Sweat was mildly forming above Sydney's brow as she watched Diana take a seat on the bed, directly beside the pillow Fletcher's knife was hidden under. One wrong move and she'd unintentionally find it.

I can't let that happen.

Still, her feet stayed firmly planted on the other side of the bed, unsure of how to approach the woman's notion. Talk? It was possibly the very last thing Sydney wanted to do with her, yet somehow also the first. Surveying the room and all possible exits, concluding that as long as Diana was there then escape was impossible, she accepted that talking was all she could do in the moment.

Get the answers you can.

The second she got the chance to leave, she would, regarsless of what she had or hadn't learned from the mercenary queen herself.

"Well, talk," Sydney demanded, sounding guarded, and rightfully so.

Shaking her head, causing her short blonde hair to brush against her shoulders, Diana raised a hand, crooking one finger as a gesture for Sydney to come closer. Scoffing, she stayed put, not willing to go anyway near her.

Sighing, Diana lifted her eyes from the floor and stared straight ahead at her daughter. "I just want to untie you," she said, her voice tired. "I'd rather not have such an important discussion while you're bound at the wrists. Not exactly how I pictured our reunion, if you get what I mean."

"Funny," Sydney chuckled dryly under her breath. "That may be the first thing you said that I can agree with."

There was a bitter undertone to Sydney's words; one that didn't go unnoticed by Diana. Her daughter rarely thought of her parents, simply because the abandonment only upset her, but there were times when she did. She wasn't inhuman, and as a child, Syndey had spent many nights gazing up at the old ceiling of the orphanage, imagining a day her mother or father would come to reclaim her.

They never did.

Standing in a room with Diana now, knowing the limited truth about her birthgiver that she did, Sydney cursed life for cursing her. Of all the possibilities, why did it have to be you? Why did you have to be in league with Denali? You killed Liz!

All those thoughts stayed locked up in her mind, not risking to provoke the woman before her whose face was morphed into one of pleading. Clenching her jaw, Sydney reluctantly began to lift her feet, steadily bringing herself closer to Diana. However, regardless of what the action could imply, Sydney's dark blue eyes remained heavily distrusting on the woman.

With outstretched arms, Diana hastened to remove the restraints from around Sydney's wrists. The moment the feet of thick rope thudded to the lightly dusted floor, Sydney recoiled; the pressure of Diana's thumbs smoothly caressing the skin made raw by the binds startling her.

"What are you doing?!" she snapped, rubbing her own wrists.

For a split second, she could have sworn she heard Diana whimper as her head fell, her hands tremoring in the air before falling limply to her lap.

"Sydney, I'm your mother," she exhaled. "I'm not trying to hurt you."

"It's a little late for that."

"I know, and I'm sorry about your friend-"

"Family," Sydney corrected, feeling that the word 'friend' wasn't strong enough to amplify her love for Liz. She was my family. Always will be. "And you know I almost died in that bombing, right? The one that killed Liz and many others, it almost killed me, too. So, next time you don't want to hurt me, don't blow a bomb right in front of me!"

"You weren't supposed to be there!" Diana exclaimed, her dark brown eyes burning Sydney's identical blue ones. "Denali said you'd be with some doctor, therapist, or something. You were supposed to be out of harms way."

Scoffing, Sydney shook her head before sneering, "Imagine the irony, if I had died in your attack. You would have never got to see how close you came to breaking your precious daughter."

Taking in a deep breath, Diana sat back down on the bed, the sound of springs creaking in the tense air. Meters away from her, Sydney leaned her back against a wall, crossing her now freed arms in front of her chest. The closer Diana scooted to the pillow hiding Fletcher's knife, the harder Sydney tried to keep her eyes away from that very spot. Don't draw attention to it.

"That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about," Diana began. Unfortunately intrigued, Sydney stood a little straighter, her interest piqued. "Despite what you think of me, I want you to know the truth."

Ha, that's unlikely.

"The truth about what?" Sydney questioned, eying her suspiciously. These were the moments when she had to remember to be strong. One commonly used tactic of the enemy was deception, and considering who she shared the room with, Sydney knew manipulation wasn't out of Diana's wheelhouse.

"About why I had to give you up. I didn't have a choice, Sydney."

When the statement left her mother's lips, it took everything in her not to step closer. She's lying. Don't trust her. While the inner child she'd kept locked away deep inside cried out for the words to be true, Sydney knew better than to take anything the enemy said as fact. She would not be naive and hope for things. She had to assume the worst of Diana, for her own safety.

"Everyone has a choice," Sydney gritted out, her fists clenching at the implication just made.

"True," Diana admitted, taking in a breath. "I should have said, I hated having to make that choice, but believe me, it was to protect you."

"Oh please!" Sydney spat, stepping closer unintentionally. "You can't just abandon me for eighteen years and then say it was for my protection!"

"But that's why I did it. To protect you."

"Stop saying that," she growled in response.

"My life..." Diana started, gesturing at the room. "...this place...and these people? Sydney, you wouldn't have been safe here. They would have found out about your father and deemed you tainted. My family would have killed you, or stuck you with one of the brothel woman to be raised as such. I couldn't let that happen to you."

Scrunching her face up in confusion, Sydney stumbled back, realizing how close she'd gotten to Diana. She struggled making sense of everything she just heard.

