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Chapter twenty-six

My Father’s Workshop

W e bolted down the servants’ passageways, but voices ahead echoed down the stone. Then I heard three long gongs of the bell to rally the guards. The Shade’s blackness deepened the natural shadows of the servants’ corridor, but I wasn’t sure how it would stand up to the guards’ luz lights or keen eyes. A cacophony of stomping footsteps forced us to duck into a supply closet, too small for the three of us and the wolf.

We held our breaths as they passed. The Shade called mentally for Jamison, but there was no response. The hall went silent again, and we rushed into the corridor, racing toward the back garden. But additional voices—louder voices—stopped us. Diving down the right hallway, I ran into the only place I knew we could hide for a moment. My father’s workshop.

We came through the doorway and sprinted down the corridor. The Shade was limping and his breath becoming more ragged.

“Don’t worry about me, Dayspring,” he muttered when he saw my worried expression.

I pushed open my father’s door, ushering the Shade, Uncle Koll, and the wolf into a room lined with jars, herbs, oils, and candles. Clicking the door shut behind us, I pressed my back against it and let out a slow breath. The Shade began picking up various canisters and tilting the substances within.

Uncle Koll sat heavily in the chair. “Can you reach the others?”

The Shade nodded. “The wolves stationed at the gate have hidden farther up the mountain. The bats are watching. The others are hiding for now.”

“Jamison?” I asked.

The Shade just shook his head. “I haven’t heard him since his first missive.”

I rubbed my hand on my chest. I didn’t want to worry about that tiny, annoying bat, but I was. When had he wormed his way into my affection? The Shade clacked his teeth twice—he was worried too.

“Okay, so”—I pushed up off the door and came to lean on the desk—“the other side of this hallway goes toward the kitchens. We could go there. I know Chef will be good to us, but—”

“The guards will be everywhere,” the Shade finished.

“We can’t stay here.” Uncle Koll pointed around the room.

The room door shut with a bang. The Shade shoved me behind him, his shadows curling around my shoulders as he faced off with the intruder.

“No. You cannot.” The speaker was wrinkled and bent, his eyes sunken, and the lower lids dark and scabbed. I hardly recognized him.

“Father,” I breathed.

He glanced at me, his expression both unreadable and showing a thousand emotions at once. “Aelia.”

The Shade stiffened, took three strides forward, and then punched my father across the jaw.

“Shade!” I squawked and rushed after them .

The shadows picked up my father and set him back on his feet. He rubbed his cheek, but there was no fire in him. No fight. His shoulders slumped.

“What were you thinking?” I asked as I tried to brush past him, but the Shade stuck out a hand.

“I’m thinking I’d like to do more than that.” The Shade’s sharp finger pointed at my father. “You let them take her. You didn’t protect her when it mattered, and you didn’t love her well before.” Instant tears sprung to my eyes, a lifetime of emotion on the brim. The Shade continued. “You should have done better. Been better.”

Each word struck my father like a blow, though the shadows and the Shade’s fists had stilled. My father…cowered. His small frame shrunk into itself, and I saw nothing left to fear. He was a broken, pitiable man. Disgust mixed with the residual ache in my chest.

My father shook his head. “You’re right.” Icy prickles covered my skin. “I should have…should have.”

“You didn’t,” the Shade said, the shadows boiling around him.

“I should have stopped the prince somehow.”

“You’re a coward.”

My father shriveled. “Yes. To my shame. I’ve thought it a thousand times, considered a million ways I could have done anything besides what I did.”

“Which was nothing.” The Shade’s hand reached out to me, and I grasped it. His emotions flooded me at the contact, my heart surging with righteous fury demanding justice.

My father put his head into his hands. “For so many things, Aelia. So many…I’m sorry.”

The Shade felt unwilling to forgive him. My previous self was ready to stop the tension and make it better, but I wasn’t that person anymore. He had apologized before and hadn’t changed. I was so sick of hurting. And yet…what was forgiveness but freedom for the one who forgave? What was forgiveness but a means of letting me loose from every ache and bond my father had pinned me under? The Shade, mercifully, held his tongue.

I glanced around the room for the alcohol bottle but saw none. Even his emergency supply under the cabinet was gone. Empty potion bottles lay on the floor in the corner. All drunk or…I hated to hope again for him. I cleared my throat. “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you love me more?”

