Chapter 146 THE TRUTH

Chapter 146 THE TRUTH
KAI

I had been so consumed by Lyra’s situation, by the letter, by my father’s half-answers, that I had not registered what was happening around me in the space of the Academy. The uncertainty in this room had been building for weeks. I had been walking through it without seeing it.

And nobody was closer to understanding what was actually causing it.

Ser Thorian raised his voice above the chaos. “Class dismissed.”

I waited.

I sat in my chair while the hall emptied around me, while the other riders packed their things and moved toward the doors with restless, unsettled energy. I waited until the hall was nearly empty and my father was gathering his materials from the lectern, and then I stood.

He saw me waiting and something in his face changed.

“We need to talk,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. “Alright,” he agreed. “Follow me.”

We walked in silence. His footsteps beside mine were even and unhurried and I kept pace with him and said nothing. I thought about what I was going to say when the door closed.

His office. The familiar desk, the window, the chair across from it. He set his books down and went directly to the window. His back to me. His hands at his sides.

“What do you want to talk about, son?”

The word son hit differently today than it usually did. Today it had weight. 

“The letter,” I started. “It told me she went into the realm of magic. It told me she felt betrayed and that she was leaving. It told me she was angry.” I paused. “It said nothing about how she died. Nothing about the realm causing it, nothing about the sequence of events. And you told me she didn’t come back out the way she went in.” I looked at his back. “The only thing that is clear to me is that you betrayed her, which still means you could have had a hand in her death, had a hand in all of this, you could be the reason this corruption is spreading and threatening every dragon and dragon rider!”

He was quiet for a moment.

“You’re right,” he said and turned from the window to look at me directly. His eyes were bright in a way I had never seen from him. They shone with unshed pain and tears “A lot of the disasters that followed were my fault and you deserve to know.”

“Then tell me,” I insisted.

“Yes,” he said, and his fists came down at his sides, clenched, his jaw locked. His voice when it came out was nothing I had heard before.

“I know I should have told you the truth, I am sorry I did not but… I could not bring myself to admit that it was my fault your mother had fled to the realm that caused her death. I had pushed her to her death” he let out a shaky breath. “You found her diary”

Kai blinked, “how did you…?”

“I kept it as a memory of every horrible thing I did to her. I knew it was missing but I said nothing, I wanted to remain in denial for just a while longer. You are grown now my son and you deserve to know, I only wish that you do not judge me too harshly for what I did. Sit down”

I sat down and so did he.

For a moment he looked at his hands. Then he looked up at me, and he began.

“The first time I saw your mother was on the first day of the Choosing. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t have the confidence to find out.” He paused. “She wasn’t chosen that year just like Lyra. But I saw her across the ceremony grounds and I didn’t forget her face.”

He told me about the tournament where mother had returned a year later. “Stormweaver descended from the sky in the middle of the tournament. He was great and large, the crowd was frozen in terror and your mother was in the middle of it. She was eighteen years old and trembling, trembling like a leaf in high wind but still she stood her ground when everything in her must have been screaming to run”

“She lifted her hand toward his nose,” he said, and the memory was visible on his face, softening something that was usually very hard. “She just… reached out. Still terrified and she touched him. And the bond snapped into place in front of every academy in the kingdom.”

I listened.

He told me about being assigned as her guide because he was the best rider in his year, just like I was and had shown the most composure during Stormweaver’s appearance. He had helped mother guide Stormweaver down to the academy field without any directions. He told me about spending every day beside her, learning who she was.

“Other riders were afraid of her,” he said. “Not of Cadence herself but they were afraid of what she represented. Of what Stormweaver meant and what emotions running high near a storm rider could produce in the weather around them. They kept their distance.” He paused. “All except Carew.”

I looked up from my hands. “Who?”

“Valtheron Carew,” he repeated. “A first-year rider along with your mother. He approached your mother a few months in. I thought initially he was using her prominence for his own benefit, attaching himself to the most significant bond the Academies had ever seen. But he was genuinely interested in her. In Stormweaver, in the nature of the storm bond and what it was.”

The name sat in the air.

I had never heard of it before. There was no recognition, no prior context, just a name.

“He and your mother spent hours in the library,” my father continued. “Researching storm dragons, what little existed about them in historical records. I was jealous.” He said it plainly, without sugar coating it. “Carew was a true friend to her when most people were too frightened to come close. I resented him for it.”

He stood and went back to the window, and his voice continued from there. He told me about the council’s pressure on Cadence to control Stormweaver. About the Academy’s fear. About Carew’s suggestion to my mother to cross the threshold, going into the realm of magic, using the storm bond’s unique relationship with the realm to understand it from the inside.

Your mother told me about the idea at lunch one day,” he said. “I was against it immediately. Nobody had crossed the threshold intentionally. It was completely unknown territory. I made her promise me she wouldn’t go.”

“She promised,” I said.

“She promised,” he confirmed. “And she kept it. She told Carew she would not go. He was furious.” Something moved through his expression. “He shouted at her. Walked away. I didn’t understand then why it mattered so much to him.”