“He employed a Death Seal to ensure no one could perform a Blood Trace on him to get to you, and said Death Seal was linked to the essence of Morien Morgrave. Given the generational necromantic link that was forged as a result, it also functioned as a fail-safe. That fail-safe was the means to strip you of your necromantic power, to unmake you.”
Past tense.
He kept talking about him in the past tense.
“Stop,” I demanded. “Stop it.”
“He had the means to strip you of your power, the very power we require to soothe Sanctus.”
“No. He wouldn’t have done that. Wouldn’t… hurt me.”
I tried to bolt forward, but I was trapped by theNihilumbra.
“You killed him for nothing! Killed him!” I screamed and screamed, thrashing, or trying to, even gnashing my teeth at him. “You murdered my dad! Took him from me! You took him!”
He uttered with a calm, but deeply sinister edge, “Something that cannot be undone. What you are experiencing now can be. Your circumstances can be improved.” His hand tightened around my throat. “Just not while you’re like this. Fighting and threatening me, raging and throwing a tantrum—something, for your information, that you have been at for hours on end now.”
“It’s called grief.” Among other things. “Can you even comprehend that? On any fucking level of your demented psyche?”
He snarled. “Mind yourself. This grief will be the least of it if you continue in this manner. I showed mercy solely for your benefit. I had the capability to eliminate all those seeking to contain me. Do you understand what a slight it was for them to attempt, not only containment, but eradication? Upon me, of all beings? For me to allow that to go unpunished and to only terminate one target out of the utmost necessity was me showing incredible restraint.” He stroked my jaw with his free hand as he rumbled at my ear, “All for you, my deathborn darling.”
I hissed. “Get your hands off me.”
“You need to focus on the goodness here, the mercy I gifted your father.”
“What?” I gritted out.
“I bequeathed him the gift of peace. Absolute peace. No more burden put upon him by the endless needs of the supernatural world. No more struggle. No more pain. No more trauma haunting him relentlessly. And no suffocating worry concerning you. He may now rest.”
Rest.
Haunting.
“I’ll pull him from the Valley.”
“You know very well that you are not equipped to do that.”
“Part of the reason you wanted me to come here now, not wait until my training had delved deeper into the Valley of the Dead spellwork and mechanics?”
“Indeed.”
“Doesn’t matter, because I will be able to do it anyway—when I bring your necromancers with me.”
His lips quirked. “Mmm, this has certainly given birth to a ruthlessness in you.” He stepped back and folded his arms across his chest. “Alas, that will not be possible. Do you not wonder why you only just thought of it now? When it has been hours and attempting a salvage spell to pull your father back was a very obvious notion? Yet in all this time since I took his life, you have been only screaming, crying and melting down—not problem-solving one little bit.”
“It’s called shock. Not to mention, you fucking binding me withNihilumbra.”
“The pain is too great? To the point that it’s impacting your cognitive processing? Hmm, we’ll have to see to that. It requires recalibration.”
“Release me entirely.”
“I can’t do that until you’ve stabilized.”
“What you did is why I’m not ‘stable’.” I hated that term. It was what everyone had been watching for all my life—the wider supernatural world, those in governance, Temperance. All waiting for—no, expecting—me to fail to control what I was, where they’d then employ their brutal contingencies. Just like Ruxnoth had manipulated Temperance and Clan Languim into doing. “But part of that will shift once I pull my dad back.”
“You are missing the point I am making.”
“Then make it clearly,” I seethed.
