Page 24 of Burdened Bonds

“So theywereforces from the West?” I ask him, sensing Ellie quivering behind me. I’m not ready to deliver my bad news, not ready to face his rage just yet.

“Who else would they be?” He smiles.

“Where have you been?”

“Fighting. Where you should have been too, instead of cowering here at home with your mother.”

The mention of her has my gaze dropping to the floor, an action my father reads as shame.

“Always a coward,” he spits.

The accusation hits me square in the chest, has anger flaring in my veins. He can call me a lot of things. But not a coward.

“Unlike you,” I hiss, raising my gaze to his. “So brave, so powerful.” My father looks at me with amusement. “Yet here you are, already fled from the fighting, back to your impregnable home.”

He shakes his head. “You really understand so little about politics and the ways in which this world operates. I had such high hopes for you, Tristan, and yet every day you disappoint me.”

The anger inside me flares more viciously. Ellie’s fingertips brush against my back as if she’s trying to calm me. I swallow, swallow down all the rage, even though it scrapes at my throat like I’m swallowing a thousand knives.

“Mother is dead,” I tell him.

I expect some kind of reaction. A flinch. A look of regret. A howl of pain. Something to tell me he cared about her, something to prove all my suspicions about his indifference are wrong. But all he does is nod and stride towards his study.

“Did you hear me,” I say, more loudly this time, striding after him, “mother – your wife – is dead.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“And don’t you even want to know how it happened?”

“Tristan, we are at war,” he snaps, opening one of the tall wooden cupboards that nestle in the room’s paneling and pulling objects from its inside. “The council has been destroyed, the academy attacked, our borders overrun. I don’t have time–”

“She’s dead!” I yell at him. “Gone!”

He freezes, then spins, his eyes cruel and angry. “And did you not hear me, boy! This is war. Not some silly dueling match. No more pretending. People die in wars. Many people already have and more will follow.”

“She was your wife. Don’t you care even a little bit?”

“What I care about is seizing this opportunity and making it ours. So instead of standing there and bawling like a little child, go clean yourself up. Our guests will be arriving any moment now.”

I should go, turn around and walk away, pretend I’m doing as he says and walk straight out the door, taking my cousin with me.

But my insides are raw and painful, the hurt too great, and I cannot find the usual disinterest and boredom I use to mask my feelings. I can’t tamper them down. I can’t control them. It hurts too much. My mother gone. My mate missing. My heart ripped into shreds.

I race at him, pushing him hard on the shoulder. “Your wife. You’re meant to care. You were meant to love her. To protect her.” I push at him again and again, my magic slashing at his skin. “And all you ever did was cause her pain.”

“Enough!” my father yells, slamming his own magic into me, so hard I’m thrown backward, skidding across the floor and crashing into the far wall.

Now I should leave. Now I should go. No good will come of this. No good at all. He never cared for her or me. And I can’t make him care now.

But I’m too raw, all my emotions hurtling and colliding around my body, making my magic hot and dangerous. And I’ve had enough. Enough of his games, and his schemes, his cruelty and his punishments.

I blast magic across the room and into my evil, twisted father. A man I’ve never liked. A man I’ve always struggled to love.

My magic is low, but not as much as it should be, and I know that’s because I have her magic in my veins now too, joined, fused, molded to mine. I have a piece of her power. A piece of her soul. A piece of her heart.

The impact smacks into my father, knocking him onto his knees. And now there’s emotion on that blank face of his. Shock.

“You dare to strike at me?” he snarls, firing magic that sizzles and hisses my way. I block it with my own, lifting my arms to shield my face from its heat and when it fizzles and dies around me, I send another bolt at my father and another. Angry, raging magic so frantic, I barely see what he manages to block and what hits him. Then he strikes back at me, chains and ropes lashing at me, attempting to curl themselves around my arms and legs, my waist and my neck. I swipe them away, cutting through them with my magic.