I didn’t ask him for details because it seemed like a private matter that was none of my business. I was surprised he’d shared any of it with me at all.
“What did you need, Callum?” he asked with a sigh, like he was tired.
“Perhaps this isn’t the best time.”
“It’s never the best time for anything,” he said. “She shared her conversation with Riviana. We only have two days before the portal shatters, so time grows thin. When Viper returns, we’ll have to travel to the dead island. There’s not much time to prepare. It’s my greatest hope that this plan is a success, because I want to live a life finally free of the underworld’s interference. It’s haunted me these last twentysomething years, thinking of Bahamut every time I see the hints of the scar he gave me. I’m glad to be free of it once and for all. And if we die…I suppose we all die together.”
The weight of the task rested heavily on my shoulders, but I wasn’t just fighting for Lily’s life, but the life I was desperate to have with her.
He looked at me again. “What do you need, Callum?”
I’d never asked a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Anya lost her father when she was a little girl. I’d asked her mother, but it wasn’t the same situation. She was just happy that her daughter had a man to care for her. In this situation, I was a penniless commoner asking a king for the hand of his princess daughter. “I want to marry your daughter, and I ask for your blessing, Talon.”
He clearly hadn’t expected me to ask that, especially right now. Confusion was rife on his face as his eyes darted back and forth between mine. “I don’t understand.”
“She forgave me and said she doesn’t care how Khazmuda or the other dragons feel…she chooses me.”
Talon continued to look confused. “And you think now is the appropriate time to ask this?”
I tried to word my response carefully, but I couldn’t think of a way to do so without planting fear in his head. “I don’t know what will happen down there, Talon. I don’t know if we’ll all make it back.”
Understanding moved into his gaze before he swallowed, his throat shifting.
“And if that happens, I’d like to tell Lily that I asked you when I had the chance. It would mean a lot to her…and the rest of your family.”
His eyes slowly dropped when he was forced to consider his own mortality. When he had to think about a world in which he no longer existed. When his wife would be a widow and his children wouldn’t have their father.
I hated myself for forcing him to think about it, to confront a reality he couldn’t escape.
After a heavy silence spent in deep reflection, he found my eyes again. “My daughter is the greatest ruler that’s ever led the Southern Isles. She doesn’t need my blessing, Callum. My father didn’t want me to marry Vivian because she was a fisherman’s daughter, and I fucking married her anyway. And if he had said the same about Calista, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted.
Maybe he could see it in my eyes because he continued. “But, yes, Callum Riverside, I give you my blessing. I know you would die for my daughter, that you’ll be a great father to her children, that you would support her rule rather than try to sabotage it for your own gain. That the love you have for my daughter is pure and true and real.”
His words meant the world to me but I didn’t know how to say that, so I said something else, something far simpler. “Thank you.”
“I wish you two a lifetime of happiness,” he said as he clapped me on the shoulder. “And I would be happy to call you a son.”
24
LILY
I was in the courtyard when Scion came in for a landing. Viper was in his armor and cape, probably tired from his quick journey there and back. He slid down Scion’s side like he’d been riding dragons for years rather than weeks. “Your father says we need to leave imminently.”
“Yes. Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said dismissively. “My brother denied the use of the army, so I support this plan.”
When I glanced toward the castle, I saw Callum and my father standing together in identical armor with their heavy swords across their backs. But the difference between them was my father’s cape, which signified his status as king to anyone who didn’t know. But Callum’s height and size made him look like a general or his private guard. “Before we join the others, I need you to know that Callum and I have decided to make it work. So I don’t want you to risk your life on this journey in the hope of a future for us, because there won’t be one.” Idelivered the truth quickly and coldheartedly, but there wasn’t time to be delicate.
Viper contained his reaction. “I understand.”
It was that easy?
“But from what I understand, the outcome of this battle affects everyone. So of course I’m not going to abandon this task because of… What does your father like to call it? Our little love triangle.”
“It was never a love triangle.”
