“I—” Her voice faltered, and for the first time, I saw something in her that wasn’t power. It was hesitation. Weakness. “I knew I had to stay away. It was the way of the Hunger Path.”
The phrase made my stomach twist. It rang hollow even as it rolled off her tongue.
Keegan’s eyes narrowed, his breath coming sharp and fast.
“Not true,” he growled, every syllable threaded with barely contained rage. “You can say that now because it fits the storyline. You’re telling yourself excuses.”
Her face tightened, but she didn’t deny it.
Keegan shook his head violently, pacing a step as if the ground itself burned under his boots.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like. I watched Stonewick crumble. I watched families tear themselves apart and magic fall. And you…” His voice cracked, but the fury carried him. “You weren’t there.”
Every word scraped at me, raw and jagged. I wanted to reach for him, to anchor him, but I knew better. This wasn’t mine tosoften. This was his wound, and it was bleeding in the open at last.
His mother’s lips pressed together. She looked away for a moment, and when she turned back, her eyes glistened faintly. “Your father believed—”
“Don’t.” Keegan’s snarl cut her like a blade. “Don’t you dare use him as a shield. You were just as guilty.”
His mother’s mouth opened, then closed again. Her throat bobbed, but no words came.
And then Keegan’s voice dropped, quieter, heavier than before. “What about him? Where is he?”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
She looked at him, her mouth trembling open once, then shutting again. The words wouldn’t come. Her eyes darted down, away from his.
That was when my grandma moved.
She reached across the space, her hand finding Keegan’s mother’s.
“Your father,” Elira said, her tone steady but aching, “is no longer with us on this plane.”
The world seemed to tilt.
Keegan froze. His breath hitched so sharply it was a wound all on its own.
“What?” His voice was ragged, broken in a way I’d never heard before.
“Gone,” his mom said gently, though her eyes shimmered with her own sorrow. “He left this world long ago.”
Keegan stumbled back a step, his face twisting between shock and horror. A raw, guttural sound tore from his chest, somewhere between a snarl and a groan. He slammed a fist against the wall, the stone shuddering with the impact.
“You knew,” he whispered, his voice frayed. His hazel eyes snapped to his mother. “You knew, and you left me wondering. For years. For decades. You could have returned. You could have told me.”
Her lips parted, but still, no answer came. Only the shimmer of tears she refused to let fall.
I took a step toward him, my own chest aching with the force of it. “Keegan—”
He shook his head violently, his shoulders rising and falling like a storm barely held in check, but he no longer looked worn down. “No. Don’t. Don’t touch me. Don’t tell me it’s all right. Nothing about this is all right.”
Twobble shuffled, looking wildly between us all, noticing Keegan’s sudden spike in energy and strength.
“Well,” he muttered, “this is awkward.”
Skonk elbowed him sharply, his grin gone.
But none of that touched the moment.
