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We could behave, couldn’t we? For one meal, we could behave like a normal family foronemeal.

Normal family. I almost laughed at the thought. I sat at the bench opposite of Tessa and my father, and began eating my meal in silence. My sister did the same. It was our father who sat there, hardly moving and staring at everyone around us.

“Are you going to eat?” I asked him after a few minutes of silence. “Your food will get cold.”

“I find it hard to eat when we are surrounded by enemies,” he mumbled, hardly audible.

“Father,” Tessa warned in a low voice. I held my hand up to stop her.

After coming moments away from erupting into ash the last time my father and I fought, I was trying my best to keep my temper under control. He didn’t need to fear me, and he certainly didn’t need to fear the others.

“These aren’t our enemies, father,” I explained calmly, looking into his blood-shot eyes. “They’re here to fight for me.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. It was hard not to see my father as the weak and confused man he really was. Hidden beneath the decades of losing himself in ale, was a simple man who wanted to survive.

A man who had lived a terrible, difficult life.

A man who had lost his wife.

Who had nothing to live for anymore.

When he wasn’t running around creating a list of enemies for himself, he was simply trying to live for the next day.

“For you?” he questioned. “They’re fighting for you?”

“Yes, father,” I said, taking another bite of my stew. “They tell me I am special, remember? I have a special power and people are trying to take it. So they are helping me. They’re protecting me.”

This was the sixth time I had to explain that to him. The second and the third time, I was annoyed. But not anymore.

He still looked confused at my words, but didn’t push the conversation any more. “So,” I started, desperate for any sort of conversation, “have you two been missing home?”

“Are you kidding?” Tessa replied with a sudden burst of energy. “You’ll have to drag my dead body back there. I should have been living here all along!”

My father snorted in response.

“Wow,” I started. “That’s pretty much the exact opposite of the response I was expecting from you.”

Tessa shoved her mouth with another bite of food, barely swallowing before adding, “I can’t remember the last time I was hungry. Seriously, I think I’ve eaten more here in Rewyth than I have my entire life.”

I smiled at my sister, but my stomach flipped. It was a joke, but it held a wicked truth.

Tessa was being taken care of here for maybe the first time in her entire life. “Yeah,” I responded. “I know how you feel.”

My father dropped his fork and shoved his tray away from him with a grunt.

I was all for keeping my temper cool, but he had no right to get angry over that.

He wasn’t there for us. No matter what the reasons were, and no matter how messed up a man he had become, he didn’t take care of us.

Idid.Ifed our family.Iwatched over Tessa.Iput clothes on our backs. He wasn’t allowed to get angry over that truth.

“Something to add, father?” I asked. I knew I was pushing him, but that dark shadow deep inside of me couldn't stop myself. “Because if you have something to say, you should just say it.”

Tessa’s eyes dropped to her food. She had always been the non-confrontational one of us.

“You two act like I am nothing in this family,” my father whispered.

Normally, I would have snapped right back. But Tessa looked at me with a surprise in her eyes that set me back.