Chapter 26
Everly
The hallways that led to the guest suites were unfamiliar and cold, much like I remembered the male I was reluctantly on my way to visit.
Amias had moved him here, though he hadn’t said why, and I hadn’t asked.
I wasn’t ready to see my father again, to talk to him, to ask him how many other secrets he had buried beneath the snow without regard for my sanity.
Draven walked beside me, though he wouldn’t be coming inside, despite his many protests. Once I demonstrated what Batty could do, he had been forced to acknowledge that he could stay within icewalking distance as long as I was out of sight.
I didn’t trust that my father would be as forthcoming with Draven in the room, if I even had a single chance at getting answers out of him.
Batty, of course, was wrapped around my neck while Lumen and Astra served as imposing bookends to our procession.
Wynnie hadn’t yet arrived. She had apparently been dragged from her bed before dawn to assist another wave of villagers, but I hadn’t wanted to risk losing whatever window of lucidity my father had.
We finally stopped at an arched doorway, pale silver and indiscernible from the dozen others that graced the endless hall. I raised my hand to knock, cursing when I saw the way it shook.
My mana raged within me, launching an all-out war against itself that only Draven’s constant touch was keeping remotely at bay, but I wasn’t good enough of a liar to pretend that was responsible for the trembling in my fingers.
After all this time, I still couldn’t dredge up the bravery to unearth a decade’s worth of silence.
All at once, a vision flooded my mind.
I stood in the throne room, chin raised as I glowered up at… Draven, I realized. The image was from him.
If the king wishes to be my executioner, he is welcome to approach me to that end.
The image shifted to one of me the day he found out I was Hollow, shoulders squared. Punish me if you will, but leave my family out of it.
Then I was standing by the slab in the sanctum, fists clenched, jaw set.
Next was just a vision of me from the back, as I forged deeper into a ravaged estate, picking my way through half-eaten corpses and blood-stained debris.
And finally, eyes blazing into his as my wings emerged, shoving him through a barrier.
The visions disappeared, leaving only the unwavering features of my husband.
Was that really how he saw me? Some paragon of courage when most of the time I felt like the fear I was forced to live in every day was threatening to swallow me whole?
He lifted his hand to my chin, tilting it upward as though reminding me who I was.
Warmth spread from his touch, and I wanted nothing more than to leave this hallway and return to our suites and exorcise our demons the only way we knew how.
But somewhere buried in my soul was all the concern my father had never bothered to show me in return… or at the very least, curiosity about what he could possibly want now.
So I wrenched myself from the tempting escape of Draven’s gaze to rap my knuckles against the icy door, three solid knocks.
Lumen and Astra took up their posts on either side of the door while Batty exuded smugness at staying perched firmly on my shoulder.
A male in the pale blue and white uniform of the general palace servants answered, swallowing when he beheld the king. He bowed low, offering tea that we declined. Then he was gone, leaving me to enter the bedchamber where my father convalesced.
A fire roared in the hearth behind the navy and silver floral armchairs, and a vase of frosted white lilies graced the low carved table. The room might have been cozy, if not for the pervasive smell of death that even the fragrant flowers did little to mask.
Whatever reason Amias had placed him here, I had a sinking feeling that it had everything to do with comfort and nothing at all to do with recovery.
Even with Draven’s steady presence in the back of my mind, it took all that I had to turn toward the high, canopied bed nestled in the corner of the room. Or, more accurately, toward its occupant.
I clenched my fists into my gown, willing my talons not to emerge. The fabric bunched beneath my fingers as I caught my father’s faraway gaze. Batty shifted uneasily against my collarbone, her tiny claws pricking through the fabric as if she sensed the tension rippling off of me.
He looked far worse than he had in the infirmary.
The acid burns along his neck were still mottled and angry, the edges faintly green, as if the venom refused to release him.
His face was several shades grayer than it should have been, almost ashen, the hollows beneath his cheekbones carved deep with exhaustion.
But it was his pale blue eyes that were the hardest to look at, maybe because they were my eyes.
My sister’s eyes. Or, they had been, before they were shot through entirely with red, spiderwebs of blood fracturing the icy blue until he looked like a faded echo of the male from my memories… a ghost wearing my father’s shape.
