A Gift from the Goddess by Dawn Rosewood novel Chapter 90

Chapter Ninety 

The pack vault. 

Reserved for only fully sworn–in ranked members and Elders. It was a place where the Winter Mist‘s most valuable possessions and secrets were kept, passed down through all the generations. 

It was my first time coming down here in this life and, out of all the people, I never expected to be accompanied by Brayden; someone who was neither a full ranked member nor someone I particularly liked. I knew he would take this experience to engorge his ego but there didn‘t seem to be much choice. I refused to spend my time doing nothing when there was so much going on. Thea or not, I would still make myself useful somehow. 

The vault was huge and packed from top to bottom with everything one could imagine; books, important documents, items, weapons, heirlooms. A collection more diverse than probably all other packs in the country. Now, considering what I knew about the lineages, I wondered if perhaps our ancient origins were to be thanked for that. 

But, more so than what we could visually see, I couldn‘t discount the smell of the old literature surrounding me. A scent that I was so familiar with and took immense comfort in. If I closed my eyes, I could even recall some of my fondest memories spent in libraries; once somewhere I took sanctuary in. 

“So, this is the pack vault,” Brayden said next to me as we entered through the large metal door. 

The undertone of excitement in his voice was impossible to miss but I brushed it off, doing my best to ignore him. Or at least I tried to. 

He walked directly ahead of me towards a cabinet of artifacts and was about to reach out and grab one when 

“Don‘t touch anything,” | snapped, his hand pausing only inches away from a chalice. “I have no choice but to let you in here but you‘re sorely mistaken if you think this is some sort of reward. You‘ve been tasked with keeping an eye on me. I don‘t see where in that order it says you can take a private tour of the vault. I o me, that would be considered doing the opposite of what you were instructed to do.” 

Brayden‘s jaw tightened in disapproval but he dropped his hand nevertheless. For a Gamma heir, he sure didn‘t show much promise in the ways of using his head or following directions correctly. Perhaps his position was something I would need to reconsider in the future. 

“This way,” I said, and started walking towards the back of the room. 

Thadn‘t explored everything in here but I did have a basic understanding. I knew it was sorted by age and then into each individual category within that e.g. books, artifacts etc. In the past, I‘d only stuck to modern history, focusing on war and politics, so it was my first time seeing the very back. 

And it did not disappoint. 

A sharp inhale of surprise passed my lips as I saw what was waiting for us. The books were as beautiful a s they were old, someone obviously taking the time to embellish the covers long ago. By all accounts, they were stunning 

“I‘m going to start reading through these. There is an armchair in the corner if you want to get comfortable,” I said to Brayden and sat myself down at a nearby table. 

And so it began. Reading carefully through the books around me. They were far too fragile, and the majority written in the old language I could only vaguely understand, but I persevered regardless. If 

anything seemed remotely useful then I knew I could always ask Elder Luke to translate it correctly for m e later. 

But with the success rate I was having, that seemed like a small chance anyway. 

After an hour of reading, I was yet to find anything with even the tiniest mention of Thea, the lineages or even just Selene in general. Everything I‘d found was mostly historical and spoke about the pack affairs at the time of writing, or just the pack itself. 

And Brayden wasn‘t making the process any easier. 

He sat in the corner, staring daggers at me the entire time. Presumably making a point at how miserable h e was and attempting to make me as uncomfortable as possible. 

Admittedly, it was working. 

“Okay, fine!” I finally burst out, frustrated from both the lack of results and his behaviour. “You win. I can‘t focus with you acting like a bored toddler.” 

He perked up in his chair immediately but was still hesitant, waiting for me to give him verbal permission. “...What do you mean?” 

“I mean go and look around. Leave me in peace to read and, in return, I won‘t tell Aleric you wandered off,” I said, defeated. “But I‘m serious when I say don‘t touch anything. If you accidentally break anything then you‘ll have the entire council demanding punishment for your carelessness.” 

He didn‘t need to be told twice, suddenly a new spring in his step as he basically skipped down the aisle and out of sight towards the weapons section. 

I sighed at that. Very typical. 

Turns out that being left alone didn‘t prove to be that much different in the end. I still struggled to find anything useful. 

