“…no, he died?—”
“I read the notice?—”
“I heard he went feral?—”
A familiar face stared back at me from across the room.
My father looked older.
Of course he did, it had been years since I’d last seen him, but seeing him now was a shock in a way nothing else had beensince I got back on English soil. His hair was more gray than dark now, his shoulders a little more stooped, but the lines around his mouth were the same.
“Bishop?” he said, barely more than a breath.
I held his gaze. “Hello, Father.”
My father clutched the drink in his hands hard enough that I worried the glass might shatter. “I was told that you died in a security incident,” he said, louder now. “That there was nothing left to recover.”
“Well,” I said. “That wasn’t true.”
“I can see that now,” he replied.
A pair of councilors drifted past, pretending not to listen while very obviously listening. One of them almost walked into a server because he couldn’t take his eyes off me.
“…that’s Bishop Hale?—”
“…no, it can’t be?—”
Someone behind me whispered, “If that’s him, then they lied,” and that was the point, wasn’t it?
My father’s fingers loosened around the glass. “Where have you been?” he asked. “All this time…”
“Dumped in Ireland,” I said. “Left to become part of your feral problem. Lucky enough to find people who didn’t think I was a lost cause.”
His throat worked. “You were bitten?”
“Yes.”
“And you—” He swallowed. “You’re not feral.”
“I’m not feral,” I said. “I’m in complete control. Have been the whole time.”
“Why didn’t they tell me?” His voice had gone thin around the edges, like the years of certainty were cracking and he wasn’t sure what was underneath.
“Because you must have asked the wrong questions,” I said. “And they had a story to maintain.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and for a moment he looked small and old. I felt a little sorry for him.
I could have stayed in that moment longer, picked at it, tried to mend something that had been snapped instead of simply bent.
We didn’t have that kind of time.
“Father,” I said, gentler than I felt. “I’ll explain the rest later. Right now, I need you to listen.”
“To what?” he asked.
“To the part where this is much bigger than just me.”
I stepped away before he could answer, weaving deeper into the crowd.
