I shake my head, frustration rising within me as I continue before Thaden can argue with me. “To help her, I need a medallion. But you’ve both warned me against using my power here. You, yourself, have stopped forging, and I can only guess that even changing the shape of your medallions was a considerable risk. Am I right?”
He nods. “There was a real danger that I’d draw the blight here. But?—”
“A medallion takes days to forge,” I plow on, “and that’s once I have the right metal. Days of risk. I’d also need crimson coal, which you don’t seem to have.”
I try to rein in my frustration, try to slow my speech, but all I’m left with is a horrible sense of hopelessness. “How can I possibly help her?”
“Because you’re not going to do it here,” he says quietly.
I blink at him for a moment. “What?”
He shuffles closer to me, and I’m startled when he reaches for my hands. “I’m asking you, Asha Silverspun, to take my daughter away from here. Away from me. And do whatever you need to do to heal her.”
“Thaden, that’s…” My voice fails me. He can’t possibly mean what he’s saying. Not after he did so much to keep her safe.
“The dragons think that I killed Lysander,” he says. “Only the people in this village know I have a daughter, and only the people in this room know what she is—or thatshekilled the dragon and not me. If you take her with you?—”
His voice suddenly breaks. He takes a shaky breath and then snarls against the tears gathering in his eyes. “If I give her up, you can keep her safe.”
I’m struggling to speak, to comprehend the complexity of his request, let alone to foresee its consequences. “There are no guarantees I’ll even be able to help her.”
“All I ask is that you try. You’re the only one with a chance. Worst case, she’ll have someone in her life who understands her wolfish nature and can communicate with her.”
“The Vandawolf,” I whisper.
Because suddenly, he isn’t alone.
And neither is this little girl.
Thaden nods. “If you agree to do this, she must never know that I’m her father. Do you understand? You can’t tell her who I am or what she did. As far as anyone knows, I killed the dragon, not her.”
I’m alarmed by his suggestion. “Thaden, healing her will be hard enough. She has a right to know who she is.”
“She has a right to live with love and trust in her life,” he says. “She will never have that if she’s living in the shadow of her grandfather’s legacy. I’m begging you, Asha. She needs to be free of it.”
How can I possibly make this decision, let alone do what he asks?
The danger and responsibility involved are immense.
I find myself recalling one of the first things Thaden said to me when he was chained up in the Vandawolf’s prison, and I’d asked him:Why are you here, Thaden Kane?
He had turned the question back on me, asking me whyIwas there. Why was I doing the bidding of a wolf when I could raze the city to the ground?
Now, I ask him, “When you were in the prison, back at the city, you were testing me, weren’t you?”
“I needed to know if you were the person I hoped you were,” he says. “All I had was Milena’s account of you. Even when she cut off her hand, I couldn’t be certain of the real reason why she refused to make you a hammer.”
“It was because she couldn’t,” I say. “There was too much darkness in her heart.”
“And none in yours,” he says.
“Oh, but there has been,” I whisper, remembering the pull of Malak’s tools and the malice within them. “Too much darkness.”
“Which is why you will understand my daughter,” he says. “The Vandawolf will understand her wolfish soul, and you will understand the battles of her heart.”
I contemplate the little girl, who has pressed her cheek forlornly against the bars. She looks up at me for a moment before her gaze drops as if she thinks I’m going to reject her.
But of course, she will hear the pounding of my heart and probably even smell my turmoil.