“Everly.” He greeted me the same way as he had in the infirmary, but this time I placed his tone better.
Not just surprise. Awe. Like he had never seen me before.
It tugged at a long-forgotten memory of the day I arrived at his estate. Thinking back now, it was strange, the way he had been waiting for me. How had he known I was coming? That I was Hollow?
Everly?
He had said my name with the same surprise, the same reverence, as he scooped my half-conscious form off the ground.
But why had he been out there, hundreds of feet from his furthest shed, alone? I must have whimpered because he had murmured in response.
You’re safe now.
Who are you? I had managed to rasp out.
Looking back, I wasn’t sure if he paused or if the pain I was in had just made each cautious step forward feel like an eternity. But somewhere through the darkness, I remembered how his words weren’t half as shocking as they should have been.
I’m your father.
It had felt true, or maybe the trauma had just made it impossible for me to feel things like shock anymore.
The next thing I remembered, I was in the estate, my new sister peering at me curiously, and my father excusing himself for the next… ten years.
I cleared my throat, swallowing down the emotion that had no place in the present. “You wanted to see me?”
He blinked in confusion, and I bit back a curse. No. Not again. Not yet.
“It’s Everly. You asked Healer Amias to get me because you wanted to see me.”
He sucked in a rattling breath, shaking his head like he was trying to clear the cobwebs.
“Something… I needed to tell you.”
“Was it about my mother? About…” I hesitated to say her name, worried it would take him back further, but I didn’t see that I had a choice. “About Mirevyn?”
“Mire…” he trailed off, brow furrowing.
Where the hells was Wynnie? And why hadn’t I just let Draven come in?
Why was this so much shards-damned harder than it should have been when I barely knew him anyway.
I clenched my fists harder. “Yes, Mire. The Skaldwing you… had a child with.”
“Skaldwings—” the word cut off with a wet cough, and blood sprayed the deep blue furs that were piled over him.
Sucking in a breath, I went to his bedside, where a crimson-stained cloth lay waiting. I held it out uselessly, having none of my sister’s caretaking tendencies.
He took it from me with a nod, wiping at the blood around his lips.
“They have portals,” he rasped out, holding my gaze with an intensity I had never seen on him before.
“I know,” I said gently. “Draven has already destroyed it.”
“No. More than one.”
My stomach dropped like a stone. “Where are the others?”
My father let out another blood-spattered cough. When he was finished, I bit back another curse.
Whatever clarity had been in his gaze was gone.
He blinked slowly, peering at me through bloodshot eyes. It was a familiar scene, if I could ignore the burns along his skin or the blood around his lips.
I never thought I would long for the days of his drunken stupors, that they would feel simple compared to this… whatever this feeling clawing at my chest was.
“Mire?”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat, nodding. Was it a sin or a kindness, lying to someone who was dying?
“Still so beautiful,” he said softly.
Tears stabbed at the backs of my eyes.
I wanted to comfort him for all that he had lost. To rage at him for all that he had given up. To demand that he come the hells back to his senses and answer all the questions he had let fester for ten long years.
To thank him for giving me a home and a sister, for loving me enough to keep me safe, even if it hadn’t been enough for him to stay.
But in the end, all I did was stand in a mute sort of shock until Wynnie walked into the room. Her footsteps were quieter, more hesitant than usual, her brusk manner entirely absent in the knowing look we shared as she silently closed the door.
His eyes were closed now, but his chest was still rising and falling in an unsteady pattern.
“Are we supposed to say goodbye?” she whispered, a trace of bitterness on her tongue.
For the world that had taken her father and her husband from her in the span of a year? Or for the fact that neither had ever lived up to the title?
“He wouldn’t have,” I muttered in response.
“No,” she rasped out, shaking her head. “But we are not him. This is not our future.”
I stopped just short of telling her that it would be a miracle if either of us lived this long to begin with, the way things were going. She was right. We would not become him, not while we had each other.
So we whispered our goodbyes, and we pulled the armchairs closer to the bed, squashing them as close to one another as the wide arms would allow. Then Wynnie grasped my hand in hers, and we sat without a word, holding our silent vigil until the very end.
Maybe it was more than what he deserved, but it was what we deserved—the closure in death he had never granted either of us in life.