“I’m sorry.” The words came out broken, mangled. “I’m so sorry, Ariella. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the father you deserved. I’m sorry I let my work become more important than you. I’m sorry for every time I measured your lung capacity instead of asking how you felt, every time I analyzed your modifications instead of holding you when you cried, every?—”
“Stop.”
Her voice cut through his rambling, sharp and clear. He looked up at her, his face a ruin of grief and guilt, and she saw the truth in his eyes.
He meant it. Every word.
She took a deep breath, feeling the air fill her lungs—those incredible lungs that he had given her, that had saved her life more times than she could count, that had allowed her to dive deeper than any human and sing with the voice of the sea.
“You broke me.” She kept her voice steady, even as her own eyes began to burn. “You treated me like an experiment, like a commodity, like a thing to be bought and sold. And I will never forget that.”
He flinched as if she’d struck him.
“But.” She held up her hand when he tried to speak. “You also saved me. When I was dying as a child, when no one else could help, you found a way. You gave me this body—these gills, this Song, this ability to survive in a world that wasn’t made for me.” Her voice softened, just a fraction. “Both things can be true, Father. You hurt me and you saved me. The question is, what do we do now?”
“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost him everything he had left. “I don’t know how to be your father anymore. I don’t even know if you’d want me to try.”
A small hand tugged at the edge of Ariella’s fur wrap.
She looked down to find Lilani standing beside her, still rumpled from sleep, her golden eyes fixed on Anton with open curiosity.
“Who’s the sad man?”
The question was so innocent, so purely childlike, that she felt something loosen in her chest. She crouched down, bringing herself to Lilani’s level.
“This is my father. He came to make sure I was okay.”
Lilani studied Anton with the unnerving intensity of a child who has not yet learned to hide her thoughts. Then she walked over to him, her bare feet padding across the stone floor, and reached up to pat his hand.
“Don’t be sad,” she said solemnly. “The Star Lady is okay now. Papa takes care of her.”
Anton stared at Lilani, at her golden Vultor eyes, her human-shaped face, and her absolute lack of fear, and something shifted in his expression. He looked from Lilani to Valrek to Ariella, and she saw him finally understand the shape of what she had found here.
A family.
Not the cold, clinical partnership of scientist and subject. Not the transactional arrangement of debtor and debt-holder. But a real family, messy and complicated and fierce and real.
“You love them.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
The answer came easily, naturally, without any of the hesitation that had marked so many of their conversations over the years. She looked at Valrek, still standing guard behind her, his beast barely leashed and his golden eyes burning with protective fire. She looked at Lilani, still patting Anton’s hand with the guileless kindness of a child.
“I love them,” she repeated. “And I’m staying here. With them.”
Anton nodded slowly, as if he had expected nothing else. “The lab?—”
“Can you run it without me?”
“I… yes. The basic operations, at least.” He seemed to shrink in on himself. “Without Merrick’s funding, I’ll have to scale back considerably. But there are still contracts, still work to be done.”
“Then do it.” She pulled the fur more tightly around her shoulders. “Build something new. Something that doesn’t require selling your daughter to finance it.”
The words were harsh, but he accepted them. He accepted the truth of what he had done and what it had cost.
“I want to try.” His voice was barely audible. “To be better. To be a father again. If you’ll let me.”
She didn’t answer right away. The anger was still there, buried beneath the exhaustion and the relief and the tentative hope. She didn’t know if she could ever fully forgive him. She didn’t know if their relationship could be repaired or if it would always carry the scars of what had happened. But…
