Thick, dead silence ticked on, uttering not a word, just as the storm just about to let loose its stormy furies. Zara could feel her racing pulse, each second a suffocating tension in the room. Gaining discomfort, she shifted and started darting her eyes from Damon's silent, immobile figure, his face unreadable, to Kai, whose gaze cut right through her as if he were ablaze.
"I did not want it to come to this," Damon said finally, in a voice very even and low. "But you have left me no choice."
Zara's breath caught as the two men stood thus-and Kai's eyes were so firm, his fists clenched at his sides as if to strike at any instant, and the air between them seemed almost to crackle with some silent threat. It was as if, in that one second, the world had held its breath, waiting to see which of these two men would make the first move.
"You knew," Kai spat, his voice shaking with rage and in betrayal. "You knew all along and yet you lied to me."
Damon's eyes softened for a moment. "That wasn't my secret to tell."
"That is utter rubbish, and you know that!" Kai exclaimed across the room, the raw, pained undertones running chills up her spine. "You kept this from me about her, about everything."
Zara jerked as if hitched on a string pulled by a puppeteer at the sound of her name, for she had always known that her past lay shrouded in mysteries, and standing here between two men who knew more about her than she knew of herself, the weight of those secrets pressed on.
"Damon, what is the meaning of this?" she hissed quietly. "What is he talking about?"
Damon's gaze met hers, his eyes carrying in their depths something she had never seen before-guilt.
"You deserve to know the truth, Zara," he said so softly and so full of regret. "But it isn't something you'll want to hear."
The room seemed to close in around her as his words sank in. She felt the walls closing in, suffocating her with questions she wasn't sure she wanted the answers to.
"Tell me," Zara said, her voice shaking, yet firm. "I have to know."
Damon let out a deep sigh, running a hand through his dark hair. "Zara, your life. all that you knew-it's all been a lie. Your family. they weren't who they said they were."
Zara's heart was racing with excitement; she had always felt there was something out of place in her family because of whispers of secrets at dead nighttime and strange, inexplicable encounters. She just never would have thought it would come to this.
"Qu-quien.quienes fueron?" she stuttered, her voice trembling.
Next to speak was Kai, and his face softened a little as he regarded her now. "They were part of something more. Something darker.
Zara's tummy somersaulted. "What's that supposed to mean?
Until this point, Damon had been cagey; he spoke now: "Your parents were involved in something called the Order of Eclipsed Hearts. They were into some really dark magic, some very dark rituals, and.secrets. They tried to protect you, but that was what killed them."
Zara felt the earth move beneath her feet. Parents-just so ordinary, so utterly mundane-even, a part of some secret order? Some secret society? It was like a blow to the diaphragm, the wind knocked from her lungs.
"No." she murmured, her head shaking. "That can't be true. They were good people. They—" They were, Damon whispered softly. They wanted to protect you from the darkness that they were a part of. But then it caught up with them.
Zara's mind drifted in and out of this insane reality, a feeling of the world coming down upon her-fragments of memory, every moment of her life now being parts of a big jigsaw puzzle that was getting dangerous by the day.
Kai spoke again, his voice at an even, low pitch: "Zara, there's more. You're. you are not just their daughter. You were to be the key.
"The key?" she faltered amazed and alarmed. "The key to what?
"Their power," Damon said. "The Order thought you had the power to unlock a hidden magic, one which could change everything."
Zara stumbled backward, her head reeling. "No.I don't want any of this."
Kai came up to her then, his eyes softening in understanding. "I know, but you no longer have a choice neither.
Damon's eyes went dark as he settled them on her; his voice was low, grave. "The Order is still out there, Zara. And now that you know, they'll come for you."
Under the weight of that reality, as it settled on Zara, her heart literally felt the pound of it inside her chest. Parents who had died protecting her, and now she stood here, the very darkness they fought to keep at bay closing in upon her from every side.
"Then we fight," Zara said, though her voice went even, as if her veins ran dry of fear. "I won't let them take me."
Kai and Damon stared into each other's face, and for the first time, something like a gleam of hope danced in their eyes.
"We are with you," Kai whispered, "but you still must steel yourself. This thing will not be so easy. Zara nodded, her head still in turmoil, but her heart centered around it: she wasn't a helpless little girl; she was powerful-things she wouldn't understand now but was ready to learn. As night wore deeper into her window, the satisfying recesses within Zara seemed to fill up with a resolution afresh: whatever terrors awaited her, she would face; she would find out who she was and fight for all that she loved. No more running, no more hiding. The time had come now to unravel the secrets that lay masked inside her heart. **End of Chapter 17**