His shoulders sagged. “I did love you—do love you. I just didn’t see how much until you were ripped from me—until I thought you were dead.” He pulled back his sleeve, showing the scars on the back of his hand, the bond mark he had burned away all those years ago. He closed his eyes, and a glowing leaf emerged beneath the twisted tissues. “I thought losing your mother was the worst pain I would ever experience. But I didn’t know the depths of agony until I lost you too.” A wave of unease slipped from the Shade, but father continued. “We were bonded. So young. She was my everything. When she gave you to me, I knew I had it all. But then I lost everything.”

Bonded. Bonding to someone meant giving up part of yourself, sacrificing the best part of you for another. And if one died, the other would wish they had died also. But Uncle Koll had responded so differently to that pain.

“Your mother was the very air I breathed, Aelia—the ground I walked on. When she left us, I was unmoored, a desiccated husk of a man. But there was you—you needed me. I didn’t…I didn’t want to care for anything ever again. I wanted to work and to die, but you and your persistent affection awoke my shriveled heart, making me want to care for something again. ”

The scoff escaped before I could stop it. I looked down at the fingers in my grasp.

“Tell him, Dayspring.”

I bit my lip. “But you didn’t care, Father. You were…mean. Drunk.” My throat threatened to close. “You hit me.”

My father had the decency to look horrified. “I was a fool.”

“Even when you lost Mother—you said you lost everything—but you still had me. I was here. I was trying…trying so hard to win your affection.”

“I was blind and stupid.”

The Shade scoffed. “And cruel.”

Father cringed. “That too.” He heaved a breath. “I thought I was doing okay. But when you looked at me at the temple—when your expression was not one of horror, but of acceptance, as if you already knew I was capable of this—I knew the slime I had become.” He scratched his arm. “I quit drinking. But without you, there isn’t enough potion. The queen’s health is failing. The hope of our nation is failing.”

“We gave the queen a potion, Father. One that is better because of the Shade—because of his help.” I tilted my head to the bottles in the corner, one still containing a drop of the pink liquid. “Did you drink her potions?”

His head sunk farther into his shoulders. “I’m a weak loamer—my earth magic is minimal—but I still felt the effects of the earth’s sickness. So I started taking the potions too.”

I didn’t know I could be more horrified. No wonder all the herbs I found were never enough.

“I’m sorry for this also. I started drinking both the mead and the potions to numb the pain, then to ignore the sickness, and finally to hide my shame from it all.” Father looked at the Shade and dipped his head. “I owe you many things, sir. Thank you for protecting her when I didn’t.”

Wicked shadows whipped around the room—menacing, but never touching my father or his things. “And what will you do now?”

My father stood as upright as he could. “Now, I’ll help you escape.”

Uncle Koll let out a slow breath. “The only correct answer.”

A shadow from behind my father slipped back to the Shade and returned the knife in its clutches to the sheath on the Shade’s hip.

“You were going to kill my father?” I thought at the Shade.

“I was thinking about it. If he threatened you, I had to disable him.” He shrugged. “My plan was more about maiming him. He’s a healer—he would have recovered.” Turning toward me, he pinned my eyes with his, the shadows around him causing the green to glow. Aloud, he said, “I refuse to let him hurt you again.”

My smile was a bit wobbly. “You can’t protect me from everything.”

“Watch me.”

“Stubbed toes?”

“I’ll destroy the floor that tripped you.” He shook his head. “Or maybe just carry you everywhere.”

“Splinters?”

“Burn the trees.”

I snorted at the image. “The prince already does that so well.”

He raised his eyebrows. “May I punch him too?”

I gave him a sad scoff. “ Maybe, but not today. Today, let’s get out of here.”

Dark shadows filtered across his green eyes as the muscles of his jaw feathered. “Dayspring, I—”

A boom preceded the shaking of the entire castle. The ground below us buckled, and dust rained down from the ceiling .

The Shade clasped his hands to his head. “Uncle, something is here—”

A loud blast shook the walls around us again. Uncle Koll rubbed his hands. “I can feel it.”

Father pulled a cane from the wall and peered out the door. “To the kitchens then. A recent shipment came for the village. We could put you on the cart as it leaves. You can escape.”

“They’ll search it,” the Shade said.

“Not if I’m driving,” my father answered with a disgusted sneer. “I’m the prince’s loyal dog.”

The Shade turned to me. “ Your decision, Dayspring. I’m with you.”

I squeezed his hand, a flood of warmth blooming through my heart. No one had ever looked at me with such affection, much less respect. And no one had ever actually waited for my decision. “It’s not a bad plan.” He raised a brow, and I spoke more confidently. “Let’s do it.”