Why the hell did Ryker have to keep his chambers so dark? Everyone already knew he was a broody asshole; he didn’t need the atmospheric lighting to prove it.
Another creak.
Closer this time.
“Ryker?”
Then a voice, quiet but hauntingly familiar, slid from the shadows.
“You shouldn’t be here alone. Not with everything happening beyond these walls.”
Instinctively, I backed away, my shoulders hitting the cold stone wall before I could stop myself.
“Show yourself,” I said, sounding stronger than I felt.
A figure emerged from the darkness, his hood pulled low over his head, his aura calm and far too confident considering whose room he was standing in.
My father.
I didn’t need to see his face. I would recognize his voice anywhere.
As he lifted his hood, I once again took stock of the scars littering his hands and forearms. I’d been desperate to learn more about his life during the years we’d spent apart, but the unforeseen turn of events that followed our reunion stifled my curiosity.
My father cocked his head, studying me, and I mirrored him. I struggled to reconcile the man before me with the one from my childhood. His eyes had hardened with time, yet a tiny flicker of recognition remained. It made me long for the father he’d once been.
Those eyes narrowed as his gaze raked over my body.
“Show me your wrists,” he demanded.
My wrists?
I raised my arms for his inspection, and he stepped forward, taking my hands in his. It was only when his grip tightened that I realized what he was looking at.
The cuffs.
He lifted his eyes, locking his gaze with mine. His jaw was clenched, and his nostrils flared as he exhaled sharply.
“You see, Daughter,” he said, gripping the cuffs. “He fears you. He is afraid of the power you possess, and he seeks to cage you because he knows he can’t control you.”
His words hit like a punch to the gut, and I flinched.
Ryker had caged me. He cut me off from my magic so I’d never be able to escape him.
And it hurt. More than I was willing to admit.
“We have little time, Cadence. I came to remind you of what’s at stake here.”
He dropped my wrists as he placed a hand on my lower abdomen.
“The future of the Wraith Borne and the Unseelie Fae rests right here.”
His fingers flexed against my stomach, and it took everything in me not to push him away and hide my unborn child from his hungry gaze. The man before me was no longer the father I knew, and I couldn’t risk exposing my vulnerabilities.
“I have allies inside these walls.”
A shiver raced down my spine at his admission. I hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that he wouldn’t have someone watching me from afar, especially given what I had learned in the council meeting.
Yet, believing something was one thing, knowing it for certain was another thing entirely.
