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It shoots from my hands and strikes Sol in the chest. She goes flying, arcing through the air and landing on the pavement before skidding several feet. I stand very still.
Did I . . . kill her?
I wait for several seconds, but she doesn’t move.
I’m about to check on her when a pained groan draws my attention to my father.
“Dad,” I say, running over and dropping to my knees. His breaths saw from his lungs like rusty blades, and I flatten my palm to the center of his heaving chest, where I can feel the listless beat of his heart.
He looks up at me, and I see so many things in his expression that I still don’t get. He’s dying. A part of me is surprised he’s capable of this, too. Maybe I thought he’d live forever, towering over the world with that stern expression and unbending fist.
“Why?” I ask, leaving my hand where it is. For so long, the idea of touching him filled me with swirling shadows that left me dizzy. I can’t remember the last time I felt the need for a physical connection with this man. “Why?”
I could be asking a thousand things, but I think he understands.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I craved control. I wanted everything in its place, but this thing . . . this rage . . . it lived inside me, and I didn’t know where to put it.”
My shoulders sag as I let out a leaden breath. It’s not really an answer. It’s not an excuse. I don’t think I was really expecting one, but maybe a part of me hoped.
“Why us?” I ask.
His eyes flutter closed, and his lungs seem to rattle. A sheen of sweat covers his face, pooling in the dark circles under his eyes.
“Because I knew you couldn’t leave me.”
A cold dose of realization sinks into my skin.
It feels like I’ve been tossed into a frothing midnight ocean, my surroundings so pitch-dark that all I can feel is the erratic throbbing of my broken heart.
We were trapped, and we belonged to him. All three of us. That’s another thing Society took from us. The freedom to choose. If we’d left, he would have destroyed us. We had no choice but to stay, but he destroyed us anyway.
“I’ll never forgive you,” I whisper, because at this moment, I finally understand this with perfect clarity. I wanted him to be better. I wanted a reason to let it go. But I can’t. I’ve never owed him that.
“I know,” he says. “I don’t expect you to.”
“You used to frighten me so much. I . . . was terrified of you.”
“And now?” he asks, grunting with pain, his eyes squeezing shut.
“And now I know that despite what you tried to make me believe, I am stronger than you.”
He nods, shifting awkwardly as if he’s trying to get more comfortable.
I don’t reach out to help him. I’m not sure that I can.
“Why did you follow me here? Why did you insist on coming last night?”
He shakes his head, tears leaking from his eyes as he moans.
“Because you did leave me, didn’t you? Bit by bit, you found a way to break free.
I’d built you a life in my image, and then you rejected it.
You chose a different House. You joined the Storm Guard.
You fell in love with a Solitude. You did all the things I thought you would never do, precisely because you were no longer scared of me.
And I guess that scared me more than anything ever has. ”
His words open up something inside me. I let them spread. I let them split and harden over as they form walls around me, impenetrable as a stone fortress.
“Were you trying to . . . fix us?”
He huffs, lets out a wry laugh that turns into a wheeze.
“Maybe I was looking for a way to forgive myself.” He shakes his head. “I guess I wanted you to see that I tried to be a father to you, even if I was far from perfect.”
“Thank you for protecting my secret,” I say, because it’s the one thing I can be grateful for.
“I don’t deserve a thank-you. It was the very least I could do. You deserved so much more.” He groans. “I’m glad I got to see Raine one last time. Even if . . .”
His eyes slide closed, and he goes very still, his chest rising and falling in slow, uneven shudders.
I understand that this is it. Our last moment together. After all the pain this man has caused me, I’ll never have to fear him again.
I hear shouts in the distance. Clouds rumble overhead, casting everything in the glow of amethyst light.
“Dad?” I whisper. His lids flutter, and his eyes open. He reaches out and takes my hand. My instinct is to pull away, but I decide to let him have this.
“Take care of your mother,” he pleads. “You’re the only thing she has left. I owe her so many things that I’ll never be able to give her, but I can at least give you back. That’s all she wanted.”
I nod, my throat going tight. I feel the loss of so much in that moment. The life we could have had. The pain we could have avoided. I wanted a father I could love so badly, but now, even here at the end, I still won’t get that.
If I ever decide to start a family of my own, I’ll do everything in my power to ensure my children are safe. That they have a father worthy of their love.
“I promise I’ll look after her,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know that means nothing, but I’m sorry for everything. For what I did. For Knox. For being the reason you were afraid.”
I inhale a shaky breath. I’m not sure I want to listen to any of this, but maybe I owe it to myself to hear him out.
He looks up at me, and I peer into those green eyes so like my own. The piece of him that will always live with me, no matter how far I go.
“I know you don’t believe it,” he says. “But I do love you.”
I can’t seem to respond. I wonder if I ever loved him back.
Maybe at one point, in the way a child loves their parent, because they don’t know anything else.
I’ve hated him so much. If you’d asked me a few months ago, I would have vehemently denied feeling anything but disgust and anger for Grady Graves.
But nothing is ever that simple.
I don’t think I love him.
I think I loved the idea of what he could have been.
Maybe I could have learned to love this version of my father.
But I’ll never get that chance.
His eyes close.
His chest stops moving.
His breathing quiets.
And I don’t need to say anything, because he’s gone.