Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
KHARON
My father looks past me to the sight through the window. He has white hair and a long grizzled beard and wears the clothing of this land. I blink, sure I cannot be seeing what I am seeing.
And yet, when he speaks again, I know he’s no apparition. “I should have used an iron fist with that one like I did with the rest of you. Look what happens when you get soft-hearted.”
I can only sputter, all my innards turning to jelly at the sight of him.
Finally, he turns his eyes back to me. “Happy to see me, Thing? Don’t gawk. We don’t have much time before all my hard work disappears into another realm. Pull your jaw off the ground. We have work to do.”
My father is alive. Both my father and brother, who were dead, are somehow in front of me absolutely not dead.
“We burned your body,” I gasp.
My father just tilts his head judgmentally.
“I am a god. And you, more than any, know we are made of far sterner stuff than mere blood and bone. All I needed was an ember in the ashes to grow back from, and an ember remained. So I remained. It took many, many years, but I grew again to my former glory, and here I am. Now, if you’re done interrogating me, we need to get in there and stop your foolish brother—”
He takes a step forwards. Three of my arms shoot out to stop him.
“You cannot simply return after all you have done!” I spit.
“After all I have done,” he says in whispered accusation. “Your brother tried to murder me!”
“After you killed our brother!”
He snorts and gestures toward the window.
“Not well enough, apparently. And are you really choosing him over me when he’s trying to send everyone you love into oblivion?
Because you really think they’d welcome your kind in the Great Hall?
I might not have been able to kill any of you here, but believe me, they have other methods there.
And they’re very particular about purity. Think of Abaddon’s consort’s child.”
My chest gets tight, and I look back inside. Layden is still crouched down, drawing on the floor.
“Can he even do it? What he claims?”
“He speaks the truth. There are other powers. I watched him fight your brothers, and he had power beyond that of the angelic kind. He has learned other paths in his time away.”
I swear harshly.
“Think of your brother’s family,” he says. “And your own consort. Where is she?” My head snaps up as my father looks around.
“How do you know about her?” My top hand snaps out to grasp his neck.
Even though I’m holding his throat in a vise grip, he only grins. “Did you not like the present I sent running your way, son? Where is the gratitude? Have you gotten her with kit, yet?”
My brain blanks out for a moment as my hand squeezes more, making him sputter as all sorts of horrific connection points fire in my brain.
Of course.
The man in the woods with a cabin who provided aid to Hannah many months ago when she first became pregnant. Abaddon has searched for months without being able to find it.
That along with the large hunting cabin Ksenia spoke of. . . the place where her uncle betrayed her father, which we also couldn’t find?
They were either one and the same, or my Father’s been very busy.
He always did love to consider himself something of an architect. Matter manipulation in this realm is one of his gifts. It was he who raised this castle in the middle of nowhere, delighting himself by adding floor after floor we could never hope to fill simply because it suited his fancy.
And he’s been able to cloak what he’s built even from our eyes—the only one who would be powerful enough to do so.
It’s what’s protected this castle from outsiders, what kept Abaddon from being able to find the shack when he searched so long, and Ksenia from finding the lodge where her father died when she went back to look.
“Why?” I ask with a devastation I shouldn’t feel. His cruelty and machinations should have stopped shocking me long ago, but for him to not only suddenly appear like this but then find out it was him who had a part in the worst thing that ever happened in Ksenia’s life—
“The offspring, of course,” Father says as if I’m a fool not to have come to this obvious conclusion.
My stomach roils at his words. And immediately, I think back to the time I was not careful enough to pull out and accidentally gushed inside Ksenia.
We plane-jumped almost at that exact moment, I try to calm myself.
So it should be fine. And I would have scented if a kit had been implanted, right?
Although it might have been too soon to tell.
I wrack my brain. Although it felt like I’d lived a lifetime in the week I’d spent with her, that particular moment had only been. . . two days ago. How soon was I able to scent Hannah’s pregnancy?
“Your brother’s offspring, I’ll remind you,” my father cuts into my racing thoughts, “is in imminent danger.” He points to the window.
I spin back around to look in the window again.
Whatever Layton has been drawing on the floor looks almost complete.
It’s some sort of large, elaborate circle with lines crisscrossing inside.
He stands up, and rune fire springs from his fingertips to light several candles on stands around the circle.
My brothers fight against their chains, but whatever magic Layden has used to keep them pinned is working.
If my father weren’t here, I would have burst in already.
But this is too important to do wrong. And if Layden has some power that bested Romulus’s runes and Abaddon’s might, what can I alone do?
So I turn to my father and ask through gritted teeth, “What do you suggest?”
I hate the way he grins in satisfaction, as if he’s been waiting for me to ask this very question. He’s a manipulator to the end.
“You are the only one who can plane jump. A blade may not take your brother to the deathly plane. . .” he leans in, grin widening, “but you can. Transport him there and leave him. Finally, you can be of some worth.”
All the breath leaves my chest at what my father suggests.
But I nod because there’s no more time.
“I will enter and provide a distraction,” he says, and I see delight enter his eyes as he steps in front of me.
Then there’s no more time. Quickly I drop into shadow as he leaps straight through the glass into the room.
“Your father returns!” he proclaims loudly as all heads in the room swing in his direction.