“Yes. Ryan.” His eyes now cold with the memories flicked back to her. “After Ryan raped her, he didn’t kill her. She began to suspect what he was about and had regained enough strength to break the chains he had her in. She escaped him and came back to me.” Cyrus squeezed her hand. “We discovered she was pregnant. An astonishing thing… but I am old enough to know that it had happened before. A strange quirk of fate that a soul eater can beget an Ankh with child. I have no idea how Ryan Winslow came across the legends that I knew to be true but he had, and he had deliberately kidnapped and raped Merrit to impregnate her.”
“Why?” Eden croaked, afraid if she let go of Cyrus’ hand she would start screaming and tearing at the walls.
“For now let me just explain the basics. Ryan was determined to have the child and he came back for Merrit and took her. By the time I tracked them down… my wife was dead, the babe cut from her body. He took Merrit’s child. I searched a long time. I never gave up. Determined to find Merrit’s daughter.”
Tears splashed over Eden’s lids as she brushed her fingers over her birthmark. “Me. He took me.”
“Yes. You are a half-breed. The legends call you one of the Unforeseen.”
“Bu… I-” She gave up, pulling back from his grasp and curling into herself. The room seemed to spin a little as she tried to process it. Her mother had been Ankh. Celine wasn’t her mother. Her mother had been a noble immortal warrior. Perhaps a woman who might have loved her. Eden choked on a sob.
“Eden-”
Cyrus was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by the handle turning. The door swung open and Noah walked in. Her heart seemed to stop. He looked different somehow. Instead of the usual scruffy jeans and t-shirt, he wore black jeans and a tight fitting black thermal top that accentuated his sinewy musculature. His hair had been cut shorter too, seeming blonder, and he wore a noticeable silver ring on the middle finger of his left hand. Eden frowned. Cyrus wore a similar ring.
Her heart squeezed in renewed hurt and anger at this Noah before her. Everything had been an act, hadn’t it, right down to his clothes. Eden refused to meet his gaze as a tall blonde girl trailed in at the back of him, vaguely familiar, accompanied by the tall man who had rescued Noah at the ceremony.
Cyrus stood up at their entrance. “Eden, you already know Noah-”
“No, I don’t,” she bit out.
The Princeps ignored her. “And this is Noah’s father, Alain.” He motioned to the young guy next to Noah.
Eden blinked. “Excuse me?”
Cyrus arched an eyebrow. “We’re immortal remember. We stop physically aging after a certain point.”
“How old are you?” Her curiosity peaked.
Cyrus cleared his throat. “I am roughly twenty five hundred years old.”
Her jaw dropped. “Holy…”
Alain straightened, seeming displeased to be imparting the information, but Cyrus’ eyes bored into him with command. “I am roughly thirteen hundred years old.”
Eden blinked, listening to his accent. Now she understood why Noah’s surname was Valois. She thought it was a French Michigan thing. But clearly it was just a French thing.
Noah cleared his throat. “I’m seventy years old.”
Still, Eden wouldn’t look at him. Her eyes fell on the blonde. Why was she so familiar?
“Ah.” Cyrus nodded at the girl. “This is Romany, Noah’s girlfriend, she is Neith.”
It was like a punch to the gut, followed by an uppercut.
Romany. Noah’s girlfriend. Neith.
Eden’s fingers dug into the quilt around her, desperately trying to keep any expression from her face. But the shock reverberated through her body as if she had jumped from too great a height.
She felt betrayed all over again. She literally felt like he had reached inside her chest and crushed her useless excuse for a heart in his lying, scheming fists.
Eden guessed that answered any lingering doubts over whether she had been falling for Noah.
“So she’s mortal?” Eden asked instead, pushing this new heartbreak out of sight, her lip curling as she glared at the girl. “She’s one of those that kept attacking me.”
“No,” Cyrus insisted. “The Neith that fought you and Noah are members of a rebel faction I’m trying to shut down.”
“Rebel faction?” That sounded so ridiculous. And yeah as one of the Unforeseen she was aware of the irony in judging anything else ludicrous.