Chapter 41 #2
My father is older, but he’s still fast. He beats my blade aside and ripostes at my chest. I parry—barely—and retreat. The snow is treacherous underfoot. My boots slip, and I have to adjust, widen my stance.
"They'll take her anyway, you know," my father says, his voice eerily calm even as he attacks. "The Consistory will never stop. You think you can hide from them? From this?"
I don't answer. Can't afford to. He's trying to distract me, get inside my head.
It's what he always does. How he trained me.
I lunge, a feint to the face—he parries. I disengage, cut at his flank. He barely gets his blade around in time. The tip of my foil catches his coat, tears through the fabric.
His eye widens. Just a fraction. Surprise that I got that close.
"All those years," he continues, circling now. "All that training. Everything I gave you. And this is how you repay me?"
"You gave me nothing," I snarl. I advance, a series of quick attacks—high, low, high again. He parries each one, but he's moving back, back toward the plane. "You took everything from me. My mother. My childhood. Any chance at a normal—"
I cut myself off. I'm doing exactly what he wants. Talking. Getting emotional.
Focus.
I bind his blade, trying to control it the way Kai did with Moroslav, but my father is stronger. He wrenches free, nearly tears my sword from my hand.
Then he attacks.
A flurry of cuts and thrusts that drive me backward, my heels skidding on the ice. He's fast—faster than he should be at his age—and every movement is precise, economical. No wasted energy.
The tip of his rapier finds my shoulder, just above my collarbone. Not deep, but enough to sting. Warm blood seeps into my shirt.
"You're hesitating," he observes. "You can't kill your own father, can you?"
He's right. Some part of me is still holding back. Even after everything, some stupid, childish part of me that still wants his approval, his—
No.
I think of Gwenna, covered in paint, hands bound, eyes wide.
I think of a woman I never knew, bleeding me into life.
The hesitation shatters.
I catch his blade in a bind, twist hard. The rapier goes flying from his hand, clattering across the tarmac twenty feet away.
The force makes him stumble, and he falls to one knee. For the first time since I've known him, he looks old. Breathing hard, his face drawn, snow clinging to his coat.
I put my blade to his throat.
“Kingston.” His inhale is a wheeze. “Come, now.” He looks up at me with that one eye, something almost like pride in his expression. Testing me one last time. “You couldn’t kill your own father.”
My hand is shaking. The blade trembles against his throat.
Behind me, I can sense the others watching—Gwenna, Kai, Lanz, Callahan.
"You were supposed to be better than me," he says.
"I am," I say.
And I run him through.
His eye widens. Shock. He truly thought I couldn’t, right until the very end.
Unceremoniously, I yank back, and my father falls forward, his dark blood flowing onto snow.
For a moment, I stand over the body.
Blade dripping red.
Hands shaking.
Face wet with my own blood.
"Kingston."
Gwenna's voice.
I turn. She's standing there, Callahan still supporting her, my coat still hanging off her shoulders, her face unnaturally pale and shocked. But her eyes—
Not horror. Not disgust or hatred.
Something else.
Like she just…sees me.
Kai steps forward, puts a hand on my shoulder. “We need to go,” he says, voice low. “Now."
“Medical emergency?” The pilot appears from the tower, his jacket collar pulled high. “Is this everyone?”
Then he notices the body in the snow.
“This is everyone," Kai says firmly. “Five souls.”
He pulls Gwenna forward, helping her up the stairs with Lanz at her back. Callahan crosses himself quickly, murmurs something under his breath, and follows.
I’m frozen.
“King!” yells Lanz. “Come on!”
I snap out of it and sprint up the steps.
The engine whines and hums as we take seats; I can hear the pilot through the door speaking into his radio in a mixture of English and Finnish, what sounds like frantic bargaining for a flight manifest.
“I promised him a fortune,” Kai mutters as he slides in next to me. “So we might want to…hold off on getting that death certificate for while.”
The plane jerks forward. We’re moving, barreling down the tiny runway.
“Jesus, Kai.” Lanz looks back from where he was staring out the window.
“What?” Kai spits back. “Only thing the bastard was ever good for was his money. And I guarantee I am not in that will.”
I look out the window too, at the dark spot on the white tarmac. At the black-robed figures spreading out from the monastery walls, watching us disappear into the heavens.
Then at my hands. Still shaking. Still bloody.
“What have I done,” I murmur. “What did I just…”
When I look up, it’s into Gwenna’s eyes. I don’t even realize I’m crying until she reaches to brush away a tear with a handkerchief.
My handkerchief. The one in my coat.
“You made a choice, Kingston,” she says softly. “You made a choice.”
She lowers her hand to mine, weaves her white fingers through my stained ones, and holds tightly.
And I never, ever want to let go.