Page 56 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part Two

“I don’t doubt it for one second,” I whisper back.

I step through the door to my father’s study.

He’s waiting for me by the windows, through which sunlight glints off the fresh snow dusting the mountain peaks that surround Waterfell Castle.

I can’t remember the last time I saw my father in casual slacks and a cable-knit sweater.

He has no tumbler of whiskey at hand, no chosen flanking him, to mitigate the weight of this conversation.

I carry my backpack with Armin’s urn in one hand, and a puffy jacket in the other. The jacket is for my father. I’m already wearing all my winter gear. Though with the sun streaming through the windows, I already know I won’t need as many layers as I anticipated.

The flight from London passed quickly. Kitty spent most of her time rotating between window seats, taking pictures and texting each one to all of us.

Tommy slid into the seat next to me — beating out both Bolan and Sully — then stubbornly didn’t move from it while playing games on his new tablet and eating from a small mountain of snacks Christoph kept steadily supplied.

“Mirth,” my father says, his tone tired— but warmer than he’s been with me for a long while.

No doubt he can feel the power contentedly twined around me. But … I also hope it’s more than that. More than just the relief that I’ve accepted my role, my duties wholly.

“Did you want me to come down?” he asks, without turning to look at me.

I’ve abandoned my soul-bound mates, along with Tommy and Kitty, to Anne and Eleanor, slipping away to get dressed and grab the jacket before seeking out my father.

Not that I didn’t know exactly where he was from the moment I set foot on the property. My sensitivity to that, to the intersection point itself, is strange but not uncomfortable.

“Do you remember the lookout over the river that you took us to as children?”

He turns to me then. Backlit, his face is in shadow. “Of course.”

“It’s one of Armin’s favorite spots. Was. Was one of his favorite spots.”

My father’s bright-purple gaze falls to my backpack, then to the jacket in my other hand. Then he looks at his empty mantel for a long moment.

I hold the jacket out to him. He steps over to take it, pulling it on and partially zipping it up. I meet his heavy gaze, so much experience churning in those eyes, which are just a shade lighter than my own. Almost a century of life, choices, mistakes, love, grief, regrets.

I don’t look away from any of it as I hold my hand out to him.

He grasps it, his touch no warmer than my own.

Then his essence snaps out, slicing into me, burrowing into my skin and pulling me apart.

I close my eyes and just bear it silently.

I’m nowhere. And also everywhere. Disintegrated and shifting, with only my father’s hand holding me from being lost forever.

Then my feet crunch through snow. My next breath is icy and crisp. And I’m in one piece again.

Teleportation.

I pull my sunglasses out of my pocket, putting them on before opening my eyes. But the vista is so bright that I need to blink more than a few times to adjust to it.

My father squeezes my hand gently, then releases me.

He’s teleported us to a sheltered spot on the sheer face of a mountain. Not a cave, but a niche carved out of the stone. A wide shelf of sorts. There’s a proper name for it, no doubt. My father would know, but I don’t ask. Because this isn’t that sort of moment.

He steps back to a small pile of branches next to the cliff face. The neatness of the pile makes it clear that he still comes up to the viewpoint, collecting fallen branches from the well-treed slopes that surround us while he hikes. More accurately, while he rock-climbs.

I wander closer to the edge of the cliff, allowing the breathtaking view of the swollen river slicing through the craggy mountains to settle me, fill me.

The river drops off to the far left into the waterfall that can be seen from one side of the castle, but I can’t quite see the castle itself from this vantage point.

Armin and my father would often scale the cliff behind this outcropping.

From there, on a clear day, the castle and the entire mountain range around it can be seen.

I never enjoyed that climb myself. I never needed to feel as though the entire world was at my feet. And that was okay. As I now understand it.

My father builds a small fire, using three calf-high boulders previously gathered in an arc as a windbreak. He builds the fire by hand, though he could have one blazing in mere minutes if he used his telekinesis.

Still gazing out at the view, I perch on the middle boulder with my back to the firepit, pleased that my jacket is long enough to cover my ass. The sun, reflecting off the snow and the rock, is warm on my face.

“Are you going to tell me why one of my chosen is hiding the details of an incident that took place in London two days ago?” my father asks mildly, striking two rocks together, then using just a touch of essence to enhance the resulting spark.

It sets the dry moss alight under a triangle of branches.

“Raoul?” I ask, already knowing the answer while also trying to hide my amusement.

“Who else?” my father grumbles, blowing lightly to coax the tiny licks of fire from the moss to the kindling.

