CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Kael — What I Owed the Truth
There was one conversation left that I hadn’t allowed myself to have, and I finally had it on a gray Tuesday in early spring, standing in front of a modest headstone in a cemetery two hours outside the city, Nadia’s hand steady in mine.
Aliya Kessler, it read, the name she’d died under, the name that had never been fully hers. Beloved mother.
“I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you say out loud to a grave,” I said, feeling considerably less composed than I had facing down armed men in an open street, “but I wanted you to know that your daughter is safe. That whatever you were protecting her from, it’s not gone completely, but it’s not hunting her anymore, either.
And I wanted you to know that I’m sorry — for what my family took from you, for the nine years it should have been longer, for everything my father’s name cost you before I was old enough to understand what that cost actually meant. ”
Nadia’s hand tightened around mine.
“I loved your daughter for four years before I ever let her know I existed,” I continued, the words coming easier than I’d expected, four years of unspoken things finally finding somewhere to land.
“I told myself that was protection. I understand now it was also cowardice, and I’m trying, every day, to be a different kind of man than the one who thought loving her meant deciding things for her instead of beside her.
I don’t know if that’s enough to earn any kind of forgiveness for what my family did to yours. But I wanted you to know I’m trying.”
Nadia was quiet for a long moment after I finished, studying the headstone with an expression I couldn’t fully read.
“She’d have argued with you about the cowardice part,” she said finally, a small, sad smile pulling at her mouth.
“She was terrified for nine years, and she never once let that fear stop her from giving me the best life she could manage. I don’t think she’d judge you for being afraid, Kael.
I think she’d want to know what you did once you stopped letting the fear win. ”
“And what did I do?”
“You told the truth, eventually. You stood in an open street. You let me choose, even when choosing terrified you more than anything your father ever built.” She turned to face me fully, the gray spring light doing something soft to the lines of her face.
“I think that’s exactly the kind of ending she’d have wanted for this story.
Not a man who never made mistakes. A man who stopped making the same one. ”
I kissed her there, in front of a headstone that represented everything that had brought us together and nearly torn us apart, and felt something in my chest finally, fully unclench — four years of guilt and vigilance settling, at last, into something closer to peace.