My mother had built this tower.
She had thought of everything.
Malric ate with the focused efficiency of someone fueling a machine, not tasting anything particularly, working through what was on his plate because his body needed it and he had accepted that. He’d been this way since we came downstairs, present but focused inward, the bond carrying the low, sustained frequency of active planning. I was more comfortable with him and his silences now that the bond showed me what was going on under the surface. It was Malric doing what Malric did, which was protecting us.
He set his fork down.
“The plan,” he said.
We both looked at him.
“Thane takes the top level. The garden.” He looked at Thane. “The weather magic needs open sky and range. From up there, you can see the full approach, and if it comes to it, you have the widest operational scope.”
Thane nodded once.
“I’ll be on the balcony.” He meant the one off the bedchamber, the level just below the garden, the one that faced the Wyrdwood with the longest sight line. “The tower’s defensive wards are active now. I need to stay in contact with the stone to maintain them at full capacity if he pushes against them.” He paused. “I don’t yet know the capacity of what I can hold. I’m not going to find out in the middle of an engagement. Staying close to the source keeps the margin higher.”
“And me,” I said.
“With me on the balcony.” He held my gaze. “You speak to him.”
I considered that.
“From the balcony,” I said.
“It keeps stone between you and his guard. It keeps you elevated, visible, in a position of address rather than confrontation.” He turned his cup in his hands. “You say what you need to say to him. Make it clear that you are no longer what he left here. Make it clear that the tower is no longer accessible to him and that what he came to retrieve no longer exists.” Something moved in his jaw. “Hopefully he looks at the situation—the active defenses, Thane on the roof, the broken portal, the failed siphon—and he makes a tactical decision.”
“A tactical decision,” I said.
“To withdraw.”
The candle between us burned at its steady height.
“Do you believe he’ll turn around?” I asked.
Nobody said anything.
Thane looked at the table. Malric looked at me without adjusting his expression, which was its own answer. He wouldn’t insult me with a reassurance he didn’t believe.
“No,” I said, for all of us. “Neither do I.”
He had not turned around from anything in his life. He had decided I was a resource, and he had spent years molding me into a tool for him to use. He was going to arrive at the edge of this tower and look at his daughter on a balcony and only see a weapon that belonged to him, not a daughter. He was going to be angry. I could use that.
I needed to speak to him, needed to say my piece. That was the part Malric had understood without my having to explain it. Not because I expected it to work. Because it needed to be said, clearly, on my terms, before whatever came next came next.
I needed him to hear it from me.
“All right,” I said.
Malric pushed back from the table.
I don’t know which of us moved first. I think it was Thane, who stood and crossed to me, took my face in his hands, and pressed his forehead to mine for a long moment, not saying anything, the bond warm between us. I gripped the front of his shirt and we both breathed together.
Then Malric was there.
He stood at my back and his arms came around me from behind, his hands covering mine where they held Thane’s shirt, and for a moment, we were simply together. The three of us in the dining room with its cracked circle and its tower-lit candle and the sound of morning outside the windows, held together in a moment of people who have said what needs saying and are now waiting for what comes next.
I could feel both individuals as part of the bond. Thane, warm and resolved, his fear present but subordinate to everything else. Malric, steady and focused, the planning quieted now into something simpler and more direct.
