Kingdoms Falling

Chapter 24

Clouddusk's son...said to have been killed at his hatching.

Violettail and Clouddusk eloped. They had a son.

Clouddusk left no heirs to the Defender of Sea, and no hope for the rest of the galaxy.

They had a son.

The first Seaspray ever.

Me.

"I'm...I'm your son?" Meadow whispered, feeling his stomach do a loop. It felt as though the world had suddenly been picked up and rolled upside down. No, it felt like it had been flipped and shaken, and smashed, until everything he'd thought he'd known had been completely and utterly destroyed and only one possible truth remained. That he was indeed the lost son of the two Defenders. "You're my parents?"

But if they are my parents, that means...Raynbow. I'm half raynbow. Cotton will have a cow when she hears about this! No, forget that cow, she'll have a whole herd!

"Surprise?" Clouddusk said, shrugging his wings out in a hopeless gesture of greeting. He saw Meadow's flabbergasted expression, and his emerald eyes sparkled as though waiting for the inevitable question. 

"How is that possible? I mean, you lived over a thousand years ago. I know I'm not a thousand years old. So, I don't understand how I could possibly be your son."

Clouddusk and Violet glanced at one another. "We're not sure," Violet admitted. "But, we believe you were brought here for a reason. When we lost your egg, we were heart-broken. But when we came back to get you, you were gone. There were signs of other dragons around. We knew someone had found you, and since you weren't lying dead in the grass, we could only hope you would be safe until we could find you again."

"And you did," Meadow said, blinking. "Because Gale found me. But...why didn't you claim me right then and there? You knew who I was, so why didn't you say anything then?" He wanted to say: "Why didn't you get me out of there?" but he didn't want to be bitter. He just wanted to understand.

"We wanted to," Clouddusk said quickly. "You have no idea how badly we wanted to. But, by the time Gale had managed to locate you, Darkwhisperer was already beginning to gain power throughout the Dark Realm. It was simply not safe. Your mother and I...we couldn't risk anyone knowing about you, especially if that meant Darkwhisperer might be able to find you. And since he was the one who tried to kill you before, we thought it would be better if he believed your egg had been smashed in the forest."

"All right, that makes sense," Meadow admitted. He thought about his egg ending up in the Undersea hatchery. He wondered who had brought him there. Had they assumed he'd be a sea dragon? Could they not tell that he was a hybrid of some kind? He had so many questions for the dragon who rescued him. Whoever it was, he knew he owed them a great debt.  "I can see why you wouldn't have told me then," he went on. "But after we defeated Darkwhisperer. Why not then? Why now?" 

"The same reason as before," Violet told him. "Twisterheart suspected something was amiss immediately, as I'm sure you noticed. He has this way of...sensing...hybrids. No one can explain how he does it, but he's been determined to hunt down every half-breed since his coming of age nine hundred years ago and kill them."

"He came right after Hillock and me," Meadow commented, recalling the confrontation in the caves. "He knew. But, why?"

"Simple." Clouddusk huffed a plume of smoke. "His parents were of two different realms. They were caught and were forced to abandon him. He never forgave them, and he believes all hybrids should be as angry and as twisted as him."