Page 28

Swallowing, I lift my chin and straighten my back. He doesn’t get to judge, not after shutting me out for nearly a month. Not after refusing to work. Not after making me keep our little farm running on my own.

“I found them.”

“Youfoundthem,” he repeats, and his eyes fix on my face, checking it for any hint of untruth.

I blink but remain silent.

Father’s lower jaw tenses and shifts forward. Teeth gritted, he lowers the necklace and scans the shelves again. The tension snaps between us like static electricity.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous this is, all this light in one place?”

I shift my weight to one leg and lower the basket to my side. “Dangerous for whom?”

His face snaps back to me, and something not quite stable taints his expression.

“Foryou,” he says. “For the whole city. For your—”

My head tilts to one side. “For my what?” I step closer, daring him to tell me the truth.

He glares at me for a moment, but then his eyes focus somewhere far away. I wait, breath held, wondering what he’s seeing. Coming at me, my father yanks the basket from my hand and tosses it into the furthest corner of the lean-to. The little bolétis tumble out all over the floor. I shrink back, shocked to see him so changeable.

“Your mother thought she was beyond their reach too,” he spits out like a wild animal in pain. His voice makes me shudder. “It brought her nothing but death.”

Tears gather in the corners of my eyes. I chew on the inside of my cheek.

“They’re just mushrooms,” I whisper.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, laughing bitterly as he grinds his free palm into his temple. “They are so much more than that.”

“Thentell me.Explain this whole broken world to me. Please.”

Father walks past me into the open air. I follow.

“I can handle more than you think,” I say, close to yelling now.

He wheels around, his shoulders heaving like he has run here from Utsanek. Even this short exertion has the power to exhaust him. I should be ashamed of myself for vexing him like this.

But I’m just angry.

“What do you know of life?” he returns, fixing me with a withering look.

My back goes rigid. It’s not like him to cut me down like this. “I know enough to keep things running while my useless father wallows in the past.” The acidic words spew from me, and I can’t get them back.

The argentilum necklace in my father’s hand slips through his fingers, plummets to the earth.

If I wielded an actual weapon, I would have hurt him less.

“Do you really think,” he begins, stops, wets his lips with his tongue. “Do you think I want to be this way?”

I wrap my arms around myself and make no reply. There isn’t a right way to answer, except to apologize, and I’m too upset to do that.

He approaches me hesitantly, no doubt afraid I will lash out again. I turn my face away and squeeze my eyes shut. His touch makes me start. The warmth of his hands brushes my arms, then my back, as he pulls me in and holds me tight.

“When your mother died, I lost everything. Everything I was.” His breaths shake the both of us. “I thought—I—I could shelter you from it all.”

“But you can’t,” I say into his shoulder. “Not anymore.”

Father’s chest rises and falls four times. “I can try.”