CH.81

Enzo’s focus drifted to the unconscious form of Knox with heavy significance.

"It would seem that prophecy is finally coming to fruition after all this time. The cycle continues to turn, the scales still unbalanced...for now."

A wry smile twisted Enzo's lips, though it held no trace of warmth or humor. "Of course, my own existence was something of an...anomaly to the Delgaard lineage, even back then. I had already begun to suspect there were certain...discrepancies about my heritage that didn't quite add up."

He arched a perfectly shaped brow. "I never could figure out why I looked so strikingly different from the rest of my royal kin, for one. Nor why I seemed to possess abilities and an affinity for the ancient forces that far outstripped even my celestial father's prodigious gifts."

Enzo's expression sobered once more as his gaze grew distant, his deep baritone taking on a wistful timbre. "My mother Aylah...she always did have an uncanny knack for sensing things beyond the veil of mortal perception, even before the visions began manifesting more strongly in her later years." His features softened at the mention of her name. "She was the one who first realized the truth of what I was destined to become, though she never had the chance to share it before..."

He trailed off, something indiscernible flickering across his harsh features.

Killian couldn't help the curiosity burning within him as he processed everything Enzo had revealed so far. "I've heard the stories, the legends about how the guardians were supposed to be among the most powerful beings to ever walk these realms," he began with his brow furrowed in contemplation. "They are practically indestructible and impossible to kill through conventional means. So how did the Eastons manage to systematically wipe out so many of them during their rise to power?"

"You're not wrong, boy," Enzo murmured. "The guardians were, in fact, nearly unstoppable juggernauts of fundamental power manifested at the height of their reign."

He arched a single raven brow meaningfully. "However...even the mightiest forces of creation have their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities to exploit if one is cunning and ruthless enough in their determination to emerge victorious at any cost."

Killian felt an involuntary shiver trickle down his spine at the weighted implications behind those ominous words. There was a strange, haunting undercurrent threaded through Enzo's tone that seemed to reverberate through the space itself.

"The usurpers did not seek to overpower the guardians through sheer brute force alone, as that would have been a fool's errand doomed to failure from the outset..." Enzo trailed off, his face etching the harsh planes into a mask of barely restrained fury as he spat out the next words through gritted teeth. "They employed far more cunny and underhanded tactics by sowing seeds of mistrust and discord. The turned ally against ally through masterful deception and manipulation until the order began fracturing from within."

A muscle ticked along Enzo's razor-sharp jawline as his expression took on a faraway cast, as though peering through the veil of centuries to those pivotal moments of upheaval with perfect clarity. "Only once the cracks had been systematically cultivated, the fissures spreading like a metastatic cancer through the guardians' ranks, did the traitors strike. They exploited those fault lines with ruthless precision, cutting down the guardians one by one when their defenses were crippled by the betrayal of their own brothers and sisters in arms."

Enzo let the weight of those words resonate through their souls. "By the time the truth was realized, by the time they saw the puppet strings being pulled by the real powers orchestrating their downfall...it was already far too late."

His expression twisted into a sneer of utter contempt. "The order had been decimated, their ranks reduced to a scattered, broken handful of survivors forced into hiding to escape the relentless purge of their birthright."

Killian felt the weight of those words resonate through his very being. He could see the bigger picture now, the grand path that Enzo had been painstakingly piecing together for them as he related that crucial event.

"We're the ones," he murmured, half to himself as he glanced between Seven and the unconscious form of Knox with new understanding dawning. "The bloodlines that seer foretold would one day rise again to help restore the balance."

Killian wasn't sure whether he should be grateful to his guardian lineage for the gifts that had kept him alive through countless brushes with death at Knox’s hands...or resentful for the burden of such a fateful mantle being thrust on his shoulders.

Seven, meanwhile, had been weighing his own contemplations, his gray eyes flickering briefly to Knox's frighteningly still form before refocusing on Enzo with renewed intensity burning in their fathomless depths.

"If what you've said about beings like yourself only being able to sire children with their fated mates is true..." the younger vampire began carefully, "Then how can Don possibly be your biological grandson?"

Seven's brow furrowed as he tried to reconcile the contradictions and inconsistencies. "From the story you told us, Queen Minerva later married your traitorous brother Valerian after...well, after everything went down with the coup and the slaughter of the original royal lineage." His eyes narrowed slightly. "Which would make Valerian the more likely grandfather to Don by blood, wouldn't it? Unless there's something you're not telling us..."

A heavy, weighted silence seemed to descend over the infirmary like a suffocating shroud.

Enzo's expression remained utterly calm. His hard features remained an impenetrable mask of regal stoicism, hiding any sign of the emotions raging beneath his detached exterior.

Long, agonizing moments stretched into a small eternity before the man finally decided to break the stillness. "You raise a fair point," Enzo murmured at last, something indiscernible flickering across his amber orbs. "The truth is...I cannot say for certain whether Knox is my biological grandson by blood...or Valerian's ill-begotten get."

He paused, seeming to carefully weigh and consider his next words. "I had already been exiled into the wilderness by the time Minerva gave birth to Myra - Knox's birth biological mother."

Enzo swallowed the lump in his throat. "I never had the chance to meet the girl, to look upon her face and see whose bloodline ran strongest in her veins with my own eyes. I was already gone long before any of that unfolded, cast out into the unknown like a leper while my own kin schemed and murdered and betrayed everything our lineage stood for."

There was an undercurrent of bitterness, of simmering rage threaded through those words that seemed to reverberate through the space itself like the discordant echoes of wrongs left to fester across the centuries, a wound that had never truly healed over the eons.

Enzo's expression smoothed once more into his impassive mask as he visibly reined in his emotions with an almost palpable force of will. "It wasn't until after the siege, after the blood had been shed and new monarchs crowned themselves through treachery over the ashes of my family's lineage..."

He shook his head slowly. "That was when Meredith and I finally met again after years had gone by. She tried to explain, to fill in the missing pieces about Myra and the circumstances surrounding Knox's birth into this world so many generations later."

His burning gaze shifted almost subconsciously to the unconscious form of his grandson.

"From what Meredith was able to piece together, Myra performed some manner of powerful spell or ritual in her final moments - an act against the very cycle of perpetual rebirth that had long governed the immortal races according to the natural order desperate bid to safeguard the future of her unborn child."