Page 6

“Discussing what?”

Father’s brow creased. “Really, Farrin, this is tiresome. If I wanted to tell you, I would tell you. Leave me be.”

He stepped past me, but I hurried to block his path. I grabbed his sleeve and lowered my voice, trying not to quail at the furious look on his face. Only twice before had my father looked at me this way. Once was several weeks ago on the far side of the oak’s hidden greenway, right before he had gone to meet with the demon. The other time was when we’d returned home from Rosewarren, still healing from our trip to the Old Country, and had told Father everything: the demon who had kept us fighting the Basks was Talan, and Talan was now free from his cruel master, Kilraith, and Gemma and Talan were in love, and there was no further need for war. Kilraith was hurt and in hiding somewhere. We could call a truce with the Basks. We could have peace.

And now Father looked at me with seething fury for only the third time in my life. An oil painting of his father’s father sat proudly over his shoulder, glaring down at me. Both pairs of eyes, flinty and bright, belonged to sentinels.

I did flinch then. I nearly stepped away from him. For a moment I thought he might strike me, which he had never done before. He’d never even come close. But I sensed the sentinel violence coiling tightly within him. My body’s instincts came alive, warning me to run.

Instead I stood firm, terrible scenarios piling high in my mind.

“Tell me you aren’t planning something for the queen’s ball,” I said quietly. “Promise me you’ll do nothing.”

“Do nothing?” The corner of his mouth went up. He let out a soft puff of laughter. “No, Farrin, that’s your special talent. You do nothing. Gemma does nothing. I act.”

“Father, the war is over. The Basks—”

“The Basks are still themselves,” he spat, shaking off my hand. “That has not changed, and it never will.” Then his gaze fell to my coat pocket. I glanced down, saw the corner of Ryder’s unopened letter poking out.

My heart sank.

Father’s mouth thinned. “Speaking of,” he said very quietly, “is that from him? The Bask boy?”

I hated many things about this conversation, none more so than the fact that I had to speak up in defense of a man I despised. Never mind that he’d fought for all of us in the Old Country as fiercely as if we were his own family. He was still a Bask, and I didn’t have to like him. I simply had to not kill him.

“His name is Ryder,” I said, “and he’s hardly a boy. He’s twenty-eight years old.”

Father raised an eyebrow. “He wants to come here, doesn’t he? For avisit? He’s still on about that?”

“I haven’t opened the letter yet.”

“You should burn it. It could contain some wicked spellwork. The ink could be poisoned.”

“It isn’t wartime, Father. Things have changed, and you know it. The queen’s ball—”

“Theball,” he scoffed, and then, quick as lightning, he grabbed my wrist, held me fast. His grip was so ferocious that it shocked the breath out of me. The sentinel anger had awakened in him, gods-givenmagic that could help him tear a chasm through a battlefield, leaving ruin in his wake.

“No amount of balls, or polite invitations, or gifts sent as peace offerings, or even pretty, freed demons,” he said, deadly quiet, “will change the fact that those people are our enemies, and they will take any opportunity they can to hurt us.”

I shook my head, tried to protest, but he spoke over me, leaning close. There was a glint in his eyes, like sun flashing on a blade.

“I willnotlet my family be torn apart by the likes of them. Do you think the harmless tricks they’ve pulled these past few months have satisfied their need for vengeance?”

All at once I remembered that horrible moment at the queen’s midsummer ball. My long-lost mother, finally come back to us, had run to my father in the middle of that crowded room, weeping with joy, calling for my sisters and me. Their impossible reunion had cut me in two and left me standing there agape, frozen not with relief but with fury.Nowshe had come back to us.Now, after so much damage had been done.

But then the glamour had melted away, revealing Alastrina Bask—crowing, triumphant—and then Ryder Bask, her brother, had stormed through the scandalized crowd to attack my dumbfounded father, to kick and punch him again and again.

“Harmless tricks?” I gasped out, trying in vain to tear away from Father’s grip. “You’re lying. I saw your face that night. You looked like you’d been shot. In fact, I think you would have preferred that.”

He kept on, ignoring me. “Since the curse your mother and I engineered ended, and the forest trapping the Basks at Ravenswood fell, I’ve been waiting for them to come at us again—reallycome at us, like they did all those years ago. Thefire, Farrin.” He shook his head, and now I saw that the glint in his eyes was angry tears, threatening to spill. “Two daughters safe, one trapped in a house set aflame. No one could find you. And thesmellof whatever spellwork they’dused to start the fire…bitter, terrible, the sear of poison laced with the stench of rot. I smell it every night in my dreams. Searching the grounds for you while the flames roared on, finding your body at last, smeared with smoke, limp in the grass… No, I will not endure another moment like that.I will not.”

I couldn’t bear the pain any longer. The bones in my wrist felt like they would snap. “Right now, the greatest danger to all of us isyou,” I said with a little sob. “You’re hurting me.”

He froze, then looked down at my wrist and let out a soft cry. He released me at once, stumbling away from me. His boot caught on the tasseled rug, and he fell back, knocking against a cushioned bench and then falling hard to the floor.

Without thinking, I went to him, reaching for him with my unhurt arm.

He waved me off, shrinking into himself. A horrible sight, my tall, hale father sitting slumped on the floor. He looked up at me, tears on his cheeks, his face suddenly haggard. I couldn’t move; I was mortified.