Gideon's Promise (Sons of Judgment Book 2) (24 page)

Gideon remained standing in the center of the room, watching as the sun slowly set outside the window. He wasn’t wholly certain what he was supposed to do, because, while he had been admonished and berated by his father in the past, he had always been able to shatter the tension with a witty comment and that would be the end of that. He had never, to his knowledge, ever been a disappointment, or at least, never been told so to his face. The fact that he had hurt his mom was the sharpest sting of all. All his life, his number one lesson had always been to take care of and protect his mother, to always make certain he never did anything to cause her grief. He had been raised with the knowledge that women were to be respected and cherished the way his father respected and cherished his mother so it was no surprise that his father was so irate by Gideon’s behavior towards Valkyrie. After being verbally smacked by Octavian, then Magnus, and finally their father, it really hit Gideon that he truly was an asshole.

Insides clenched with fury and self-loathing, he limped his way to the kitchen doors, only to have them swing open to reveal Reggie.

“Dad says you’re helping Mom with the applications tonight.”

Gideon began to groan in protest, but stopped. Now was not the time to get whiney, even if application sorting was the worst job on the planet.

His mother was already in her office, glasses perched on the edge of her nose as she shuffled through the mound of papers in her hands. There was another pile by her elbow and Gideon knew there was even more filed away in the cabinets behind her. They would need a three hundred man crew to go through all of it. As it was, his mother only allowed fifty passes a week. Two hundred a month. Considering this was country wide, it was a fairly small number. Other gates released thousands a week. His mother had one rule; no harming children, but seeing as how demons didn’t really care how old their meal was ... the choices were fairly slim. Nevertheless, the endless hours of shuffling through each application were the reason no one else wanted to do it.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?” She raised her head and squinted blue eyes. “Hello darling.”

She didn’t seem angry with him, but she wouldn’t say even if she was.

Gideon edged deeper into the room, feeling every bit the scolded child. “Dad said ... I came to help you with the applications.”

“Oh!” She straightened in her chair. “That’s all right. I think it will be an easy night.” She patted the pile next to her elbow. “See?”

Gideon shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. “Well, can I help you summon them? You know we don’t like it when you do that alone.”

His mother smiled, then chuckled. “You four...” She shook her head. “You really need to stop worrying about me. I will be fine.”

“We know.” He walked deeper into the room and dumped his frame into the chair across from her desk. “But we can hardly allow you to have all that fun alone.”

Laughing, she lowered her attention back to the papers in her hands.

“Mom?”

Papers forgotten, his mom raised her head once more and waited for him to continue with curiously raised eyebrows.

Gideon dropped his gaze to the hands folded between his knees. “I’m sorry for what happened earlier. It was my fault and it never should have happened.”

“No,” she agreed, slipping her glasses off. “It shouldn’t have. Your father and I raised you boys better and that display was ... atrocious.”

It was clear that she wasn’t going to cut him a break.

“I told Dad not to let her stay here,” he mumbled. “She drives me crazy.”

A frown creased the space between her eyebrows. “Gideon, you are a grown man. Your behavior is one I would expect from a spoiled child. Valkyrie is your mate. No matter what the circumstances, she deserves your love, devotion, and respect. I understand the situation is not ideal, but your father and I expect you to behave like a gentleman.”

Gideon sighed. “I don’t like hurting her.” He scrubbed a vicious hand over his face. “It kills me, but when she looks at me and I see it in her eyes...”

“See what in her eyes?”

He lifted his head. “Love.” He snorted bitterly. “I don’t know how the hell she could still love me after the things I’ve said to her, but it’s always there before she remembers and hides it away.”

His mother’s head cocked to the side with her deep exhalation. “Sweetheart, whether we are imprinted, or not, a woman can sense her mate, just like you can sense her. Deep in our hearts, we know you belong to us and no matter what, that love we feel for you never goes away.”

“But I need it to.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, trying desperately to scrub away the vile taste of hatred. “If he knew she loved me, he will kill her and that’s only if she’s really lucky.”

His mother shook her head ever so slightly. “Arild Devereaux may be the god of his kingdom now, but kings like him have very short reigns.”

Gideon propped his weight forward. “Yeah, well, he’s king now and until he’s not, I have to protect Valkyrie. I can’t let her love me.”

