“Something… I needed to tell you.”
“Was it about my mother? About…” I hesitated to say her name, worried it would take him back further, but I didn’t see that I had a choice. “About Mirevyn?”
“Mire…” he trailed off, brow furrowing.
Where the hells was Wynnie? And why hadn’t I just let Draven come in?
Why was this so much shards-damned harder than it should have been when I barely knew him anyway.
I clenched my fists harder. “Yes, Mire. The Skaldwing you… had a child with.”
“Skaldwings—” the word cut off with a wet cough, and blood sprayed the deep blue furs that were piled over him.
Sucking in a breath, I went to his bedside, where a crimson-stained cloth lay waiting. I held it out uselessly, having none of my sister’s caretaking tendencies.
He took it from me with a nod, wiping at the blood around his lips.
“They have portals,” he rasped out, holding my gaze with an intensity I had never seen on him before.
“I know,” I said gently. “Draven has already destroyed it.”
“No. More than one.”
My stomach dropped like a stone. “Where are the others?”
My father let out another blood-spattered cough. When he was finished, I bit back another curse.
Whatever clarity had been in his gaze was gone.
He blinked slowly, peering at me through bloodshot eyes. It was a familiar scene, if I could ignore the burns along his skin or the blood around his lips.
I never thought I would long for the days of his drunken stupors, that they would feel simple compared to this… whatever this feeling clawing at my chest was.
“Mire?”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat, nodding. Was it a sin or a kindness, lying to someone who was dying?
“Still so beautiful,” he said softly.
Tears stabbed at the backs of my eyes.
I wanted to comfort him for all that he had lost. To rage at him for all that he had given up. To demand that he come the hells back to his senses and answer all the questions he had let fester for ten long years.
To thank him for giving me a home and a sister, for loving me enough to keep me safe, even if it hadn’t been enough for him to stay.
But in the end, all I did was stand in a mute sort of shock until Wynnie walked into the room. Her footsteps were quieter, more hesitant than usual, her brusk manner entirely absent in the knowing look we shared as she silently closed the door.
His eyes were closed now, but his chest was still rising and falling in an unsteady pattern.
“Are we supposed to say goodbye?” she whispered, a trace of bitterness on her tongue.
For the world that had taken her father and her husband from her in the span of a year? Or for the fact that neither had ever lived up to the title?
“He wouldn’t have,” I muttered in response.
“No,” she rasped out, shaking her head. “But we are not him. This is not our future.”
I stopped just short of telling her that it would be a miracle if either of us lived this long to begin with, the way things were going. She was right. We would not become him, not while we had each other.
