Angel must have seen my confusion, reaching my side in an instant. Her support was given freely, an arm wrapped around me, which I was a touch ashamed to admit, I needed. The truth of what I’d just heard had knocked me over, and I wasn’t sure which part was the hardest to handle.
Shadow’s focus was on his mother—the fuck?—but I sensed that he was aware of me as well. Dude was very good at multi-tasking.
“We should sit down,” Dannie said, sweeping her arm wide like she wanted to take in the beautiful land of the Nexus. Unlike the rest of The Grey Lands, here there was a plethora of energy and life. A taste of what used to span out across all of this land when it had been Paldeena.
No one said a word, not even Ixana, as we followed Dannie. She moved through what I would compare to a field, but there was no grass. The golden matter beneath our feet was soft, cushioning my boots, and as I leaned over to run my hands across the velvety, cloud-like substance, I wondered what it was.
It wasn’t sticky or weird to touch… It felt nice. Like I could comfortably curl up in a ball and sleep on this field that morphed from gold to red and back again with careless abandon. It was so much like Shadow’s eyes that I felt an odd pang in my chest.
Pushing that aside, I fell into the back of the group. Shadow and Dannie were up front, talking to each other, but I couldn’t hear what was being said.
As she led us deeper into the Nexus, I started to wonder why she’d wanted to see me first, before her own son. Had she known how destroyed I’d been over her “death?” Or was there another reason? Either way, I really hoped she had some answers to my many, many questions.
Deep down, I wasn’t actually handling the truth of who she was very well. She no longer felt like my Dannie; instead, she was the being who quite possibly knew all along what I was, and had kept it from me.
I felt betrayed. Was nothing the way I believed it to be? Was my father’s death connected to this as well? Did I truly know anything about myself?
“This spot will work,” Dannie called back for all of us to hear.
The “spot” was beside what looked like a creek, but the water was red and thick. Dannie pulled her brown leather sandals off and dropped her feet into it, sighing as she did.
“It’s a lot like a river back on Earth,” Angel whispered in my ear. “One made from gelatin.”
As I crouched and ran my hand through it, I was surprised by the cool liquid suctioning onto my skin. The deeper I went, the more icy and intense it was. After a few seconds, I enjoyed the sensation of it swirling against me.
“This is mist born, and the purest form of the original energy,” Dannie explained. “You should all partake in some, restore your energy. I believe you’re going to need it.”
Shadow and Ixana both scooped up a handful and drank it down. I hadn’t seen Shadow ever truly eat anything until this point, but he clearly was all over this.
“It’s safe for you, Mera,” Dannie told me.
As I pulled my hand free, it made a small popping sound emerging completely clean. Crossing my arms, I glared at her. “And why should I believe a word out of your mouth?”
I was gonna yell at Shadow’s mom, and honestly, I didn’t even care if it pissed him off.
Dannie got to her feet again, two pops as she pulled them from the Jell-O creek.
She approached me slowly. “I owe you an apology and explanation, and I promise both are coming your way. Energy first, though, since you’re carrying the burden of all the creatures. You feel a little… worn down.”
Shadow’s gaze snapped to mine, and he was looking me over like he was checking for broken bones. The exhaustion had been coming and going in waves, but I’d felt like I had been doing a fairly good job keeping it hidden from the world. All of the world except Dannie, apparently. Never could hide anything from that woman.
“How long have you been here?” Ixana asked Dannie, clearly giving zero fucks about my state of being.
Dannie’s eyes shifted color, gold bleeding into the familiar blue. I’d never seen that before… Had the gold in Shadow’s eyes come from her?
“I’ve been here since the day my son was stolen from me.”
I had the sense then that she didn’t really like Ixana, and I was stupidly pleased by that. Why had she helped her escape from Cristell, then? Out of loyalty to her son?
Dannie sighed. “It’s time for me to explain everything, and it’s going to be difficult for some to understand their role in all of this, but I would appreciate it if everyone could just wait until the end to yell at me.”
My lips twitched. That last part was definitely directed at me.
“I was not born a royal.” Her first statement was a fucking doozy. “I’m not even from The Concordes.” Shadow’s chest rumbled, but he remained quiet, as she’d requested. “I was born in this land. Right here, actually.”
Shadow jerked back, his face wreathed in confusion. “Only shadow creatures are born here.”
Dannie smiled, her expression much darker and fierier than I’d ever seen before. Shadow clicked on first, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s not possible,” he shot at her. “The Danamain is a myth, and your energy is that of a royal’s.”
Those flames in her eyes spilled out onto her skin, and she lit up like Shadow. The heat was intense, buffeting against us, pushing all of us back. I wondered if these flames would burn me or not. They felt the same as Shadow’s, but also different somehow.
“I’m like nothing that any of you have known,” she said, her voice deeper than I’d ever heard. And then, like a snake shedding its skin, she tilted her head back and spread her arms to the side as her body melted away.
In the place where Dannie had stood, there was a very different being. A creature? She was bird-like, with a long, flame-colored plume, and tail feathers that had to measure six feet in length. She was also covered in very real red and gold flames.
From the ashes, the phoenix will rise.
Dannie was a freaking phoenix, or at least as close an equivalent as I could think to a mythical creature who didn’t actually exist. But every image I’d seen back home of a phoenix was so close to Dannie, it was almost scary.
While I was having my freak out about what I was seeing, the others were as well, but once again, they had more information than me.
“It is the Danamain,” Angel breathed before she shook her head like she couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “No. Seriously. You’re a myth.”
Ixana breathed heavily. “You’re the original creature, Mainey? How? The literal Mother of Creatures?”
They knew her as Mainey. I knew her as Dannie. Between all of us, she’d been the Danamain. We just hadn’t had all the puzzle pieces to put it together.
Unable to stop myself, I stepped closer to my old friend, running my hands through her flames. As always, anything fire dragged me in and never let go.
The burn was pleasantly warm, and comforting, like I was the one coming home to my own mother. Once again, I panicked at the thought that Shadow and I were somehow related, and apparently only one person had the answer to that.
The Mother of Creatures.
