The Parent Trap – 17&24.01.2023 – Delilah

It is a habit at this point, these reports that she writes. They have become her way of decompressing, analysing, and remembering everything. Except this time is different. This time she is detached. There’s no commentary, no musing thoughts. Just the facts.

‘We entered disciple Ankaa’s dreamscape. When we found one of her “cores”. Ilfrey got to work finding her location. A fight commenced. Ilfrey got what we needed. We left.’

The battle in her mother’s hideout flits through her mind in bright flashes and dark shadows. Beastie had watched from the side, and they help her note down the events in more detail than she would otherwise. It is nearly a whole page and a half of her cryptic cypher before Delilah reaches the end.

There’s hardly any mention of her father, however. Only one anecdotal note that appears to be more of an afterthought.

‘The shadow dragon Kurtz left once Demona was defeated.’

It is the most thorough report the Pale Daughter has written since the last time she thought she had killed her mother. Except this time she knows the deed is done. Carnán had burned Demona’s body with a sacred flame, the perfect antithesis for the powerful necromancer she had become.

She goes through the motions of putting the report into the hand-sized tube and attaching it to Beastie. They receive a scritch behind the ears and under the chin before she tells them, “Go. Return quickly.” There’s a flick of a shadowed tail and then, the not-cat is gone.

With a sigh that goes beyond relief, beyond satisfaction, Delilah stands up and returns to her bed with Oziah.

---

Three days after returning from the Twilight Court a long, thin black box made of thin wood, wrapped with a silken bow of scarlet sits waiting for her just outside their room. Delilah spots it first, freezing as if held by magic. Oziah, not one to miss something happening to her, whips around, looking for someone that is possibly (and foolishly) attacking. Then she, too, sees the box and also goes stiff as a rod.

They bring the box inside their room, Beastie weaving between Delilah’s legs, sharing her growing panic whilst trying to eat away at it. Their way of comforting her. She barely waits for the latch in the door to slot home before the pale half-elf tears the ribbon from the box.

Inside is a delicate, black-blue skinned fey ear, pierced with intricate rings. Ilfrey’s ear. It is perched on a bed of crushed black velvet with a small card laying underneath it.

“What. The fuck,” Oziah says, her voice tight.

“…Delilah…” Beastie says, their voice hesitant.

With shaking hands, she picks up the card.


There is a ringing in her ears that blocks the sound of Oziah’s voice, which sounds far away. Even Beastie’s colder, calmer thoughts can’t break past the rising pitch. It had been too easy. Too simple. And she had known, hadn’t she? She had known there was something Demona had planned, she saw it in her eyes as life left them once and for all. But it’s not over. It never will be. All because of her. Oziah is never going to safe from her past. Her friends, this place. She is a curse upon everyone. A black death. The bringer of the end. All because of her sentimental heart.

“We’ll kill her. Again. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. Nothing can stop us-”

Familiar, strong hands grip her arms, practically hoisting her up into the air so vibrant blue eyes can look directly into pits of black.

“Nothing can stop us,” Oziah says, as if stating it like an absolute.

“I…” Delilah feels Beastie brush against her leg. Their calming presence finally gets through to her, pushing the ringing back and away from her mind. “I need a moment.”

She was almost worried that Oziah wouldn’t let her go, but she did. There is a look Oz gives to Beastie, but they’re already melting into Delilah’s shadow.

Then she is running.

---

She comes back as dawn is just about to break.

Oziah had been waiting for her. Neither of them say anything. The taller woman gets up from the throne-like chair by the fire she had been sitting in to draw the haggard and wary half-elf a steaming hot bath. Delilah looks rough around the edges. It’s clear she has been doing something all night. Running in the woods? Brawling in the pits? A little murder on the coast? She doesn’t say, and Oziah doesn’t ask.

Once stripped of her clothes, Delilah sinks like a stone into the piping hot water. Oziah stays silent and steady as she begins to wash her, like the magical dusky pink walls of the Fort all around them. It helps. Her love, this amazing woman, powered by conviction, washes not only the dirt, grime, and flecks of blood away, but the little lingering panic and despair she had not managed to get rid of during the night.

“I was a fool,” she eventually says. “I guess… I always have been.”

“No.” Oziah’s response is short, brooking no argument.

Delilah continues as if she has not spoken. “‘Love is weakness. Sentimentality is the slow death. To have power you cannot have emotion. No feelings, no heart. Only then can you be unstoppable. Only then… can you be a force no one can control.’”

“No.”

She closes her eyes and lets her head fall to Oz’s shoulder.

“That’s what I always said, too…”

Oziah grabs her face, her chin, in the same way she did when she healed the scar on her face all those months ago. She tilts Delilah’s head back up and grips her tightly, almost painfully.

“Look. At. Me.” Her voice is barely restrained fury. “Open your fucking eyes and look at me.”

She lets the small vestige of the undeniable divinity that she still has left — the light she denies the world, denies herself, denies everyone but Delilah — shine through, letting it burn to the core of her lover.

“You are mine. You are mine and I am yours, and nothing will ever break us apart. Not Ankaa, not your father, not my father, not your mother and certainly not her fucked up doctrines and commands.”

She kisses Delilah, still holding her chin, and bites her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, jolting the other woman momentarily with the sharp pain. Delilah tastes her blood, mixed with Oziah’s spit and she swallows whatever thoughts she had along with the iron mix.

Oz pulls back, eyes shining with rage and conviction.

“Shut the fuck up. You’re mine. Not hers.”

There’s a roiling of emotions in the pale woman’s dark eyes — desire, love, guilt, shame, fury, frustration.

“I know, Oziah. I know. I just-” she pauses considering her words, wanting to get it right. Or as much as she can. “I’m just… lost.” Delilah grabs Oziah and pulls her closer, fingers digging into her skin. “Only when I’m with you do things become clearer. Only with you, do I feel certain.”

Oz grabs her right back just as hard, letting go of her chin to grab at her bare shoulders, her neck, her back in the water.

“So stay with me. Let me keep you.”

Delilah shakes but her voice is steady. “Then keep me. Please.”

Oz lifts her bodily from the tub and carries her to the bed, soaking wet. She slips out of the simple robe she was wearing and presses so close to Delilah she may as well be trying to slip under her skin. She’s not aiming to seduce — isn’t trying to buy them both a moment’s peace of mind by their usual method. She just presses against Delilah, clinging as close as she can. She kisses what bits of Delilah’s skin she can reach, and breathes and bites and hangs on by tooth and nail.

And keeps her.