Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 89222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Even if it feels like it is.
Like it’s my calling.
Like he’s not so much as meant for me but designed that way.
Half.
Yeah. I’m starting to get that shit.
“I’ve got news about you,” Dae gestures her hand my direction, “and your mother.”
An urge to cut some of the tension prompts me to poke, “You’re not gonna do the whole good news, bad news thing?”
“No…,” she quietly begins, fingers fiddling with the end of her French braid, “I’m learning that the subject of news when dealing with patients who can speak is much more subjective than dealing with those that don’t.” The sight of my quirked eyebrow encourages her to add, “I was a veterinarian on the other side of The Fog.”
“It’s how they met,” the male next to me mutters prior to protectively wrapping his arm around my lower back once more. “And rest assured, Dae, I’ll tend to her if said revelations require me to.”
I deliberately lean into the embrace to give him a non-verbal thanks. “Go ahead. What’s the news?”
“Well, I reviewed the medication you’ve been taking, and the main active ingredient in it is witch-haze.”
“Do you mean witch-hazel?”
“No, I mean witch-haze. When you’re reading the label, which is from this realm by the way, there is no l. And on this side of The Fog that particular ingredient is literal. You are ingesting a potion—so to speak—that places your mind and senses in a haze. Because you’re half-orc, half human, you are born with an unbreakable tether to all things you’re just now realizing are real, but by ingesting witch-haze—and in alarmingly high doses—suppression occurs. It feeds on the specifically human portion of your brain. You become convinced anything fantastical is either a figment of your imagination or that you’re in a delusional state on the brink of a psychotic break. It temporarily places you back in a Foglike state of mind or again—to be literal—a haze.”
“You’re shitting me,” I thoughtlessly mutter.
“The older you get, the higher the dose needed to keep your orc side subdued.”
“That’s why I can completely understand the voice in my head, isn’t it?”
She slowly nods.
“Is that why she doesn’t smell or look like a half-orc?” Ptur inquires without regard or care to how offensive the question sounds.
Before I can snap over the comment, Dae professionally does. “Mixed genetics are just that, P. And while there are traditionally more likely outcomes of offspring, there are very few absolutes especially on this side of The Fog. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is that shifter essence trumps out all others meaning whatever child you have with whoever you have it with will be a shifter. Now, when it’s a shifter and shifter mating, that’s when shit gets really murky in the medical books. They don’t seem capable of predicting which creature a child will become or if the genetic makeup will fuse, like it did with your water dragon cousins—though technically mermaids aren’t shifters but you see what I’m saying.”
I whip my head his direction at the same time I croak, “You mean to tell me there are more dragons out there?!”
“Of course. Our legacy alone has four separate branches.” Rather than allow for more interrogating from me, he asks the question that’s lingering near the front of my mind. “Why would someone purposely put her back in The Fog?”
“In my most professional opinion?” Dae cautiously retorts. “I would hypothesize—based on very little-known information about this situation –, that her heartbroken, human father—who probably had no idea how to raise a child on his own let alone a child that was half otherworldly—did what he thought was best. Even Sleepers who are now technically Awakers don’t typically have enough information to guide or lead or even assist in the processing of any of this. He—to my best guess—probably assumed this was the safest route he could take to protect his only child. The only piece of his wife he had left.”
An unprecedented sympathy starts to seep down my spine.
I get it.
I wish I didn’t.
I wish I could stand on my soapbox and preach and condemn him for having other options, but I can’t.
I know my father.
He is by far the gentlest soul I’ve ever known. It pains him to squish fucking houseflies, so there’s no fucking way he’d do something to deliberately hurt me.
And this does hurt.
Learning there’s not only an entire other portion of myself I haven’t been able to connect with is awful in itself, but learning that I’ve basically been gaslit into questioning my own sanity defines the very definition of the word.
The only bit of comfort I can clutch onto in the situation itself is knowing he takes the same pills.
For what I would assume is the same reason.
We’re going to have to talk about this.
In-depth.
But not yet.
Not until I can talk to my mother.