"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."

"That's your sire?" Helia asked with a grimace.

"That's my father. You can't choose who donates sperm to make you." Shan shrugged with a twisted smile. "Rivin is a good man. Shows up when it matters, cares for his people, but he also enjoys all the pleasures one can have as a vampire in excess. He's yet to find a woman who can straighten him out.

"Regardless, we don't need him. If he used his power to shield your mother and the dhampirs, I can find their location. As his direct kin by blood, I am the only one who can give you passage as well. That is all you want from him correct?"

"I guess." That just about covered it, but she now had a different view of the Sols.

They were the strongest vampire house with some of the most terrifyingly overpowered warriors, and yet their leader was a drug addict? Could vampires be addicted? And what did Shan mean by lecher? The journal had called Rivin a 'wild untamable soul'. Ugh. Nothing like her mother being one in a bunch of women Rivin slept with just for the fun of it. The journal had made it seem like Rivin had done her mother a kindness while Shan gave the impression that he'd sleep with a table as long as it had nice legs.

The enigma that was Rivin Sol consumed her mind even as she spoke with her father and Horus about what she'd learned. Some parts she left out, and how she got the information, she also kept to herself. Shan found the caves without much difficulty once he knew he was looking for Rivin's magic, and he said he could take them at any time.

It was up to her to figure out who was going.

Horus refused outright, saying that he had no interest in a mother who would walk out on her family like that, but Pyre said he would go with her. One of them was married to Nova, though, so much of it was obligation on her father's part after he'd learned that Nova had chosen not to come back for the last twenty years. Sure, she could get away with helping the dhampirs, but to never return was the issue with everyone including Helia.

Harper Song offered to go with them the moment he heard they were planning to visit the caves. It was more for his stuff that he'd left behind than any care for Nova, but he knew the passages well enough to avoid them getting lost. Magic barrier or not, the cave system was a mess of wrong turns to death according to Harper and Helia liked living, so their party ended up as, Pyre, Vice, Harper and her.

Shan led them to the cave entrance in the early evening just because he didn't want to wait the whole night to get this over worth. Anything related to Rivin, Shan wanted to keep as far away from himself as possible, but Nova and the dhampirs could be a problem for the Sols, so Shan was dutifully checking it out. Shan kept the trip entertaining though. Every twist in the corridors dictated by Harper having him spit another slew of slurs in reference to his father.

Drunk whoremongering eccentric was among Helia's favorites.

Though most of Shan's griping was behind a wall of nervousness as she walked with Vice so close his shoulders rubbed against hers. That was all that told her he was there because he'd become invisible just in case they walked into anything dangerous. The dhampirs her mother had saved and raised were the same ones who had hunted down and injured her father irreparably, so they weren't fluffy kittens waiting in the caves to be pet. They were lethal, and according to Vice, had no aversion to cutting up Cinders for entertainment.

Helia couldn't help but glance back at her father as he walked at the back of their tiny column. With Harper leading, Shan was just behind, and Helia was in the most protected position with Vice around her. All the way back there, in his sling and walking silently, Pyre looked lonely. For so many years, he'd spent near every waking moment at her side, and she hadn't seen him much since she'd left to manage their house.

"I'm fine, Helia," Pyre said with a sigh, and she turned front and center with a pounding heart. No matter how injured Pyre was, he was still a grand mage and noticed minute things like a twist of her chin backward. "Tormenting Stone has proven as entertaining as harassing Kopje all through my physical therapy. I assure you, I lack for nothing here."

"If you say so," Helia grumbled, knowing full well that his mind was spiraling on the wife he'd thought dead. If Helia had to eat those journal pages, Pyre would never find out about Rivin sleeping with her mother.

The door to the living areas came on them all too fast, and Helia's heart resumed its parade dance as Harper stepped forward into a large room. Ghost gave her a pat on arm to let her know he was scouting ahead, and she kept a few feet behind Harper as three people met their Song tour guide. Of them, Helia could only see one.

"Harper," a stern female voice said, her mother's voice, and it stole her entire focus. "I was told the Sols captured you some time ago." Nova Cinder came into view around Harper, and her mother was everything Helia had expected.

Long mage robes of the Cinders shifted as Nova lifted a hand to her chin and felt around Harper with her light magic, searching even now for any threat to herself and her children. Even with the robes, Nova Cinder's frame was thin like Helia's, and identical dark red curls spiraled in neat columns to her shoulders. Most were tied up behind her head, and with the dirt on Nova's hands and face and the rough patch on the ground behind her, it appeared she had been gardening. Cinders were better at burning things down than growing them up, so that was something she'd had to learn to live down here.

Sharp eyes made of flame left Harper the moment Nova's magic touched her, and a gasp escaped her mother's lips. "Helia," Nova whispered, and just that word in her mother's voice sent tears flooding down her face like she was a child.

Helia was frozen at the doorway, her hands grabbing rock and her eyes glued to the ground the moment she knew her mother would be looking at her. Nova Cinder had left a baby in Pyre's arms, and Helia was now the youngest grand mage in history, a proud and powerful warrior. Was that what her mother had wanted for her? What would she think if she knew that Helia loved a vampire and had defended the Sols as a Cinder? Though her mother had accepted Riven, she was still a Cinder and a grand mage who fought vampires all her life.

What if Helia was disappointing after all these years?

Cold fingers threaded between her hands and the wall, and Stone helped her stand up straight by offering his body as support. With him invisible, it looked like some phantom was puppetting her, and that would freak her mother out, so she stood as much on her own as she could. She clutched Stone's hand because it would merely look like her fist was clenched, and it still took his solid fingers on her chin to lift her face so she could meet her mother's eyes.

With all the waterworks, she couldn't make out her mother very well, but she felt the approach of the strong light magic. As her mother closed in, Stone shifted a hand to her back to keep her steady and left the other in her hand for emotional support. Helia needed it as Nova lifted her hands to the sides of her face, and Helia leaned in to wrap her arms around her mother.

Helia had been so angry that her mother hadnever come back for her or tried to communicate that she was well at least toher children over the years, but all of that paled in comparison to the need totouch her, to squeeze her tightly and know that she was alive, and to cry onher chest. All of the frustration at her mother's leaving faded as Nova heldher back, her hands cradling her head against her chest and her light magicswallowing her.

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