Victorious in every step, Salem followed Arielle across the meadow, far out of range of the party. They took a detour through a wooded area and emerged before the house. The white behemoth structure, complete with its triglyph cornices and iron railings looked like something out of an antebellum book of architecture. Arielle clutched Salem’s hand in her own as she guided her around back and through the side door of a smaller two-story wing.

  Arielle paused at the door and cautioned, “We mustn’t let any of the servants see us. They tell Mother everything.”

  Salem couldn’t help but think to herself as she held Arielle’s hand, this girl is my sister. The idea was strange. Never before had Salem wished for a sister because she’d always had Beryl, Fable, and Yasmine. But this felt different—more different than she might have expected it would. Because this girl—this sister—shared her father. That exclusive club to which before only Seth and she had belonged, now had another member. Not only did Arielle share their father, she knew their father. She’d grown up with him. Traversing Oleander land hand in hand with this girl who, so far, seemed so kind, made Salem feel special. Cassandra, during their very brief exchange, was purely Atheidrelle’s daughter. Salem felt nothing in her which seemed remotely sisterly. But Arielle didn’t appear to have any of Cassandra or Atheidrelle’s cruelty.

  Salem was unsettled by what the house looked like on the inside. It felt suffocating. The openness which the outside promised had been bastardized inside. Dark curtains, bleak tapestries, and heavy gothic furnishings made the inside of the plantation house look like something medieval. The rugs, though no doubt expensive, were equally grim with their moody colors and frayed edges.

  Arielle seemed to pick up on her apprehension, pausing to say, “I know. My mother decorated to reflect her childhood home nearby. It’s depressing.”

  They maneuvered through a passage of rooms and came to the front entrance hall. Arielle motioned for Salem to wait as she poked her head around the corner, ensuring no servants were around. When the coast was clear, they dashed up the grand, rising staircase to a landing which split into two separate runs. The left side reached to what must have been the second floor. The right side went higher, perhaps to the third. Salem had to pause a moment to take it all in. There was something disturbing about the design—an architectural feat, no doubt, but the off-balance symmetry made her apprehensive. The archaic furnishings of the rooms they passed seemed to be waiting for Lady Macbeth. It was a sinister house, befitting Atheidrelle Obreiggon, but somehow Salem could not picture her father living there. A sudden pity for him came into Salem’s mind, as to what his life must be like in this dreadful house with that dreadful woman. Was he as despicable? She had always assumed so. Always hated him. But now, just moments from his presence, Salem didn’t think she felt that way anymore. Besides, Arielle seemed so nice.

  Soon Arielle stopped at a door down one of the corridors. She opened it and pulled Salem inside. The room was dimly lit, but far more appealing than the rest of the house. The large chamber was furnished with oversized chairs and a couple of sofas. Cheery art clung to the white plastered walls, lessening the severity of the rest of the house. A series of bookcases lined one side of the room and on the other side stood a tall bank of windows. This was his room. A haven in a sea of darkness.

  As her eyes adjusted to the dim lights, Salem caught sight of a figure standing in the shadows of the window’s heavy drapes. She couldn’t make him out. For a fleeting moment she thought to herself are both my parents shadows? Only once he stepped out enough for the overhead light to hit his face could she at last see what he looked like. He was tall and handsome. He looked exactly like Seth, or rather what Seth was sure to look like in another 25 years.

  “Daddy,” Arielle beamed, “this is Salem.”

  “You are exquisite,” he said. “More beautiful than I ever imagined.” He came closer toward her, examining every inch of her face as he approached. “You are your mother, in all her splendor. Please—sit down.”

  Salem took a seat on the nearest sofa. He sat down beside her—close, but not too close. A respectful distance considering the fact that they were strangers.

  “I’ll go,” said Arielle. “I know you two must want to be alone. Salem?” she asked timidly. “In case we do not see each other again tonight, may I call you sometime? I’d like the chance to get to know you.”

  “I’d like that,” Salem smiled as Arielle closed the door behind her.

  A thick silence huddled around Salem and her father once Arielle left. Each of them intensely ready to say all the things they had individually imagined they would say if presented with the other’s company. But now the words they had rehearsed a thousand times were lost to the stale, shadowy room.

