“And… all we can do is… arm ourselves against the rest?”
“Exactly.”
I sank into him, and his arms came around me right away. “I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too.Forevermore, son.”
I smiled against him.“Forevermore.”
I held him to me for a while, then I lifted my head to see him beaming down at me. “With what’s coming… please don’t, okay? Please, Dad.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Don’t what?”
“Pull anAuctoritas Mortisagain.”
He eased back a little. “I vowed to never impact the Valley of the Dead again in that manner.”
“I’m not talking about the actual spell, or the act. I mean the mentality that you employed at the time that led to it—that all-or-nothing approach, that do-whatever-it-takes-regardless-of-your-own-life approach.”
“I see you’re taking Pops’ recounting of that situation over mine.”
“Because you downplayed it. Pops didn’t. He can’t when it’s about your wellbeing.”
“I don’t want to leave any of you. I’ll be careful. Mindful of your concerns.”
Well, that wasn’t a surefire reassurance.
But it was actually something—especially from him, given how he was with this sort of thing. I’d heard stories from so many different sources that he used to be way worse in the past, before I’d been born.
“Okay,” I said.
It would really be okay. Because even if he couldn’t hold true to that, if he was pushed too fucking far—which was the only way I could imagine him doing something like that again and risking his life in such a horrific way—I was here now.
I could change things.
I just… I had to swallow down the grief and fear that was currently getting in the way.
I could do this.
I’d come here today for this first high-level necromantic training session with him prepared to give it all I had.
But once it had come to battling directly against him, I’d panicked.
Because of what it meant to me. The danger of what it meant.
The only other necromancer who’d come close to overpowering my dad was Morien.
That wasn’t exactly an easy thing to brush aside.
But these also weren’t normal circumstances.
A lot was at stake.
And I had to step up. I had to be ready.
I was.
I could.
