Control (Book Seven) (Fated Saga Fantasy Series)

Control, Book Seven

Fated Saga Fantasy Series

By Rachel Humphrey – D'aigle

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 1

Meghan Jacoby could not remember th
e last time she felt happiness.

Real happiness.

Yes, there were many terrible things happening in her life, as well as to people she cared about deeply.

A
nd yes, she was currently standing in a run down shack in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where her life was headed except that a prophecy seemed to be determining every move she made.

Nevertheless,
at this moment, all she could feel was giddy relief.

In the chaos of discovering that
Jurekai Fazendiin, the original and most powerful of the immortal Grosvenor, was her father, she had forgotten one thing: she also had a mother.

A mother she had
finally met. A mother that had, so far, fully lived up to her expectations. Meghan also gained an older half-brother in Ivan Crane. A young man that was possibly the most loyal, albeit pain in the butt and irritating, friend she had ever had.

Without even realizing it
, she had come to think of him as a big brother and now, he really was her big brother. There was something comforting about this fact.
Because he was good
.
His mother, their mother, Isabella Crane, was good
. She had sacrificed everything to make the world a better place, to keep it from becoming a world no longer worth living in.

The blood pumping
through Meghan’s veins did not belong just to evil. She was not doomed to follow her father’s footsteps. She was not doomed to turn out like her brother, Colby.

Ivan
had still not spoken since announcing that she was his sister. He just stared, bewildered, confused and petrified.

Sebastien
Jendaya, on the other hand, wore an ecstatic grin. Whether he had believed Ivan previously or not, in his claims that he had never liked Meghan
like that
, there was no argument now. Of course, this didn’t mean she would just automatically forgive him; he still had a lot to make up for, including keeping secrets from her.

L
ike the fact that it was he who’d attacked Colin and stolen the Magicante while they were in Grimble. Or that he could transform into a bird and had been spying on them since they had first come to live with the Svoda.

And as if that was not enough to need forgiveness for, there was also
the fact that he had known magic existed, and pretended not to, as part of his duties to the now deceased Amelia Cobb. He had befriended Meghan and Colin per her orders, and then spied on them after they were taken in by the Svoda. And at a time when all they wanted to do was return home and find out the fate of their Uncle Arnon.

Sebastien
had known Arnon’s fate and did not share this information.

He hated himself for this
. At the time, he was following orders. But why hadn’t he found some way to tell them? A secret message. Something. Anything, to relieve some of his friend’s fears.

As he thought about it, the idea of her ever
forgiving him seemed like a distant idea that was falling further out of reach. Yet he could not help but feel some measure of hope, knowing that Ivan was no longer his competition.

A gangly Jae Mochrie kept his distance
, but watched everything unfolding through the strands of his stringy hair, trying to make sense of it all. He was too young to remember what Ivan’s mother had looked like. He was just an infant when she died. Although she hadn’t died at all, only left. The resemblance between Meghan and Isabella was striking, especially seeing them side by side with their bright red hair, ocean blue eyes and milk-white skin.

Meghan sighed, satisfied to relish this happy moment.
She wished she could bath in it, soak it in, and somehow bottle and keep it.

She heard Ivan shudder.

He staggered backwards, swaying a little.

“
I think I’m going to be sick,” he stammered, sprinting out of the shack.

Meg
han’s smile dropped and she moved to follow him.

Isabella stopped her.
“Give him a moment.” There was a tremble in her voice. “I have shattered my son’s world. He is realizing that so many of the beliefs which forged his life are not real.”

Meghan nodded, pretending she understood, and in part
, she did. Ivan had always had plans, intentions, but nothing he had ever really shared with her. She had pieced together enough to know that at least some of this regarded bringing down Juliska Blackwell, to show the Svoda that she was evil. But to what extent beyond this, she did not know.

“I should speak to him
alone,” Isabella said.

“Okay,” replied
Meghan. She was not ready to let her mother out of her sight but realized that Isabella and Ivan would need some time alone. As Meghan thought about it, she could not fathom what Ivan was feeling.

Meghan had only very recently discovered that her mother was even still alive, and her mother had believed Meghan
dead for almost thirteen years.

Isabella Crane had volu
ntarily left Ivan. And even though this was to potentially save the world, she had knowingly and willingly left him and his father behind to do so.

Ivan
had not ventured far. He stood just outside the shack, staring blankly into the woods, its many barren tree limbs indicating the onset of winter. Pine trees dotted the countryside, their needles still intact, giving some cover from the frigid chill, a chill that seeped inside Ivan’s bones, sending another shudder down his spine.

The
shack wasn’t much of a buffer zone between the group inside and the two outside, or the November chill. The cracks and gaps in the walls, along with the missing front door, made it easy to overhear Ivan and Isabella speaking.

Nona rubbed up against Meghan’s leg, purring. Meghan reached down and picked up her Catawitch, nuzzling her as they listened in silence to the conversation outside.

Ivan didn’t turn to look at his mother but he heard her approach behind him. “I didn’t even know you were a Firemancer,” he whispered.