“Would it be so bad?” she murmured.

“Mom—”

She put her hand up, cutting him off. “What have I always told you boys?”

“Mom...”

“Humor me.”

Gideon exhaled. “Your heart is your greatest weapon.”

“Your heart,” she repeated. “Not your sword. Your heart. There is nothing more powerful. You can conquer anything, win any war, as long as there is hope in your heart. Why do you think there is such a strong connection between love and hate? Because both can make, or break, you. But love can make you do impossible things.”

“You mean like convince Arild Devereaux I’m worthy of his daughter?”

He had to give it to his mother, she almost kept a straight face. Almost. But even she couldn’t help the slight twitch just under her right eye, a barely concealed grimace.

“Maybe you should start somewhere smaller,” she admitted almost sheepishly. “Like talking to Valkyrie.”

He couldn’t help it, he slumped back in his chair and threw up his hands. “What good will that do?”

His mom shrugged. “Maybe nothing, or maybe...” She inhaled deeply, held it and rolled her shoulders again in another shrug.

“Or what?” he teased. “She’ll leap into my arms and beg to be mine forever?” He laughed, the sound was bitter and sharp even to his own ears. “Trust me. That is very unlikely to happen.”

A look of sorrow passed over his mother’s face as she watched him, searching his face like she was trying to find something that wasn’t there. Finally, she pursed her lips, tipped her head to the side and offered him a halfhearted smile.

“Ultimately, the decision is yours,
mo ghrá
. We will respect it.” She reached out and stroked the side of his face. “But take it from someone who has tasted a love made for poetry and love sonnets, there is nothing you cannot accomplish with your mate by your side.” She pushed to her feet. “Now, let me finish with our applicants and you can accompany me to the summoning chamber.”

“Mom?” He tilted his head to the side, watching her as she rifled through her papers. “Can I ask you something?”

Without glancing up, she nodded. “Of course.”

“You know when you reported Riley to the summit?”

She nodded again.

“They never followed up, but they came with the guardians to check on her after she’d become a strigoi. Maybe I’m over thinking this, but they seemed more concerned about her being unclaimed and a strigoi, then her being a human and finding Final Judgment.”

Carefully, his mother set her glasses down gently on the papers. She met his gaze squarely when she spoke. “What does the summit fear most?”

Gideon frowned. “Disobedience?”

She shook her head. “An uprising,” she answered for him. “The idea that there are creatures like the strigoi, powerful and unstoppable and they can do nothing about it ... now add Riley to that mix, unclaimed and outside the treaty. I am not surprised they are so worried.”

“Yes, I understand that,” he said. “But why didn’t they come sooner? When we summoned them because of Larry, they arrived within the first month.”

His mother shrugged. “They do not perceive time as we do here in the mortal realm. Maybe they had an opening,” she joked. When Gideon didn’t laugh, she sighed. “Who can say what the summit thinks? Just be thankful we got as lucky as we did, or Riley wouldn’t be with us now.”

And he was thankful, but something still didn’t sit well with him.

S
he didn’t return that night. She didn’t return the next night, or the next. Three months passed without a single word from Valkyrie. It was on the fourth month that Gideon charged the doors of Arild Devereaux’s fortress and came face to face with Serinda at the front gates as though expecting him. She stood loosely, relaxed even, but it was the hand she had curled around her sword that warned him.

“I have come to see Valkyrie,” he announced.

Serinda, if surprised by his request, which was doubtful, never so much as batted an eyelash. “She is preoccupied.”

“Where is she?” he demanded. “I have not seen her in weeks. Is she all right?”

Blue eyes so much like Valkyrie’s narrowed. “Forget my sister, Caster. She will never be yours.”

“That was not my question,” Gideon shot back. “Where is she??”

“That is not your concern. Valkyrie is not your concern. You would do well to leave.”

He shook his head. “I am not leaving until I have seen her.”

“Then you will be waiting a very long time!” Anger sparked behind her stare. “Father will never allow it.”

“I do not care what your father will allow!” He calmed his voice when her fingers tightened on her weapon. “I must see her.”

“Well that is impossible,” she said evenly. “Because of you, Father has banished her to the pits. Even I have no inclination when her punishment will be lifted.”

“What is the pits?” he demanded.

