Page 110 of The Hunter

“Do you want me to fetch your mo—”

“No!” Jakub cried. “No, don’t get her!”

Millie paused, hurt trickling down her ribs.

“I don’t want her to see me. I can’t face her! Not like this.”

“Why not?” In the face of the storm of youthful distress, Christopher’s cool, temperate voice was a strange and effective balm to her son.

“I don’t have a f-father.” Jakub sniffed. “Which means… I’m the m-man of our family. She has no one else. I’m supposed to protect her from distress, aren’t I? I’ve not done a very good job. I’m not acting like a m-m-man.”

Millie’s hands flew to her mouth; the shame in her son’s voice was too much for someone so young. Had she made him feel this way? Had she put the responsibility of her happiness, of herloneliness,on his tiny shoulders?

She ached for him, for he would not know that his sire died only this afternoon. That of anyone in this house, save Lady Northwalk, his blood was the most noble. He was the bastard son of an earl and an immigrant. Raised by a woman who knew nothing about children, who knew nothing but how to love him.

What if that wasn’t enough? What ifshewasn’t enough? Again she wanted to dash in there, to scoop him up as she did when he was so small and would wrap his arms and legs around her and cling and cry until she cooed and kissed all his woes better.

Farah put a staying arm around her shoulders, giving the doorway a meaningful glance.

“I told you before, I don’t have a father,” Christopher said softly. “Never have done.”

“Did you even know who he was?”

The bed squeaked a bit under the stress of a heavy weight, as though Christopher had sat.

“No. My mother named me after herself. Told me that my father wasn’t the sort of man who deserved a namesake, and I believe she was right.”

“Your mother’s name was Christopher?”

“Christine.” The name sounded dusty on his voice, as though he hadn’t said it in a lifetime.

“Did you protect her?”

Millie closed her eyes, her trembling hands still covering her mouth as tears burned behind her lids.

“No.” Christopher’s voice was tighter, darker, but retained its infallible composure. “But you must understand something I didn’t at your age. Mothers like mine, like yours, they don’t gather strength fromyourprotection, but from protecting you. Your mother needs you to be a child when you’re a child. And then a man when you become a man.”

It was true. He was so unbelievably correct. If it weren’t for her son, for her fear for him, her love of him, she’d never have had the ferocity and strength she did in the catacombs.

Jakub stopped crying, and was so incredibly silent for a moment while Farah and Millie clung to each other, each of them filled with an understanding of what this conversation might be costing the assassin. And what Jakub might be gaining from it.

“Really?” was her son’s watery question.

“Really. When I was your age, my mother thought of all kinds of clever ways to keep us occupied. To keep me happy, and—brave. She did it for me, but I think—I think it helped her as well.”

“My mother makes me teach her things that I learned at school, or from a book.” Jakub’s voice lifted, and Millie found it so bittersweet that he understood why. Sweet that he knew she cared, bitter that he’d found her out so young. “She pretends to misunderstand everything and repeats it back to me all wrong and we laugh and laugh.”

“There, you see? You mother… she’s…” Millie held her breath, her heart balanced on his next word.

“Mr. Argent?” Jakub asked.

Millie winced, wishing her son had waited one more moment, so that she could have heard the words Christopher hadn’t articulated.

“Hmm?”

“What did your mother do when you couldn’t sleep?”

A heartbeat went by.