  A couple of times one of them seemed on the brink of beginning to say something, but each stopped before anything more than a breath escaped their lips. What can you say after a lifetime of nothing? No interactions had taken place between them since Nacaria was cursed into the shadows by the Witches Council. Salem vaguely remembered her father from early childhood. Her mother had taken her to see him clandestinely a few times, but she’d been far too young to remember very much about it. She had so many questions. Too many. There was so much to know that finding a starting point was impossible. This man was her father, but was also the man who had allowed her mother to become damned for an affair he never should have begun. Yet Salem knew her mother was not an innocent victim—far from it. She’d tried to kill Atheidrelle Obreiggon and failed—thus ruining everyone’s life in the aftermath. How could Salem find the words to address all that needed to be said?

  Her father broke the silence first, making things a little easier to begin. “I am Xander Obreiggon. I know you know that, but I am at a loss for any other way to begin a conversation with you. I have wanted to see you very much over the years, but especially now. I am so deeply sorry for the loss of your son.”

  Her son. Michael was dead. For a second that had slipped her mind as her own childhood’s sadness over never knowing her father flooded back to her. Xander’s words reminded her that she was a grown woman now and not a frightened little lonely girl. She had been a mother…for a time.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Thank you. It’s been…difficult.”

  He took a deep breath, as if to fill the time during the newest onset of awkwardness. Then he spoke again. “There must be so many questions you want to ask me. And I you. However, first I must let you know that I am profoundly apologetic for never having contacted you. But under the circumstances…”

  “My grandmother has told me that you cared for my mother very much.”

  “No,” Xander interjected quickly. “No, not cared. Loved. I loved your mother immensely. In fact, I worshipped Nacaria. I have never loved another creature as much as I have loved, still in fact, love your mother.”

  The statement shocked Salem for some reason. She had not expected to hear such passion from this man—this man she’d hated all of her life. It had been he and his wife who destroyed her mother and took her away from Salem and Seth.

  “Then why didn’t—No. I don’t want to do this,” she said. “This is my father sitting beside me. I do not need answers now. I just want to savor this moment and remember it in every detail for the rest of my life.”

  “Salem,” Xander started. “We haven’t much time. There are things I have always needed to say to you and your brother. Things I want to say now.”

  “Then say them.”

  “Firstly, I do not want you to blame your mother for what happened. The fault was not hers alone. I could have stopped it, but perhaps I secretly wished for her to succeed.”

  “Don’t you love your wife?” Salem asked.

  “No.” He took no time in answering. His candor came as somewhat of a shock. For the first time ever in her life, Salem realized that Xander Obreiggon loathed his wife. Just sitting beside him on the sofa she could physically feel the intensity of his hate when he said her name.

  “But if you loved Nacaria, then why?”

  “Why?” he repeated. “Why did I advocate her being banished? Why did I join the Council in her condemnation? It is rather simplistic, my dear. I would much rather your mother be cursed than be killed. They were all pushing for that, you know. Pushing to execute her. It was I who convinced them to punish her rather than crucify her. Brimford Uding helped me to convince the Council.”

  “Why didn’t you help her?”

  “I did help her. Better to be cursed into shadows than be delivered into death. The affair was my fault. I loved her so much. I knew I should have ended it, and after you were born, I knew that I could not abandon her. We saw each other in secret. I saw you when I could. Then when Seth was born, I knew that my duty to Atheidrelle did not outweigh my love for your mother or you and your brother. I wanted to leave my wife, but she also had my child. My choices were clear—abandon Atheidrelle and Cassandra or reject Nacaria, you, and Seth. My choice was made, not too many people know that. I had decided to leave my wife. I say decided now, but at the time it was not even that much of a decision. I adored your mother. I would have left even if you had not been born. But there are rather complicated ties which bind me to Atheidrelle. Ties made by our fathers before we were married. Unknotting those knots took longer than I had expected. But I was in the process of freeing myself to be with Nacaria. I had made the choice. But Nacaria made one as well, without consulting me.”