“It skipped a few generations and I hid the fact that I was. I think everyone started to believe the Firemancer gift had died out of my family line.”

He spun around, teary eyed, and cleared his throat.

“Why hide it?”

“Many reasons, which I will explain.”

“I’m sorry,” he said unexpectedly, bowing his head.

“For what?”

“I don’t know
how to feel. What to ask you. I...” he stopped, sucking in a shaky breath. “I haven’t seen you since I was a child, barely old enough to remember what you looked like.”

“I
van,” she said, lifting up his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I am the only one that needs to apologize. Although I cannot imagine a thousand apologies will ever be enough to make up for what I’ve done to you.”

Ivan stepped back, unable to keep eye contact with his mother.

“I’m not mad,” he told her. “I don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just...”

“D
on’t understand,” she finished.

Isabella
took in a deep, determined breath.

“If you’ll let me, I would like to explain.”

He nodded, his throat feeling too tight to vocalize his reply.

She began by explaining the same things she had shared
with Meghan. The visions she’d had of the future, how the Grosvenors’ immortal children brought with them uncontrolled chaos and destruction, which she felt certain could be contained by bearing those children herself, instilling as much love and compassion into their lives as she could. She told him about bringing Colby and Meghan into the world, giving up Colby when he was just five to his father and how she had hid Meghan in the orphanage, where she was then found alongside Colin.

“
When I left you, I faked my death, obviously,” Isabella told Ivan.

“How
did you do it?”

“A spell
.”

“You weren’t afraid they’d do something with your body? Ivan asked
her.

“It
wasn’t my body they found,” she explained. “I used magic on someone recently deceased... I won’t go into specifics, the details are not important. But I used magic to make everyone believe it was my body they had found.”

“Including me and D
ad,” Ivan added.

“Including you and
your father. My biggest regret is that I didn’t see what would happen next. That I didn’t see your father would die so suddenly, and so soon after I left you. I left you alone. With no one. With nothing.”

“
I was taken in, taken care of. The Mochries,” he said. “I’m sure you know that already. The young man you don’t know inside the shack, he is their eldest son, Jae. They took good care of me.”

“But they are not family. Not blood. And after I learned what you saw, about how your father died, I feared what would become of you. I didn’t want you to be alone.
I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

“I...
I started to believe that you’d been killed too,” Ivan admitted after a moment. “After I was old enough to understand what had really happened to my father, I started to doubt whether you’d actually died of an illness. It just seemed so hard to believe. I started to think that both of you had seen something, or learned something you shouldn’t have,” said Ivan. “Everything in my life after that was to prove what had really happened to you. And to show everyone what Juliska Blackwell really was. It didn’t matter that I was...” he broke off, looking for the right words.

“That you were alone,” guessed his mother. “Being alone made it easier. Having nothing to care about made it easier.”

For being absent nearly his entire life, she seemed to know her son well. He could not respond.

“I never stopped looking in on y
ou,” she continued. “I never stopped thinking about you. Worrying about you. Questioning, sometimes by the minute and the second, if I had done the right thing.”

Ivan, the boy who
had always been about doing the right thing, could not reply. He didn’t know what to say. He glanced past her, seeing Meghan’s silhouette just inside the doorway.

Isabella caught his glan
ce.

“After your father died and Meghan had been born, I had hoped that somehow you would find each other. That she could become a part of your life even if I could not. I made sure that my locket went with her to the orphanage, hoping
that one day you’d find it. You might not have known who she was, that she was your sister, but I had hoped the locket would at least bring you together. I used magic to pass along a message to you, hoping to spark your interest, so you would search for it.”

“Via the Song Spinner, Catrina Flummer,” said Ivan.

“Yes. I feared greatly what would happen to you, as you grew older. I wanted you to have something,
someone
to care about. A reason to live. To care. I could not keep Meghan with me, she needed to be hidden from her father, but I wanted you to find each other. Alas, as I have said, I thought she died and had given up hope that you’d ever find out the truth. I should have known she wasn’t dead. She was the daughter of an immortal after all. But I assumed that because she was so young that she could die... another regret... and then I started to see what was happening to you, Ivan. I knew. I knew you would too easily sacrifice your life for what you thought was right.”

“I was ready,” he
befuddled himself by admitting. “I always expected to die. My life didn’t matter as long as I proved what really happened. And now I find out that the theories lurking in my head were just that, theories. There was no conspiracy surrounding your death, other than what you created yourself...”

“And your father was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Isabella said. “But that doesn’t change how he died, at the hand of the Scratchers
, which
you
found out Juliska created. You were the first to discover this treachery. Not everything was in vain. And without any interference or help from me, your sister found her way to you. Even if you didn’t know it until now.”

I
van looked up again, Meghan had shuffled into the doorway. Nona remained in the shack along with Sebastien and Jae; they felt as though they were eavesdropping on a private conversation and wished they could leave. At the same time, the information they were learning was mind blowing.