Killing a sänglure wasn’t easy.Teo had never been as powerful as I was.But he was still strong.
“Completely,” Rafaela said, holding my stare.
“Convince me, then.Tell me everything you know.”
“No.First you need to tell us what happened to you.”
I felt my fangs sharpen.“That’s not as important.Not as urgent.”
“Mateo is dead.”
Rafaela let her dooming pronouncement echo for several awful moments, as if Heartbreak crouched on her shoulder and encouraged the cruelty.
“There’s no hurry with him anymore.But you were stolen from us.Vengeance must be had.”
“My vendetta for myself comes after Teo’s.”
Rafaela smiled one of her half-smiles.“That’s my girl.”
“The vendetta for what was done to you is ours to claim,” Alonso said, the soft underside he exposed to me hardened, as if now protected beneath scales.“You were taken fromus.”
ButIwas taken frommyself.
“We’ll allow you to claim Teo’s vendetta,” Alonso added.
I pressed my lips together but didn’t agree.“Tell me.I have to know.”
Rafaela took one last pull off her spike and waved it in the air.A goblin appeared to materialize from the very wall to receive it.The little serpunta, animated into immortality by a spell, was already coughing out the undesirable fibers of the olandule when the goblin lowered the spike onto a silver tray and vanished back into the wall.The serpunta’s hacking silenced immediately.
“I insist,” Rafaela said.“We must know everything first.We are your parents.More than that, a great deal has changed since you were last home.You’ll need a history lesson before you’ll comprehend the full scope of Mateo’s murder.”
There it was again,history lesson.
“Tell us what happened to you, then we’ll tell you what happened here.We’ll save the identity of Mateo’s killer for last.”
“Why?”I asked tightly.
“Because now that I recognize my daughter in you again, I know what you’ll do the very instant you learn who he is.”
He.A man, then.The assassin in me started cataloging.Or perhaps a male creature of some sort.
“You won’t listen to us anymore, not even to me.You’ll race out of here to punish him.I won’t let you leave here unprepared for what you’ll be facing.”
I stared at her with a hardening jaw, but when it came to fights with Rafaela, I knew to pick my battles.I won a sad few.Resigned, I sighed.
“If you won’t tell me who, then tell me when.How long have I been gone?”
My mind eagerly filled in such hopeful options asa week,a few months at most,less than half a year, even when the signs suggesting longer—far longer—were too numerous to discount.
Alonso cleared his throat, slid forward on the settee with a rustle against the blood-red-and-gold brocade.“My dearest Sora, you’ve been gone for 121,963 days.”
I blinked.
“It’s been more than three hundred and thirty-three years.”He ran a hand along his nape.“After a few desperate decades without news, we finally accepted that you were dead.”
“Not Teo.”
Alonso shook his head sadly, the movement highlighting a few silver strands at his temples.“No, not Teo.”
