Chapter 21 #3
I bolted past Jon, straight toward Father. “You—you know where they are? They’re alive?”
Hope softened his rugged features. “They’re safe. Not far from here, waiting for me to return. I’ll bring you to them.”
It felt like far too much of a command, making me hesitate. No. I wouldn’t leave my friends this way. This couldn’t be the end, running off elsewhere with this impossible approximation of my father.
“You could be lying,” I said.
“My darling, I—”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t know you. Not really.”
I swallowed hard, wondering if Ben could read his mind or offer some other glamour fairy trick to help me. Could I bear to ask such a thing of him? Glancing over, I saw the choice was barred to me now, anyway; he was entirely unconscious now, held in Lee’s protective grasp.
I lifted my chin. “You could have overheard me worrying over my mother and sister during transport. You could be using that to make me come along without a fight.”
Father shut his eyes for a moment, and despite everything, guilt tugged at my heart to know I was causing his pained expression. When he met my gaze again, I was surprised to find the faintest trace of a wistful smile on his lips.
“When you were ten, you told me you’d made a wish that your baby sister would be an ice affinity,” he said softly. “So that you would be able to train affinities together over the years. Never to be parted.”
I sucked in a long breath, dizziness sweeping over me. I vaguely remember this—curled up next to Father in our home in Elysia, prodding my finger into Hazel’s tiny, soft hand while she slept. She’d scarcely been one, and I’d already been so in love with her.
“Would you like to know what her affinity is?” Before me, Father’s smile widened with a small measure of hope.
My eyes widened, and I nodded like a woman in a trance.
“I am going against my word to your mother and sister by telling you this without them here, but…Hazel is an animal affinity. She discovered it last month. If you believe nothing else, then believe that. Hazel made me promise to keep it secret until she had a chance to share it with you herself.”
My hand flew to my mouth to cover a sob. Tears blurred my view of him. I nearly gave in. Nearly.
How could any illusion know something so intimate, so sacred?
“I won’t go with you,” I said. “You’ll have to bring them to me.”
Father scowled. “Where? That cursed hotel?”
Absolutely fucking not, I thought heatedly.
I looked at Jon and Cliff helplessly, wondering what our next choice was. A motel room? Another stolen cabin? Out of all the ways I might reunite with my family, we hadn’t prepared for this.
“I have a place we can go.” Delilah stepped forward and gave me a hard look. “Sylvia. Do you want him to be able to find us?”
I buckled under the pressure of that question.
This man may have convinced me he was my father, but the thought of putting my friends in harm’s way was unthinkable.
Then again, he had put himself in harm’s way to save my life, and I was in desperate need of answers. But I would not go alone with him.
“Yes,” I blurted.
Nodding, Delilah moved behind Lee and removed the pendant from around his neck. She tossed it to Father, her eyes glittering with uncertainty and a touch of curiosity.
“There is something about you,” she admitted.
“An odd sort of magic that I can’t begin to decipher right now.
You shouldn’t have any trouble tracing the enchantment of that stone back to its origin—me.
But I’ll warn you. All of my homes have a nasty habit of slaughtering people who show up with ill intent toward its inhabitants. ”
Although my father didn’t look entirely pleased by the arrangement, the pendant gave him some level of satisfaction.
“Here.” Jon handed him the keys to the motorcycle, perhaps in an attempt to get him away from us as swiftly as possible. “Can you drive a Ducati?”
Father nodded, glancing thoughtfully at the gleaming motorbike parked on the asphalt.
A sharp whine preceded a rumbling boom that made the ground shiver. A deafening explosion cracked across the cleared, and everyone flinched around to see the charred remains of the transport vehicle. Body parts and a siren’s tail lay amongst the rubble, the wide truck now a skeletal husk of metal.
A winged figure fast approached from the billowing black smoke. Zia eagerly darted off to meet Rowan, pulling him into a tight hug. They rocked slightly mid-flight, whispering into each other’s ears.
But another movement across the road caught my attention: a figure staggering into the opposite woods, carrying another.
Judging from the uttered curse from Jon, I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
But red and blue lights rivaled the blaze of the fire along the stretch of disrupted highway.
If we lingered to hunt them down, we risked being caught and arrested.
And then my hopes of seeing my family would be well and truly vanished.
Cliff was the first to turn away. “They’re on foot in a forest fire,” he muttered. “Let’s leave them to burn and get the fuck outta here.”