“Perhaps he’s still gathering all the intel,” I say. “To present it properly.”

My father huffs. “And the annoyingly thick stack of paperwork on my desk from Lord Hereford? And the bank draft from Lord Savoy buying out Rian Callaghan’s contract? None of it submitted for my input or approval.”

I just hum agreeably.

“Eleanor has already sent the staff in to relocate our rooms at Lake Thun,” my father continues. “Because you’ll apparently need more room now.”

“That’s lovely of her,” I say.

“And the two children you brought with you? The younger is an awry.”

“I know.”

“A seer?”

“I believe so.”

Satisfied that the fire has taken, my father steps over to the edge of the cliff, standing far closer to the sheer drop than I had. He looks out across the winding river, back stiff and hands on his hips. Then with a heavy sigh, he turns and sits down next to me.

“So we’re not talking about any of that,” he says.

“We’ll stay for a few days,” I say mildly.

We sit together, taking in the view for long enough that the fire begins to warm my back. Then I take Armin’s urn out of my backpack and place it on the ground before us.

“I haven’t been here,” my father says, “since Armin … left us. Eleanor asked me to bring the twins last week … I made an excuse about the snowpack melting too quickly.” Plumes of white mist — condensation from the cold — punctuate his words. “She let me get away with the lie.”

“Fresh snow last night,” I say, not agreeing or disagreeing with him.

He huffs a laugh. “Why is it that the child who didn’t inherit my power is the one most like me?

Had you … you I never had to worry about …

you never would have …” He takes a shuddering breath.

“I was hard on Armin. I had to be hard on him. You know what normally happens to awry telepaths or telekinetics.”

“They go mad. Or tear themselves apart.”

“I thought his mother’s blood would dilute my own. When I realized it hadn’t, I thought I was going to lose Armin when his powers manifested. I prepared for it. But then, he had you. You as his counterbalance. And he survived his manifestation, then his teens, and …”

“Almost his twenties.”

We fall silent for a moment, both thinking of Armin.

“Christoph tells me that a crown of purple myrtle appears around my head,” I say, “when I give my power … freedom.”

My father looks at me then. “I haven’t seen it since the night you saved Armin from those kidnappers. But yes. From your mother’s lineage. Goddess-touched, they call it.”

“The night the Mobius Group tried to take me. And Armin.”

“Likely, but unconfirmed.” He laughs grimly. “They never dared try to take you or Armin again. They couldn’t pay mercenaries enough to even attempt it.”

His gaze falls on the urn sitting on the ground before us. Then he looks at me and nods. I lean over, removing the lid. My father’s essence shifts, curling around my hands, then flooding into the jar.

I sit back as a controlled spiral of Armin’s ashes — the last of them — rises at my father’s behest from the urn. I hold my hand out, and the spiral shifts closer, hovering over my palm.

I look at my father. “I won’t leave you.”

His expression cracks under a wave of utter agony, utter grief. He bows his head over his knees, and he sobs, power and essence pouring from him.

The mountain beneath us shudders under the onslaught of his unfettered grief. Under that same onslaught, the marble urn cracks, then disintegrates, mixing with the now-erratic spiral of Armin’s ashes.

Then the energy that is the intersection point reaches out to my father, to me, and takes everything pouring from him, all of that immense power, absorbing it.

My father takes a deep, shaky breath.

He raises his head.

Then he allows the wind to take the ashes and the marble dust. But not all at once.

I watch it slowly filter away. “I hope Armin’s at peace now, once more one with the aether. We’ll find each other again.”

My father sobs, just once more.

And I’m crying too, silently. I lean against his shoulder, and he reaches for my hand.

I can feel my soul-bound mates all reaching for me as well, soft brushes of comfort and love through our nascent bonds.

Even if they aren’t all currently perched on the edge of a mountain, they are with me.

All around us, the bottomless energy of the intersection point settles, as if it too has been purged of grief and despair, of constantly seeking a connection with Armin. Scarred but not mortally wounded.

“Is the weather going to be clear tomorrow?” I ask.

My father scrubs the tears from his face. “Yes. Why?”

“We should bring the twins up. Actually, maybe we should have a family picnic!”

My father huffs disapprovingly. “I’m not going to ferry you all up here like some pack animal. Plus, there’s not enough room.”

I lean my head against his shoulder, our hands still clasped. “Maybe in the summer.”

He laughs, then whispers so quietly that the words are almost lost to the wind, “Anything for you, my goddess-touched daughter. It’s already all yours. You and your chosen few.”

The End