Chapter 43
Gemma
O ur estate in the Collis was just how I’d left it.
Dingy, rusted gate on poorly oiled hinges.
The too-bright green grass that never grew, leading to the circular drive, which wrapped around our crumbling fountain that no longer worked.
Beyond, the grand home stood. It looked small compared to House Kaalium’s keep, and I’d forgotten how quiet it was here. In New Inverness, where I’d lived as a child, little chittering bugs had filled the evenings with their music, especially since we’d lived out in the countryside of the colony planet.
But here…it was silent. Like nothing dared to breathe. Or maybe it was just me.
My father would be here. I’d called him from the ship that Azur had chartered for me, telling him I was returning to the Collis but dodging his questions about why. My sisters had been excited to see me, surprise evident on their faces, especially when I couldn’t quite share their enthusiasm, only offering them half smiles that hadn’t quite reached my eyes.
I was sick to my stomach. A weight of dread lodged deep in the pit of my belly. The cowardly part of me would’ve given anything to flee the Collis. The moment the transport vessel had dropped me off at the gates from port, I’d had the urge to turn and run . To hide in the blue salt mines and just sink into the mountain. A mountain that had been named after my father, which was enough to propel me forward through the gates.
I couldn’t run from this. I would never forgive myself if I tried, just as I knew I would never forgive myself for what I was about to do to my father. My sisters . This would ruin their chances for a future. They’d be shunned from our society, cast out to the wolves. Our estate would be sold. Mother’s grave would be forgotten.
It was Piper that I saw first. Running from the house to me. The last time we’d seen one another in person, she hadn’t quite been able to look me in the eyes, her harsh, biting words still stinging between us. But it was her arms that wrapped around me first, hugging me tight.
“I’ve missed you, Gem,” she whispered in my hair. We were the same height, and I found it so odd since I was used to being around Kylorr. Around Azur with his towering bulk. “We’ve missed you. Please tell me you’ve come home. Please tell me he’s let you come back to us.”
I saw Mira racing from the house too. It was evening, the golden light spilling from the inside like a beacon, and I felt out of place. I didn’t belong here anymore even in my sister’s arms. It was a bewildering, dizzying realization, and all I could think, shamefully enough, was that I wished I was in Azur’s arms right now.
Mira joined us when she reached us, her breath huffing, her delighted laugh filling the small circle.
“I’ve missed you both so much,” I whispered raggedly.
How would I tell them? How could I?
But I was done lying to them. They deserved to know the truth.
Piper and Mira pulled back. It was Mira’s laugh that died first. “What’s wrong, Gem? Tell us.”
The words were stuck in my throat, however. They wouldn’t come out. Not right now.
“Is it him?” Piper asked, her defenses rising. “Did he do something to you?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, reaching out to squeeze her hand. My other was still wrapped around the handle of my trunk. “No.”
“But you’ve come back?” Mira asked hopefully. “You’ll stay?”
Mira’s lovely face looked so much like mother’s that I wondered if it hurt our father to look at her. Sun-kissed skin, golden hair, and glittering eyes. Piper had her features too but had taken her coloring from our father, like me.
I wondered if looking at me hurt Azur. Because I wondered if I reminded him too much of Rye Hara.
I wanted him.
I wanted him so much that it hurt, but how could we ever move beyond this?
“I’m not sure,” I told them, uncertain what else to say. “But I’m here now. And…And I need to speak with Father. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
Piper frowned, her brows pulling. She was observant, her eyes flicking around my face, scanning the lines of my clothes. I was wearing pants and a soft tunic that flowed over my hips. Estee had made them for me, and I found them infinitely more comfortable than my dresses.
There was a hole in Mira’s dress, I noticed. My eyes stuck to it because it was so unexpected, near where her hand brushed her side, and I wondered if they’d been hiding things from me, too, during our Halo calls.
“Where’s Fran?” I asked.
“In the house,” Piper said, still trying to read me.
I nodded, relieved. Fran hadn’t been present for any calls in the last week. I’d almost worried that she’d been let go, if there were holes in Mira’s dresses and a tight look in Piper’s eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“Come,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”
When we turned, there was a figure standing in the doorway to the house. A burst of adrenaline and dread and sorrow and grief and anger pulsed through me, freezing my lungs and stilling my heart before it beat so fiercely I wondered if Azur could hear it all the way on Krynn.
Father.
Leaning against the doorway, a familiar glittering glass clasped in his hands and a pink hue in his cheeks.
His grin was wide. He was happy to see me. I even saw tears gleaming before he blinked them away.
He embraced me when I reached him, and I smelled the whiskey on his skin, deep in his pores. My stomach roiled but I had the insane urge to hug him tight, to breathe him in.
