His gaze snapped to mine, a withering look there. “Really, Win?”
I frowned. “I don’t… you activated that ring?” I asked, gesturing at the gold ring around his thumb. It was a giftfrom Ketheron that enabled him to briefly invoke Celestial-level power to protect himself in emergency situations.
“No.”
“I don’t—”
“You also should have registered it if I had. It shouldn’t even be a question.”
“Fine, yeah. That’s true. I just don’t understand how you didn’t even feel what I threw down there.”
“I am the Master of Death Magic,” he rumbled, striding toward me, his coat flapping behind him. “The Almighty Necromancer. Do you really think a bolt of necromantic power wielded with barely a lick of conviction can touchme?”
“Barely a lick of conviction?That’s being a little hyperbolic.” I grunted. “And dismissive.”
“Isn’t that how you wish to be? Dismissed? As a true powerhouse? A threat?”
“No. I told you that’s changed with what’s happening.”
“Has it? Because what you’re demonstrating today is the same intent to remain inconsequential.”
I dropped my hands.
“Over the last couple of hours, I’ve already demonstrated that I have superb understanding and command of Soul Track and Undead Domination.”
“Tip of the iceberg and you know it.” He laid his hand on my shoulder, his eyes softening, moving from trainer-mode to dad-mode. “It’s okay. Admit it, son. Let it out—what’s really holding you back now.”
I screwed up my face and turned my head. “Fuck.” I grasped his hand on me and squeezed as it burst out of me, “I can’t, can I? I can’t remain inconsequential! They won’t let me! The world won’t fucking let me, Dad!”
My pain met his. The grief. The unfairness of it all.
I saw it then, through all his efforts, through Pops’, Father’s, Mom’s, all of them trying so hard to make it okay for me, to give me a place in the world that was mine and not… not other people’s versions based on fear or… or… wanting to use me for what I was. I saw his grief that it couldn’t be.
“I know. It’s true. As much as we wish so badly that it wasn’t, that’s where we currently find ourselves. And I know it hurts you—how much it hurts you. But you’re also missing an important part of this.”
“What’s that?” I rasped, so fucking choked up now.
“‘There’s no perfect fairytale version of this. It’s down to what we make it.’That’s what I told your grandpa when we were discussing you just after we found out your mom was pregnant. The world, this latest threat in Ruxnoth, they can want you to be whatever the fuck they like, but you also have a choice. You get to decide what that actually is—who that actually is. And by doing this training now, it’ll go a long way to enabling you to do that, to enforce it. You’ll be empowered, armed with the knowledge and the means to do so. Without that, if you continue holding back the way you currently are… you’ll make yourself into the victim of others, somebody who can be subjugated to their whims and will.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Sorry?”
“That things didn’t work out the way you wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“That you, Mom, Pops, and Father couldn’t get the peace you wanted, that you deserve. That having me brought a whole new realm of danger and grief and—”
“Stop. That’s not true.”
“Of course it is.”
He grasped both my shoulders then, holding me gently but firmly. “Don’t you see, my sweet and gentle son? Youareour peace.”
I choked at his words. “What?”
“Yeah. What you’ve brought to our lives… nothing else can compare. I trade in death, Winter. That was all that I was for so fucking long. But you? Fuck, you’re a miracle from death itself, something I never thought possible, something I never even dared to dream of. You coming into our lives… fuck, you’re everything. Just being who you are. Being you, okay? Not what others think you are, not what some want you to be. Just being exactly you.” He squeezed my shoulders. “The rest? The bullshit out there? It’s just part and parcel of the world we live in. Nothing more than that. And none of that—absolutely fucking none of that—is on you. It never will be.”
