Azagoth waved his hand.“I’ll get to it this afternoon.”Hestared at Hawkyn long enough to make him begin to sweat, and just as Hawkstarted to fidget, his father spoke.“You’ve never told me about yourchildhood.”
Hawk swallowed, remembering that Darien had told him Azagothhad been asking weird personal questions.“No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Tell me.”
“I really don’t think it’s important—”
The breeze turned chilly, mirroring Azagoth’s voice, andHawkyn resisted the urge to shiver.“Would I ask if it wasn’t important?”
Hawkyn ignored the rhetorical question.“My childhood was nodifferent than any other Memitim’s.”Except Suzanne, who had led acharmedexistence before her first Memitim mentor pluckedher from her human life.“It sucked.”At Azagoth’s cocked eyebrow, Hawkyn knewhe wasn’t going to get away with a vague explanation.His father wanteddetails, and only a moron denied Azagoth what he wanted.“I grew up in aworkhouse in London.The people who ran it said I was left on the doorstep as anewborn.”
“No one adopted you?”
He laughed.“Children who were ‘adopted’ back then wereoften taken to be used as slaves or apprentices.”
“Children who lived in the workhouses and orphanages weren’ttreated any better, no?”
Not really, no.And why the hell were they talking aboutthis?Reluctantly, he answered his father’s question before he becameimpatient.An impatient Azagoth was a scary Azagoth.
Then again, so wasa patientAzagoth.
“As soon as we were able, we were forced to pay for ourcare.We got money however we could.Begging, stealing, doing odd jobs,prostitution.”
Azagoth’s expression didn’t change, and yet Hawk could feelthe anger billowing off him.But why?As far as Hawk knew, Azagoth didn’t givea shit about how his children had grown up.He’d always said thatnowwas what mattered.They’d grown up the way they hadin ordertoshape them into warriors.It had all been for the greater good andall that standard issue bullshit.
“Was there ever a time when it wasn’t bad?When you werehappy?”
Happy?Was Azagoth fucking kidding?
The memories he’d thought were long buried came rushing backat him, and with it, the anger.The feelings of abandonment.Back then he’dthought he was human and that his human parents, probably devastatingly poor,had given him up as a last resort.
Now, knowing his parents were powerful beyond imagining andhad intentionally left him in a shitty situation, he was even angrier.Yes, heknew why they’d done it.And he’d always been able to conceal his emotions.Buthe could no longer deny that those emotions, that fury and hurt, had beenseething just below the surface of his mind for centuries.
“No, Father, it was always bad.”Hawk’s hands curled intofists at his sides.“I don’t remember ever having a full belly or being clean.I was never happy.Not once.Not ever.Not until the day my Memitim mentorarrived to rescue me fromthe hellthat was my life.He might even have saved my life.I was about to lose a hand for stealing acrust of bread.”
For a long time, Azagoth said nothing.He merely stoodthere, his eyes glinting like greenglassas he staredat Hawkyn.
Finally, he gestured over Hawkyn’s shoulder.“You havecompany.”
Hawk wheeled around to find Jacob, a Memitim who hadAscended nearly a century ago, standing near the Summoning Stone.His minkbrown wings that matched his hair and eyes were fully extended, probably toshow them off to his lowly, un-Ascended half-brother.
“What do you want?”he asked in a snooty tone.
“I—” Hawkynturned to Azagoth, buttheir father had disappeared.Well, that was one less thing to worry about.
“You what?”
Damn, but Jacob was annoying.But he wasannoyingeven before he’d been given his wings and a cushy job at the Memitim embassy,which wasreally moreof a regulatory agency, butwhatever.
“I know we aren’t supposed to be privy to our Primoris’futures,” Hawkyn said, “but would we know if their futures have gone offtrack?”
Jacob adjusted the crimson sash that kept his embassy-issuedmetallic silver and bronze robes closed.“Why are you asking?”
“I dunno,” Hawkyn said casually.“I’m just curious.”
“I see.”Jacob put away his wings in a whoosh of air thatruffled Hawkyn’s hair.“You wouldn’t know.We would.”
Hawkyn’s breath backed up in his lungs like cement, and hecouldn’t move any air for half a dozen thudding heartbeats.Had Drayger’s fateline gone off track, and did the embassy assholes know?
