The visions disappeared, leaving only the unwavering features of my husband.
Was that really how he saw me? Some paragon of courage when most of the time I felt like the fear I was forced to live in every day was threatening to swallow me whole?
He lifted his hand to my chin, tilting it upward as though reminding me who I was.
Warmth spread from his touch, and I wanted nothing more than to leave this hallway and return to our suites and exorcise our demons the only way we knew how.
But somewhere buried in my soul was all the concern my father had never bothered to show me in return… or at the very least, curiosity about what he could possibly want now.
So I wrenched myself from the tempting escape of Draven’s gaze to rap my knuckles against the icy door, three solid knocks.
Lumen and Astra took up their posts on either side of the door while Batty exuded smugness at staying perched firmly on my shoulder.
A male in the pale blue and white uniform of the general palace servants answered, swallowing when he beheld the king. He bowed low, offering tea that we declined. Then he was gone, leaving me to enter the bedchamber where my father convalesced.
A fire roared in the hearth behind the navy and silver floral armchairs, and a vase of frosted white lilies graced the low carved table. The room might have been cozy, if not for the pervasive smell of death that even the fragrant flowers did little to mask.
Whatever reason Amias had placed him here, I had a sinking feeling that it had everything to do with comfort and nothing at all to do with recovery.
Even with Draven’s steady presence in the back of my mind, it took all that I had to turn toward the high, canopied bed nestled in the corner of the room. Or, more accurately, toward its occupant.
I clenched my fists into my gown, willing my talons not to emerge. The fabric bunched beneath my fingers as I caught my father’s faraway gaze. Batty shifted uneasily against my collarbone, her tiny claws pricking through the fabric as if she sensed the tension rippling off of me.
He looked far worse than he had in the infirmary. The acid burns along his neck were still mottled and angry, the edges faintly green, as if the venom refused to release him. His face was several shades grayer than it should have been, almost ashen, the hollows beneath his cheekbones carved deep with exhaustion.
But it was his pale blue eyes that were the hardest to look at, maybe because they were my eyes. My sister’s eyes. Or, they had been, before they were shot through entirely with red, spiderwebs of blood fracturing the icy blue until he looked like a faded echo of the male from my memories… a ghost wearing my father’s shape.
“Everly.” He greeted me the same way as he had in the infirmary, but this time I placed his tone better.
Not just surprise. Awe. Like he had never seen me before.
It tugged at a long-forgotten memory of the day I arrived at his estate. Thinking back now, it was strange, the way he had been waiting for me. How had he known I was coming? That I wasHollow?
Everly?
He had said my name with the same surprise, the same reverence, as he scooped my half-conscious form off the ground.
But why had he been out there, hundreds of feet from his furthest shed, alone? I must have whimpered because he had murmured in response.
You’re safe now.
Who are you?I had managed to rasp out.
Looking back, I wasn’t sure if he paused or if the pain I was in had just made each cautious step forward feel like an eternity. But somewhere through the darkness, I remembered how his words weren’t half as shocking as they should have been.
I’m your father.
It had felt true, or maybe the trauma had just made it impossible for me to feel things like shock anymore.
The next thing I remembered, I was in the estate, my new sister peering at me curiously, and my father excusing himself for the next… ten years.
I cleared my throat, swallowing down the emotion that had no place in the present. “You wanted to see me?”
He blinked in confusion, and I bit back a curse.No. Not again. Not yet.
“It’s Everly. You asked Healer Amias to get me because you wanted to see me.”
He sucked in a rattling breath, shaking his head like he was trying to clear the cobwebs.