However, though not overly important, I did find it interesting to learn that the Knight family, Cai‘s ancestors, were once a part of the Winter Mist. In fact, it looked as though the two territories used to be combined but broke off somewhere down the line. The ‘silver lake‘, which eventually became the pack‘s namesake, used to be connected to the same river system that flowed through the Winter Mist. Would they then be the Silver River pack if still connected today? 

For some reason, something about that was nagging in my head, as though I should be remembering something I couldn‘t. What could be so important about that though? 

“Aria,” Brayden then said nearby, returning already from his short expedition. 

But I didn‘t look up, trying to remember the thing I was close to forgetting. I couldn‘t lose focus and he was literally the last distraction I wanted right now. 

“Aria,” he then said again, more urgently this time. 

“What!?” I snapped and looked up furiously. 

...And there she was. 

Thea. 

In the flesh. 

And an all–too–familiar looking sword in her hand that was being held against Brayden‘s neck, keeping him hostage. The ancient sword that once beheaded me in the past. 

My body instantly froze in shock, almost as though time had stopped. Of all the moments she could have chosen to appear, now was by far the worst. 

With Brayden at sword point, myself in handcuffs, and all of us so far underground inside the vault that no 

one would hear us call for help, we were basically at her mercy. The real question was how she managed t o get inside the most secure location of the entire pack without anyone even seeing her... and why she was choosing now to appear. 

“Aria,” she greeted, her sickly sweet voice sending dread through me. 

Calm, I needed to remain calm. She couldn‘t touch me which meant I already had the advantage. From everything I‘d learned, she would always bet everything on me acting emotionally without much thought; something that her influence moulded me to become. 

“What do you want?” I asked and slowly started to stand up from the table. 

“Ah–ah, don‘t do anything stupid now,” she warned, pressing the blade deeper against Brayden to makem 

e sit back down. “I came for the sword but this little one caught me in the act. Told me you were still wearing your new accessory. Of course, I couldn‘t resist corning over to say hi.” 

Brayden told her I was still wearing the handcuffs? So she didn‘t already know? That was interesting. 

“What‘s so special about the sword?” I asked, keeping my voice as even as possible. 

“Oh, this?” she said, looking it up and down, “This right here is an instrument of my most recent troubles. The weapon forged by my daughter in the Silver River, now imbued with the souls of Gods upon my children‘s deaths.” 

Silver River? 

And then I realised why that sounded so familiar earlier, ‘Argyros‘, as in the Argyros River from the origin lore Selene showed me, translated to ‘Silver‘ in the modern tongue of today. The river that used to connect the Silver Lake and the Winter Mist was the very one that had birthed our kind. We were once ground zero, 

So what made the sword so special that Thea wanted it? 

Well, unfortunately, I could already begin to answer that without thinking too hard. And I didn‘t like what it meant for me. 

Under the table, I started to tug on the handcuffs, knowing that getting them off was possibly my only chance at survival. But freeing myself would prove to be almost impossible. Not without…. 

“It astounds me how hard it is to get into this shithole vault,” she continued. “Breaking in is hopeless… and yet I hear there are merely ten people who have access to it; none of whom ever seem to come down here.” 

And now I had just opened the door for her. 

“Something like that,” she said. “I have a bit of a soft spot for you, I guess you could say. We‘re not so different when you really think about it. Both of us having our lives ruined by Selene. Both of us sacrificing everything for our duty and then losing everything we love anyway.” 

I gritted my teeth. “*You* ruined my life,” I argued. “You ruined *both* my lives. And now you‘ve manipulated and turned me into ... into whatever this* is. You took away those I loved and made me push 

away those I still had.” 

She paused to consider for a second. “I guess that‘s true. I didn‘t know about the prior timelines until I met you, I‘ll be honest. Every now and then you would just give me snippets until I finally had full control. I I was extremely entertaining to see. I knew Selene was marking those selected from the original lineages but I never realised that they had been reborn by her own making. I wonder how many times I‘ve succeeded in my goal without ever knowing.” 

“Cai? Well... he‘s fun, isn‘t he? You two once had a thing, right? I can see why,” she winked, causing me to wrinkle my nose in disgust. “Alas though, his genetic predisposition is too similar to my own. At best, I can influence only on a surface level but to fully manipulate someone who by nature can also manipulate, even if that‘s in a slightly different way...? It just doesn‘t really work. Just sort of made him sick. Like two magnets of the same pole repulsing each other. I did what I did purely to break you down further. Create