“This is cause for celebration,” he told me when we pulled away, his arm looping through mine and pulling me into the house.
The first thing I noticed was that some furniture was gone. Disappeared, the dusty edges still noticeable from where they’d been sitting for years. A marble cabinet; a golden curio display we’d had in the main foyer; an entrance table that had once held a Voperian vase, etched in silver, and a bright display of flowers from town.
When I peeked into the front sitting room, the chaise lounge was gone. As was the rug, a tapestry that had been threaded with gold, and a sword that had been hanging on the wall, its handle encrusted with gems.
They’ve been selling furniture, I realized, turning to meet my sisters’ eyes, who cast theirs away.
How bad had it been? How much had they been hiding from me?
Now I knew the burn of hurt at being kept in the dark. And I’d done it to them for so many years.
I had 200 vron sitting in a private account. Azur’s money, a stipulation in our marriage contract. I had asked for it with my sisters in mind, but I hadn’t wanted Father to know about the lump of credits, more credits than we’d seen in years.
“No,” I said quickly, pulling away from his arm. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t pretend . As much as I wanted to put this off another day, I wouldn’t allow myself to. Aina had waited long enough. Azur, Kalia, his brothers had waited long enough. His mother . “We need to talk, Father. We need to talk now.”
He frowned. I watched his eyes dart, as if he were cataloguing all his wrongdoings since I’d left, already thinking up excuses for why he’d been on Vrano or Jrika. When what I wanted to talk about was much, much worse.
“What about?” Mira asked.
And as much as I hated to do it, I knew this was a conversation that only needed to be between Father and me. I wouldn’t keep the truth from my sisters. I would tell them immediately afterward.
But they didn’t need to witness this.
“I’ll tell you,” I promised. “Later tonight. But this cannot wait.”
Whatever Piper had heard in my voice, it was enough for her to pull Mira away. “Fran is making your favorite stew,” she told me. The words nearly broke my heart. “We’ll go help her in the kitchen while you two speak.”
I nodded, unable to tell her that I hadn’t had an appetite for days.
Then I followed Father into his office, tracing the familiar path after I set my trunk down by the door, every step closer hardening my heart, my sweaty palm clenched around the Halo orb as I stared at Rye Hara’s back. The way he stumbled a little as he took another swig of his whiskey and all I wanted to do was cry.
“What is this about?” he asked when we were safely tucked away in his office. Far from the kitchens. Far from my sisters.
I’d rehearsed on the ship. I’d rehearsed every single word that I would say to him, how I would bring it up, how I would ask him to turn himself in to War Crimes, how I would plead with him to let House Kaalium know where Aina had been buried. If she’d been buried.
But all that went out the window when I felt my throat burn.
There were no words for this.
And so, as my father turned his back to me to head to his glittering bar cart still perched in the corner—something that hadn’t been sold yet—and I heard the familiar clinking of his decanter and the swish of alcohol pouring into glass, I tossed the Halo orb into the air so it floated between us.
Then I played the black feed that Azur had given me access to. With the sound.
“He alerted her Nu device. She’ll come out soon,” came Rye Hara’s voice, the sound warbled with time. The black feed angle hadn’t been in the best place, an outdated model no doubt, which was why it had likely gone unnoticed by my father and his unit, who had taken out all the other cameras and scanned for others in the vicinity. “When she does, cut her wings so she can’t fly. Cut them quickly. She’s strong.”
The decanter clattered on the bar cart, toppling over on the glass. The confusion on my father’s face was evident when he turned to me, but when he saw the black feed, projected into the air between us, I watched his face through the pixels. I watched his face pale, becoming sickly. The whiskey glass in his hand shattered across the floor, but he didn’t even seem to notice when his footsteps crunched over it.
I watched him through the pixels as Aina appeared. His face crumbled when the first, piercing cry left her throat, as she was swarmed at her door in the deep, deep night, on the outer borders of Pe’ji. Her bellowing cry as a blade tore through membranes and tendons and muscles of her wings made my father’s hand clutch the edge of his desk.
“Get her down!” Rye Hara ordered, his voice a growl of an order. “Get her down now!”
Through the black feed, his eyes came to mine.
I waited until the horrific killing was ended, flinching when the sizzle of his plasma gun burst, giving way to silence before a member of his unit laughed , huffing his exertion.
The feed ended. The pixels collapsed like a glittering rain until the Halo stopped the recording.
The silence was deafening . My heart was breaking all over again, nausea swishing back and forth in my belly, like the waves crashing against the cliffs of the keep.
My voice sounded hollow, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Father.”