, she could not see what happened to her as rape, they heighted her joy and lowered her fear. It is the most sinister thing which I can see that power used for, it was never given for such reasons.”

There was a rumbling, the ground around Harlan swelled and vanished as the darkness that covered him ran rampant in her anger.

Then she calmed herself, she did not like to be heated.

Yet the crime of them was the crime of her, she had given them their powers, and they used them in such a manner that she wept.

They wiped out the free will of their fellow man to make themselves free of an exile imposed on them for their lust for conquest.

They believed the world was owed to them, that the Golden were free to hide in their desert, but they would take the rest by soul and steel.

They could’ve been free had they lost that ambition, yet instead they had only become more radical as leaders used their empathy on their own people to grow their anger until it seemed like their own anger.

“I am sorry to have yelled. Have you more questions of me?”

“No, and I don’t mind that you yelled, you and I see eye to eye on what my powers do. I hate to use them for anything that I do not need to use them for.”

“Then I leave with these words. You do not need to do what I ask, you absolutely should not listen to what I’ve said here and now and let that hate crush your heart. Someday you will come face to face with these people, then you must make your choice. It will always be YOUR choice, not mine, not a king, not a Fae, it can only be yours. Because that choice was taken from your mother, it was taken from so many others, and if they are let out, and you cannot handle them, or you choose not to kill them, it will be the fate of any man. Yet that will still be your choice, and I will not hate you for it.”

Sepul was waiting outside when he woke up.

“Harlan, I believe we need a talk about when you want to speak with that woman.”

“Yes, we do need to talk, but not about that. I want a blood sample from you before I say anything more about what I want to say.”

Shit, that was the word that came across his mind.

He knew in an instant that Harlan had figured him out.

The feeling of familiarity that they had with one another even when they first met, how it made Sepul happy to be with him, how he dropped his guard, how he defended Harlan so much despite their short time knowing one another.

“Of course. I will draw one and bring it to you at the end of the day.”

“Why not right here? Right now? I have vials.”

He kept a few of them on him, just in case.

He filled one with his own blood and tossed the other to Sepul.

He watched like an eagle as the old archmage cut his palm with a blade pulled from nowhere and handed the vial to Harlan.

So far as he knew, there was nothing wrong with what he had done, every step was clearly shown to him, he saw no spells cast.

In a few moments he would have the answer he believed was right.

The sinister red light lit his face and then… the other vial did not glow.

His blood did not react to Sepul’s.

He tried three more times.

But the result was always the same.

“Disappointed? You are not the first person who I’ve gotten close to and assumed that they are a long lost relative of mine, which I have had many in the past. Now please, destroy both of those vials.”

“I am very sorry for this. I came across new information about myself, I have a living relative, another child born of my mother. If I find out who she was, and who her forefathers were, I can find that half-sister of mine.”

“It is fine, but you are going to miss breakfast if you keep staying out here in the woods. Let me send you back inside.”

“Thank you.”

Harlan found that Adina had already gotten him a plate of food set in his place.

“So, were you working with Sepul again last night?”

“... I had other things to do.”

He was troubled, but only that. He felt a bit bad that it wasn’t a world shattering revelation, that he put that woman away as somebody that he didn’t know.

That her death at the hands of The Darkness, or rather her shadow, didn’t send him spiraling with fury.

Claude filled the silence left by his answer.

“Did you threaten my family?”

“I am sure it sounds like that when she says it, but no. I gave her a warning for their sake, not all of the skeletons they will find are entirely mine. If she wants to sic your brother and sister on me to find something then they should be aware of that and I hope that they can see it isn’t worth pursuing me as a target.”

“Harlan, that is clearly a threat.”

Everyone around the table agreed with Claude, even Adina.

“I am very sorry. That was wrong of me.”

“Are you?”

Harlan thought for an uncomfortably long time.

“I am sorry that it has upset you, because you are my friend, but I am not sorry that I gave the warning.

I gave it out of anger, though my intentions were not to threaten them.”

Claude wasn’t entirely sure how to react to him.

Harlan was honest at least, and he could somewhat believe that it was not meant the way that he said it.

But he had threatened his family.

“Just… don’t do that again. I think you don’t see what exactly was wrong with what you said, and that doesn’t excuse it completely, but it does dampen my anger about it.”

“Thank you for forgiving me. I won’t let it happen again.”

Yara clapped once.

“Good, you learned a lesson here that can help you in the future.”

“I will think about how my words come off to others more.”

Claude was unsure of Yara, since she had become more open with others she often came off as odd, had they the guts to actually voice this then she would’ve closed herself off again.

But, when she talked with Harlan there was a sort of reverence between the two of them.

“Before I forget, I’m not going to spend the weekend here. I need to go home.”

“Ah, when should I be at the gate offices?”

“Adina, I’m going back alone this time. I need a bit of time alone with my parents.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“No, I don’t actually. It isn’t anything to worry about, I just need to set my mind right, I need a little time.”

“Alright. I hope you have a nice time.”

“Thank you for understanding, I’ll still take you along next week when I do my monthly visit. And, before I forget. Keep this on you while I am gone.”

He had taken back the white orbs after the gala, such things were simply too powerful to be left on anyone but himself, now, he was giving one to her.

He knew that bringing her along wouldn’t be good for him, yet leaving her here would worry him until he was unable to clear his head.

“Are you sure?”

“The last time I left here without you, your father tried something. If he tries again, even after losing legal right to do so. If that happens, call Sepul, pull that thing out, and try not to think about what happens after that.”

Claude was ignorant of what the orb did, everyone was actually.

The others only really knew that it was something that acted as a last resort, even more than his war magic filled necklaces.

That alone made them narrow their eyes at Harlan both when he first showed them off and right now.

The lunch passed with little more than smalltalk.

Though Harlan had tried to keep things light, his past with things that greatly upset him meant they believed that he was hiding something and it unsettled them.

An upset Harlan was one on a hair trigger.

Yet he went about his day normally, he did not rise to any challenges, though his mind was clearly somewhere else as he did quite poorly compared to his composed self in his classes.

Not so much that his teachers asked what was wrong, but enough that they noted it in their weekly reports.

In the morning he had Sepul send him near the farm.

He made his way there by flight, a simple cast of hover and a jump, then he let the force just carry him as far as it could while he thought.

He was glad the boy wasn't a spatialist, nor an illusionist.

He looked at the vial of blood and it vanished as the void coursed through it.

It did somewhat pain his heart to lie to him, that he had the perfect chance to reveal himself, yet he hesitated, he did not know if it was the right time for him to learn.

Sepul would scribble a letter to Elise, asking her opinion in a roundabout way about if she had a brother.

Just as her mother before her, she was his last blood relative that openly lived, though she had locked herself up in her lab most days.

It had been months since he last saw her in person, he thought of tearing up the letter and just going right to her.

But she was impulsive, smart, and clever. If she saw his face for a moment as he asked the questions, even as a little hypothetical word game being played, she would see right through him and find Harlan in a matter of days.

The letter, full of many things and then ending with a hypothetical under the guise of him perhaps finding another wife or that he would find a husband for her, she would be less likely to find it out.

He hoped it would buy him months at least, or better yet, that she would be in the middle of a test or study and forget all about the question after she answered it.