  Salem found herself tearing up a little. Instinctively she moved closer to Xander on the sofa. She reached out her hand and clasped his. The moment her skin touched his, tears fell from both their eyes. After all these years, I am holding my father’s hand.

  “I didn’t know you were planning to leave to be with us. If mother had just held out, trusted in the love you shared, none of this would have happened. But she turned greedy and wanted you all for her very own.”

  “Had she waited even two days, she’d have found me on her doorstep,” Xander said. “Unfortunately, she took it into her own hands to undo Atheidrelle’s life. After that, it all came down to a question of your mother’s life or death. I swayed the Council, and she was cursed instead.”

  “It was Atheidrelle who pushed for my mother’s death,” Salem realized, bitterly. “She hated her because you loved her, so she tried to have my mother killed.”

  Xander shook his head. “Atheidrelle was the victim, Salem. You must understand that. I understand your contempt for her. She can be a very contemptible woman at times, but technically she was the victim. Nacaria had no right to do what she did. You do understand that don’t you, Salem? Your mother attempted to murder Atheidrelle by casting a spell and propelling herself back in time to undo Atheidrelle’s birth. She tried to erase her from time completely, as well as our children together. You do understand that your mother had no right to do that, don’t you?”

  “What she did, she did out of love for you. It was blind of her, but she wasn’t thinking clearly. I understand that far better now more than I did when I was growing up. I too have been recently blinded by love and attempted to alter the Natural Order.”

  “It was a crime, what she did,” Xander stated. “But I confessed our affair to the Consort, and I told Atheidrelle if Nacaria was executed I would bring you and Seth to live with us at Oleander. I struck a deal with her. I promised to leave you where you were. I promised to remain married to her. I promised to share my seat on the Council with her. And I relinquished all my rights to you and your brother, vowing never to see you again, all in exchange for her agreeing to the banishment.”

  Salem was silent. Taking it all in. She gave his hand a light squeeze and looked into his teary eyes. Salem went silent—considering everything she had just heard. Patting his hand as she rose, she walked to the window to stare down and out to the party still going on in the distance. She ran her hands through her hair and lifted it up slightly from her back, wringing her long locks in her hands.

  “Mother died anyway,” she said from the window. “It doesn’t matter whether she is a jar of dust on a shelf or a shadow on a wall. Either way she is still out of our lives. I see no difference than if they had hanged her.”

  Xander fidgeted with his hands on the sofa. His instinct was to go to his daughter and embrace her, but he had lost that right years ago. “Please believe me when I tell you that I had no idea her punishment would be so cruel. To be banished to the shadows of the very home her children had to grow up in--for you and your brother to have to see her silhouette every day yet never be able to talk with it, to hold it, to be comforted by it. It was a cruel punishment, not only to her, but to you children as well.”

  “It has been a kind of hell for all of us,” Salem revealed. “Over the years, Seth and I have taught ourselves to largely ignore her because it is far too painful to think of that ghost on the wall as our mother. I’d rather she had died.”

  Xander stood up shaking his head, “No, you mustn’t say that Salem. She will be released one day.”

  “When?” Salem screeched, whipping her hair around her back angrily as she turned to face him.

  “I-I-I don’t have that answer, Salem,” he stuttered. “No one knows when. That’s part of the punishment. Only the King knew when, and he is long dead now. But one day her punishment will be over.”

  “Does that matter anymore?” Salem asked. “I grew up. Seth grew up. She wasn’t there when we needed her to be. We never had our mother. Or our father!”

  “I am so terribly sorry, Salem.”

  Salem’s eyes carried a deep hurt in them that only now Xander could truly see. She had been through too much in her young life, and a lot of that was his fault. Maybe all of it.

  “I got married,” Salem continued. “I fell in love, got married and had a child. A child my mother never held. And now that child is gone. My husband is gone. I have lived and lost an entire life while my mother is still merely a shadow on a wall. It’s worse than had she died.”

  “Then it was all for nothing.” Xander said sadly. “All my pleading. My deal with Atheidrelle. If my bargain spared no grief for your life, then it was all for nothing.”

  “’I’m afraid it was.”