Page 19 of Velvet Folds (Velvet)

Chapter 19

In which our heroine goes home

Two days pass before I find the will to leave.

Two days of healing wounds, discovering that Mrs. Pegg does not hate me after all, and letting Adrik prove just how much he wishes to devour my velvet folds.

Adrik doesn’t ask me not to go. He doesn’t try to keep me when I kiss him and slip from his bed.

And I don’t tell Tybald not to follow me when I go, either.

Dressed in clothing that is not my own, I take the path down the cliff side toward my home.

He follows at a distance, even though he knows I know he’s there.

This time, he has promised he won’t kill my father.

But when I get to the clearing, my father isn’t waiting for me as he usually does.

When I try to open the door, it won’t budge.

Something heavy rests against the door and I push at it again.

Then, for the first time in my life, I knock on my own door.

My father comes barging out and I quickly backpedal down the stairs, away from his ire.

But it’s not my fear that stops him. It’s Tybald.

The man steps between us, a blade to my father’s throat.

“Don’t hurt him, please. You promised.”

“I said I wouldn’t kill him, and I won’t. Unless he makes me.” And then, as my father takes a step backward, confusion written on his face, Tybald says, “Hello old friend.”

Stumbling back, my father sits on the steps of our porch and laughs mirthlessly. “My daughter has betrayed me for a bloodsucker and my dead friend has risen from the grave. It must truly be the end times.”

“How interesting that we both thought the other dead all these years.” Tybald sheaths his sword. “I thought the vodyanoy killed you.”

“It almost did. I thought the previous lord of the castle killed you.”

“We were both wrong.” Tybald laughs mirthlessly. “About so many things.”

“What were you wrong about?”

“Not all monsters are bad. Some monsters aren’t even monsters at all.”

My father spits. “Your father would be ashamed of you.”

“Probably, but he would be wrong. As he often was.” Tybald glances at me, before he asks. “Are you going to welcome your daughter home? Or will you be the same sort of fool he was?”

“She can’t stay here if she plans to go back to him.” He turns his face toward me. “If you leave, you can’t come back.”

“I can’t stay in this house forever.” I tell him. “Did you think I would?”

“You are my daughter,” he says with a righteous indignation that isn’t deserved. “You are Liarian. No one in this village. Certainly no monster in that castle.”

Tybalt looks at me over his shoulder. “Go get your things if you want them. If you would like to stay, I will go.”

I should pretend to hesitate.

The steps creak as I walk up them.

“You’re leaving me.” My father says with a bitterness I’ve never heard from him before.

“You’ve given me no choice.”

Tybald says something to him in Liarian and I slip inside while he’s distracted.

The house smells like sickness—the silver sail’s effects—and I open the windows to air it out before I go to my room.

There is too much to take with me. Too much I’ll have to leave behind. But I pack what I can and I gather the pages of my compendium, binding them together, notes and all.

And when I step out again, my father turns his face away from me.

I say good bye, but he ignores me.

This time, Tybald walks beside me. He takes my things and I let him—except my compendium, and when we reach the shroud of soap vines, I pause.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve asked him not to come looking, but… I don’t want him to kill my father, even if he didn’t intend to.” I press the soil at the base of the plants, making sure they are sturdy. “If they don’t cross each other's paths, my father can’t do something that will make him.”

“To be honest, I thought Luca was dead because he didn’t come after Adrik.”

“You did?”

He shakes his head. “I came for his father. And found just that, a father, playing with his youngest son… and a mother, teaching the older children how to be better than I was ever raised to be.

“Farin could have killed me then and there. He could have set his children to do it, heaven knows they were all capable at that point.

“But he didn’t. He asked me questions I didn’t expect. He reminded me why your father and I started hunting in the first place… and after a time, I realized there was something more important than killing for me.”

“What happened to his parents?”

“They left. When Adrik’s older siblings reached maturity, they went off to find their own place in this world, and when Adrik was old enough, Farin said his goodbyes, lifted Raelle into the skies and went to the guardian’s resting place.”

“They died?”

“No, vampires don’t die unless you kill them… but when their service has ended, they can return to the land of their forebears and spend the rest of their days at ease.”

We descend into silence until we reach the path that leads left to the castle and right to the village.

“Will you come back to the castle?” The way he says it, I know that he won’t drag me with him. He does not plan to make me return.

“I will go to my friend for the time being. There are still a few things I need to do before I can leave the village to its own devices.”

When I knock on the door, Felicia opens it, wide eyed and she looks sharply up to the top of the bell tower and then pulls me inside.

She only notices Tybald when she tries to close the door and then she shrieks a little.

He is the one who apologizes, leaving us as soon as he’s set her things aside.

“You have to tell me everything, Lucia.”

And I do.