“A place no Harvester ever wishes to go.” She paused as she eyed him with a sort of deliberation he did not appreciate, kind of the way he would eye a spider workings its way up his bed towards his face. “It is our purgatory,” she stated. “A place greater than hell itself.”

“Why is Valkyrie there?” he asked. “What is she being punished for?”

“For considering to leave her home.”

Gideon frowned. “How could he possibly know about that? We were alone...” It hit him like a punch. He glowered at her. “You told him!”

She didn’t so much as batted an eye. “I do not lie to my king, nor does Valkyrie. She confessed.”

Muscles tensed with hatred. “It was me! Why is she being punished for what I did?”

“Because that is the way of things,” she answered lightly. “She is being punished for not beheading you for even suggesting such a thing, for not honoring her heritage. For not respecting her king.”

“Then punish me!” He took a step forward. “Let her go.”

“That is not how it works, Caster. She must be purged of her affections, of her weakness. We cannot be strong with love in our hearts. It makes us soft. A soft warrior is a dead warrior.”

“Valkyrie isn’t weak!”

Rather than answer him, she took a step closer, lowered her voice and for that split second, there was something almost human behind her eyes.

“If you care about my sister, you will let her go.” She stared hard into Gideon’s face. “If you do not, Father will keep her down there in the darkness until the end of time.” Her voice dropped even further. “We are beings of light. We cannot survive in darkness. Valkyrie will not survive at all. She is too much like our mother. Her love for you will destroy her. He will destroy her to set an example for the others. He will never let her leave, Gideon. If you love her, as I know you do, you must protect her.”

A cold knot formed in his stomach. “How?”

Her expression was grim, but fierce. “Never allow her to love you.”

T
he summoning chamber was located at the highest point in the house. It was unclear even to them how many floors the manor possessed, but the circular room overlooked the entire structure and seemed to be about fifty stories from the ground. On dark, cloudless nights, it was like peering down into a bottomless chasm. The fact that the arched openings all the way around were windowless and the only way into the chamber was through a trap door in the floor made it feel like you could fall straight down into nothingness at a single gust of wind, which there was plenty of. Summer, or winter, it was the coldest place in the entire house.

Gideon gritted his teeth together to keep them from chattering as he watched his mother light the four black candles around the rune carved with chalk in the center of the room. The wick caught almost instantly and sparked a dazzling shade of purple. While they shivered and held against the breeze wafting around them. His mother murmured quietly under her breath, whispering the incantation to opening the gate. The glow shone across the blue surface of her irises, tinging them purple and giving her an ethereal appearance. Aside from his father, she was the only one familiar with the chant, which suited Gideon just fine. Were it up to him, or his brothers, the doors would never open.

With the last candle lit, his mother stepped back. She blew out the match and dropped it into the metal tin of sand she kept in the corner for that purpose. The chamber filled with the scent of sandalwood and death. Columns of gray smoke rose to the curved ceiling, choking the air with the sickly sweet stench of rotting meat roasting under the hottest summer sun. But even then, even as he had to stave back the urge to cover his face, or throw up over the ledge, under the rancid tang was the smell of night flowers, musky and laced with just the hint of a meadow in full bloom.

From below, light lanced around the sharp edges of the life rune. It shimmered in the candlelight, a pale halo expanding from the gray stones. Instinctively, Gideon took a step back. His hands slipped into his pockets and he cursed when he found them void of his blades.

His mother caught his eyes from across the altar. She offered him a small smile before focusing once more on opening the gates of hell. She reached for the stack of applications she had set aside and took up the first one. Looking into the heart of the altar, she said the demon’s name out loud. The flames shuddered in response as though she’d blown on them. The very air thickened despite the cutting chill that seemed to swirl around them. Tendrils of his mother’s hair lifted and swept around her face and her shoulders. The papers in her hands fluttered like the frantic wings of a bird. She gripped them tighter. But her gaze remained level, firm as she watched the rune splinter and cave inward. The void left behind was an illuminated hole too bright to look directly into. A form rose from its depths, dark and hunched. Gideon couldn’t see the face it had concealed beneath the hood of its cloak, but its hands were gnarled, bent and scabby like lizard skin. There were no fingernails, or knuckles, just rows upon rows of bends. It drew in a rattling breath.