Page 127 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

TUCKED AWAY

Jove

JOVE’S CHEST WAS HEAVY, TOO heavy. He didn’t know what to do with himself, but he needed to do something. If he stopped moving, he would drown.

The ropy, glowing Gate disappeared in a blink, and the tunnel was thrust into darkness. Kase had vanished as if he never was.

Harlan Shackley, the Stradat Lord Kapitan, his father, was dead.

He’d died.

The word sounded harsh even in Jove’s head, so final, so cruel as if the word itself had dealt the killing blow. It tasted sour, like spoiled wine.

He half believed that any minute now, his father would stride around the corner and demand that they stop wasting time, or shout at him for doing nothing to stop his death or for not stopping Kase from leaving. But his father would never do any of that again.

The world felt muffled, like his ears were stuffed with cotton. He held his mother tighter as her tears fell.

Formidable, his father had murmured among his final words—yet she felt so fragile and small in his arms, too light, a wisp that would scatter in the wind.

Now they very well might lose Kase too, and in the end, his father’s sacrifice would be in vain.

Sacrifice. Would he have done it for Jove?

He stared at his father’s closed, lifeless eyes, trying his best to not look at the grotesque wound in his chest.

He swallowed hard.

Jove needed to be strong. Whether he liked it or not, he was now the head of the Shackley family, and it was up to him to protect it.

While he’d never agreed with his father’s methods, he could appreciate the strength he radiated. If Jove could admire one singular thing about his father, it was that Harlan hadn’t broken despite his world crumbling for the third time in his life these past few months.

How would Jove have fared if he’d been in his father’s shoes? Considering he’d barely felt alive these last few months in his own, he doubted he would’ve survived. How had his mother made it? How had she kept functioning through each heartache life dealt her?

What did true strength look like?

War was here, had been here for some time; in fact, he wasn’t sure it had ever ended fifteen years ago. But he couldn’t change that. They would lose today without whatever strength he could scrounge together.

Clara and Samuel’s faces flashed in his mind’s eye. They were somewhere above, and they needed his protection.

He needed to step into the shoes his father left behind. They wouldn’t fit, but they didn’t need to—Jove would make them his own.

“I need to speak with Lord Stephenson and the others,” Jove whispered into his mother’s hair. “This isn’t over.”

The weight on his chest never lifted, but he rose anyway.

His mother shook her head. “I can’t…I can’t leave him.”

He helped her stand, and she clung to him. “I know.”

“He’s gone. I know he’s not here, and that I… hated the person he became after all these years, but I knew the Harlan I loved was always tucked away, reaching. I just didn’t search for him…I didn’t reach back.”

Jove didn’t know what to say to that. He’d had a very complicated relationship with the man who’d fathered him; his grief felt infinitely more complex, so interwoven with anger and confusion he couldn’t find a way to comfort her. Instead, he squeezed his mother tighter. “We’ll figure this out.”

His mother brushed away more tears.

Lady Fely edged forward, sword hanging by her side. “I will stay with her.”

Saldr threw some dust over Harlan’s body, murmuring a few words. A glow surrounded his father, and when it died down, his skin glistened, the hole in his chest covered by newly woven cloth.

Les jumped, but Jove held her tightly. “I swear I’ll come back for you.”

“When this is over, it would be my honor to burn him with the holy flames,” Saldr said quietly. “A great honor to be bestowed on someone who is not of our race, but deserving of the man who sacrificed himself for another.”

Jove’s eyes stung. If Harlan hadn’t knocked Kase out of the way, it would’ve been his brother lying before him, skin pale and chest unmoving. Jove had been frozen, unable to do anything but watch as his father shoved Kase to the ground, taking the blow for him.

His father did indeed have a heart hidden underneath the layers of ice, and the moment he’d revealed it, he’d died.

Neither Kase nor Jove would get to see the man Harlan Shackley could have been…the man he might have once been.

Once, when Jove was small, Harlan had played toy soldiers with him and Zeke. Once, his father had laughed at something his mother had said and drawn her close, kissing her softly to a chorus of groans from his children.

But those few memories had been buried beneath grief, pain, and abuse as if they never were. It was only now that Jove remembered, and it was too late. They would never return to a time such as that.

Jove refused to live like that. He’d allowed the alcohol to numb his pain, but it would no longer control him. He would do whatever it took to make sure Samuel could be proud of the man his father was. To make sure Samuel would know the man he’d become.

“Go,” Les said, patting his cheek and waking him from his thoughts. “Do what you were born to do.”

Jove’s chin wobbled, but he swallowed his emotion. He could grieve later. With one last squeeze of her hand, he strode away from his father’s body.