Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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"My mother is still alive," Helia whispered, trailing her fingers across the parchment even though she knew how damaging that was to the old text. It was impossible to not touch something that had come from her mother's hands, that had shared the same space and life as the woman Helia had been searching for since the day she understood what a mother was. "But if that is so, why was I not told when I came here? Do the Sols hide her from even me?"
"I do not believe that is the case, Helia," Vice said, leaning her face on his shoulder and running his hand down her hair in a gesture that should be soothing. Everything was so wrong that Vice's touch barely felt like a whisper blowing in a typhoon. "Rivin Sol is Talamayas' sire and an eccentric, so it is likely he conveyed none of what transpired to his heirs. If his aim was to hide your mother and the dhampirs then it was best to never speak of them. More ears means more danger, regardless of whose they were."
That made sense, but her insides were still boiling. Pyre also deserved to know that her mother was alive, but he could not see this journal. It would destroy him to know that Rivin Sol and her mother had had some sort of vampire mage fling. Helia groaned as she thought about it. Pyre might be a commanding general, but he loved his family, his mother more than anyone. Helia would have to tell Pyre that she found her mother in a different manner than this damning account of her abandonment of her family and sordid affair with the original Sol.
"I need to see her, to talk to her, to touch her. How can I find this Rivin Sol?
"You don't," a voice yanked Helia's attention up, and she tucked herself into Vice as Shan Sol came into the room. With his dark skin covered by white silk and his hair tied neatly behind his head, he appeared much more civil than he'd been bare-breasted on the battlefields.
"You were listening to us," Helia near hissed, flame magic filling the air in the room, but Shan did not so much as flinch. The man was as much a leader here as Talamayas and not someone she could beat in a fight, so she simmered down and bottled her frustration.
"I was the one who gave Vice access to my father's personal libraries in the first place. Never seen a man beg so hard for books, and I was admittedly curious about the Cinder diary left behind. My father does not like mages and keeps away from them if at all possible, as you may have noticed from the desert domain that he created, isolated and protected within anti-magic. The journal just showing up a few decades ago puzzled me enough to relinquish it to Vice for investigation."
"Why don't you want to help me find Rivin Sol?" Helia asked, watching his every movement for clues that she was sure he'd withhold. She didn't quite expect the laugh and him bending forward from the force of it. It shook him so badly that it took him a moment to find stability and air for words.
"Believe me, no one wants to find Rivin. I could take a few stabs at where he is, likely track him down given a week, but it will be time wasted. Vice is kind in calling Rivin an eccentric. The man's a straight up lecher, likely on fifteen drugs at any given moment, and he gives new meaning to the word indulgence."
