Solomon went still beside me. His entire body locked, the soldier’s composure dissolving in a way I’d never witnessed in four centuries of standing beside this man.
The face that looked back at us was old. Weathered by decades, lined with the particular erosion of a man who’d survived alone for longer than anyone should. White hair, cropped short. Gaunt frame beneath layered clothing, hands that bore calluses.
But the eyes.
Pale silver, almost colorless.
“Solomon,” the man said. Just the name. His son’s name, spoken with twenty-four years of silence behind it.
Solomon’s hand tightened on my arm until the grip hurt.
He didn’t speak. His mouth worked but no sound came out, and the scar on his face went white.
“Father,” Solomon said.
Lord Farmon caught his son before his knees hit the ground.
44
— • —
Solomon
I woke to a ceiling I didn’t recognize.
Stone. Rough-hewn, curving overhead in an arch that suggested natural formation reinforced with manual labor. Roots threaded through cracks in the rock, and the light came from a pale luminescence that seemed to emanate from jars positioned along a shelf carved into the wall.
My body registered the damage before my mind finished analyzing the room. Both shoulders ached where the darts had entered and a residual numbness radiated down my arms into my fingertips.
I sat up. The motion cost me more than it should have.
Percival was on the floor three feet away, propped against the stone wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. His skinhad gone gray beneath the stubble, and the dart wound on his neck was an angry red circle surrounded by spreading bruise.
Lucian was worse.
He lay on a low cot against the far wall, shirt stripped away, and the wound in his chest was a nightmare. The entry point had stopped bleeding but the tissue around it had darkened to a web of black veins that spread across his ribs and up toward his collarbone.
“Don’t move yet.”
The voice came from behind me. I turned, too fast, and the room tilted. A hand caught my shoulder and steadied me.
Father.
No longer just the ghost I’d been chasing for twenty-four years or the portrait that hung in the wall of our home. The man in front of me was real. Ruined but alive.
He held a small ceramic cup. “Drink this. Both of you.”
“What is it?”
“A counter-agent for the sedative compound. I’ve had years to study their formulations.” He pressed the cup into my hands. “It will help.”
I drank. The liquid was bitter, metallic, and it burned going down. Within seconds, the numbness in my arms began to recede. Father took the cup from me, refilled it from a clay vessel on the shelf, and crossed to Percival. He crouched beside him and held the cup to his mouth.
Percy drank. Coughed. Some color returned to his face.
“Where are we?” My voice came out rough.
“My home.” Father straightened. “For the past thirteen years, at least. Before that I moved every few months. This was the first location I found that their patrols couldn’t reach.”
