Malakai left so shortly after we’d received the Bind, our tattoos had barely settled into our skin. After being apart for years—growing and shrinking and coping—everything within the magical ink was convoluted.
Now, there was a brief sweep of knee-shaking nerves, then the connection fell silent, as if he’d brushed aside all feeling. Without another look, he knocked. A dull voice welcomed him in, and the man I loved disappeared to confront his past.
Jezebel squeezed my hand. When I looked at her, her brows were raised.
“What?”
“Is everything okay?” She jerked her head toward the door Malakai had walked through.
“Everything’s fine.” At least, everything I had space in my mind to consider right now was. “Are you ready?”
For a moment, she looked so young, with wide eyes and a slight frame. The need to shield her from pain snapped like a whip inside me, but the time for that had long passed. She may still be seventeen, but she was as much a warrior as I was—the first underage Mystique to complete the Undertaking.
She closed her eyes, and I could see her build a steel frame around her emotions. When she opened them again, the tawny depths were a void.
Together, we stepped to the closest door, the reddish-brown wood reflecting mystlight on our skin and weapons. Gathering strength from the spear, Angelborn, at my back and dismissing my thundering heart behind my ribs, I rapped my knuckles against the wood.
After a beat of strained silence during which I swore I could hear both my sister’s and my own blood rushing, a familiar voice called, “Come in.”
We stepped across the threshold of our father’s chamber, locked palms sweating. A tense rope knotted between us, each party observing the other.
A month. That’s all it had been, but an eternity of experiences spread across the stone floor like spilled oil, leaving a sheen behind even once cleaned. It was clear, there in the thickening of the air—we were not the same girls who left Palerman.
The expression on my father’s face stopped my voice in my throat, his eyes dull and cheeks hollowed out. His unbound golden hair fell in wild waves past his shoulders.
“Girls,” he whispered, pushing back from his untouched plate and standing to his full, intimidating height.
A piece of my old self crumpled at his cracked voice, and we ran forward, each fitting beneath one of our father’s arms as we had as children.
When I left on my quest, I didn’t intend to ever see my father again. I said goodbye to Palerman and my entire life, ready to greet my death at the hands of the Curse. But when the Spirit Volcano leached it from my body, I was gifted a second chance. And whenDamien confirmed the Curse was a ruse, I no longer knew what to believe. As I stood there with my sister and father, all of those emotions came crashing down on me.
Reluctantly, I stifled that impending flood and pushed out of his arms. Jezebel followed my lead.
“You look…” he began, taking in the official leathers we wore. A grimace twisted his lips. My eyes drifted over my body, stopping on the Curse webbing on my wrist. The fresh white scars across my waist and arm. “Thelupine daimons,” he whispered.
“The what?”
His eyes focused back on mine. “The scars are from the tundra wolves, aren’t they? Thelupine daimons.” I nodded, tucking away the name for the creatures we’d battled during the first step of the Undertaking. My father’s shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you about them. I’m sorry they—” His words faded into a guilt-laden silence as my scars caught his stare again.
“I’m not. I’ll never forget the pain those wolves—thelupine daimons—caused me, but I’m proud to bear these scars.” He couldn’t have prepared me any better without sharing secrets of the Undertaking. “You gave us everything we needed to succeed.”
I looked over at my sister in her own leathers. The boots to her knees, with their thick soles. The gold plates around her shoulders and wrists. The fitted dress brushing mid-thigh with a tight corset up the back, made of the imbued brown leather from which Divina Delantin crafted all Mystique Warrior garb.
Together, we looked formidable. To my father, we must’ve looked?—
“You look like true Mystique Warriors,” he finished, a silver sheen gathering in the corners of his eyes.
Jezebel cleared her throat beside me, and I swallowed my own emotion.
“Father, take a seat.” He snapped to attention at my stoic tone, but listened, returning to the table set for one. The room felt more like a bedchamber than a cell. An empty armoire stood in the corner, doors gaping, and a single bed waited across from the fire.
“How was your journey?” I began easily.
“Plagued with concerns after learning my daughters fled with noindication of where they were going.” He ran a hand through his hair, muscles tensing as if trying not to yell.
“I’m sure it didn’t take you long to figure it out,” Jezebel said.
“I guessed within the day. Your mother practically had to restrain me from coming after you.”