"What?" Explain. "That doesn't make any sense. If I'm actually your daughter-"

"You are," Diana interjected.

"-then why would your family want to kill me?" Sydney finished, her expression wild with wonder.

"Because..." she hesitated. "Because..."

"Because what!" Sydney snapped.

She could feel it. For once, Sydney could actually feel an answer to a question that had haunted her her whole life. The emotion on Diana's face, the pain, the turmoil, the brokeness, was not something possible of being faked. Regardless of how much hate Sydney had for her, there was no denying that this woman, the woman she looked so much like, was her mother, and as her mother, she had the answer.

"Why did you have to give me up?" the question came out weak, soft, almost feeble. The complete opposite of how Sydney always carried herself. Yet, in the face of her greatest enemy, she was rendered utterly vulnerable.

"There's something you should know about us Moraas, Sydney," Diana began, wiping her face of the few tears that made an appearance, surprising Sydney when she saw them. "From our forefather, King Avi, down the line of ancestry, all the way to my father, the Moraas have hated the Western Region. When Isaac Freeman was abdicated of the throne and exiled, he took a large portion of the kingdom with him. Avi had expected them to die in Shadows Peak, but they didn't. Their survival was the biggest thorn to his existance and reign."

Not sure where this history lesson was going, Sydney stayed silent, taking in every detail for a possible contradiction. If Diana was lying, she would use her own words against her.

"With his resources and time allocated to rebuilding and restructuring Galdon, Avi was not able to focus on Freeman and his new settlement. But, he knew how to hold a grudge. Avi taught his children to hate the westerners, and that mindset was passed down through the generations...all the way to me and my brother, Dorian."

"You have a brother?" Sydney asked, caught up on that piece of information.

"I had one," Diana said solemnly, looking down at the floor. "The only Moraa I ever loved...outside of you, of course." When the last statement left her lips, her dark brown eyes lifted to Sydney's face, despite looking lost in a memory.

Looking away, because of the intensity of Diana's stare, Sydney pointed out, "None of this answers my question."

"It will." Standing up from the bed, the mercenary queen stalked over to the only window in the room. They were multiple stories from ground level, and the crisp air whipped her hair back from her face. "My mother, my father...their brothers and sisters...they all hated westerners, much like how Galdeans today do, except they were extremists. I guess I was too...for the first half of my life."

"The first half of your life?"

Turning her back to the window, Diana nodded. "When I was barely twenty, I went with a unit my father had dispatched to the west. He thought it would be good for me to see the way we dominated the poor westerners. I had no qualms with the idea, either. If it gained me my father's approval, I'd do it."

"Even rip innocent woman and children from their homes?" Pausing at her line of questioning, Sydney laughed bitterly. "Pfft, what am I saying? Of course you would. You still do."

"Yes, I do, but not because I want to." When Sydney gave her a look that showed her disbelief, Diana continued, "Before my brother died, he had a son...I believe you've already met him?"

Clenching her fists, Sydney nodded. The light blonde, black eyed monster that dragged her and Brooke here flashed in her mind. His smug smirk causing her to grind her teeth in detestment. "Carter," she seethed.

"Yes, Carter, the rightful heir to the throne."

At her words, the image of Carter Moraa ruling the mercenaries played in her head and Sydney's eyes widened in horror. No matter how much she hated her mother, she knew Carter would be a far worse substitute.

"Dorian made me promise to look after his son before he died of pneumonia. Carter was only ten, and the spitting image of his father. No matter how many times I wanted to leave, I couldn't. I reasoned that once Carter was of age to relieve me of the throne, I would leave and find you, but then I saw it. The same hatred for the west that my father had. I couldn't let him take over."

"And you expect me to believe that you're, what, different than the rest of them? That you don't hate the west just as much as they did?" Sydney voiced, eying her carefully.

"Not all of us hated the westerners. Dorian and I...we knew they were our enemies, politically, but we didn't see the point in killing them, in raping their woman. We had plans. Plans to rule differently. To rule with less emotion and more reason."

"And how's that working out for you? As well as you had hoped?" Sydney asked sarcastically.

With a sunken posture, Diana shook her head. "Things don't always go as one hoped." Another blanket of silence fell over the two women before the older added, "But, one day, while in the Western Region, I'd gotten in an argumemt with our group leader and ran off. I half expected to be murdered by the so-called savages of the region, but I quickly found that they were nothing like what I'd been taught."

"What happened?" Sydney asked with genuine interest. It was hard to deny that Diana's story sounded eerily similar to hers when she first encountered westerners. "What changed your mind?"

"Your father did." With a shaky breath, Diana turned away, gazing back out the window that ironically faced west as she prepared to say the name she hadn't spoken in eighteen years. "Victor."

Author's Note: Hi, guys! I hope you all read chapters 7 and 8 before this, since they were published together. I just wanted to thank you all for continuing to support this story.

I know it's been a while, but I'll just put it out there. "Victor" should be ringing a lot of bells for you guys ;]

Also, consider following me on instagram: ayemaccc

I plan to post teasers and quotes for this story and others, soon. Thanks again!

Fun fact: I was Sydney's age when I started this series, and now I'm Casey's age 😃. (5 Feb. 2019)

-Mac