I scoff. He abandoned us because he didn’t want to leave behind the beautiful Siphon general who turned him?
“I knew you and your mother were strong enough to manage without me,” he says with unearned confidence. “That you would be fine.”
“Fine?!” I shout.
The anger is back, and I watch the shadows tighten on him. Relish his look of fear. I have so much hurt in me.So much hurt.And he’s here, and it’s like I finally have somewhere for it all to go. I wanthimto hurt.
“Mother was pregnant when you ‘died’!”
His eyes widen. “What?” I get the sense that for the first time in this conversation,I’vesurprisedhim. Which means he didn’t even bother to find a way to check up on us, not once in the past eleven years.
“Your disappearanceshatteredher mental stability. I had to become both a sister and a parent. I had to think about things, to do things no child should have to think about or do. My sister’s life was onmyshoulders. Do you even care? Do you evencarethat your wife isdeadnow?”
His lips purse, and he glances away. When he looks back at me, something like regret is in his eyes.
“Meryn, the way I’ve been dead to you all this time, it felt the same way for me. You and your mother were part of a life I couldn’t return to, no matter how much I would’ve rather been with you. I had to make peace with that. I had to move on.”
The rage bubbles up in me again. “Move on?Like, to another woman?”
His gaze trails over toward the building, to where Ruby left with the attendants. “Ruby and I, we’re—”
“Stop,” I say, holding up a hand, nausea rising.
“It’s how we figured out who you were. Ruby received intel about the new queen of Nocturna, that she had been living as a commoner named Meryn Cooper. There couldn’t be more than one Meryn Cooper in Sturmfrost. I told her right away that you were my daughter.”
“Isn’t she a little young for you?” I snap, petty. “That woman can’t be more than three years older than me.”
His hands tighten around the armrests of the chair. “She’s four hundred years old. Kind of the other way around, actually.”
Gross.I turn from him and start to pace, my mind a whirling frenzy of anger and confusion. Anassa nudges me with her snout, then turns back to glare at my father.
“I’m sorry to hear about Nathalia—both her death and her mental health. I’m sorry for the burden my absence placed on you. And I’m—”
His voice cracks, and I turn back toward him. I get the sense he might be fighting back tears, but he swallows them down.
I wish I felt satisfaction, watching him almost cry. That my outburst did what I thought it would. That I wasdonehurting. But all I feel is echoing numbness laced with simmering anger.
“I’d like to know more about your sister,” he finishes quietly. “What’s her name?”
I stop pacing, moving back to Anassa’s side. We watch him in silence. I tell him nothing.
“You hate me?”
Still, I say nothing. Anassa and I are motionless statues, staring him down.
He shuts his eyes and clenches his jaw. If this hurts him, too,good. Then he takes a shaky breath and says, “Please don’t let how you feel about me turn you away from Ruby’s offer.”
I click my tongue and pace away from him again, frustrated. I start to flip my dagger in my hand to expel some of the excess energy.
“Astreona is nothing like what Nocturnans have been taught,” he implores, begging me to believe him. “Humans live there peacefully along Siphons, not as prey but as citizens. If you would only come to see it for yourself, you would understand how different reality is from the propaganda you’ve been raised on.”
Reality. Propaganda. Who is this man? His existence is a lie. How can he speak truth?
“You can trust them. Astreona and King Lucien will be good allies,” he tells me.
I catch my dagger’s hilt and grip it hard, glaring at him. “How can I trust you when I don’t evenknow you? You’ve been absent for half my life. What right do you have to give me advice about alliances and rulership after abandoning your own family?”
My anger seems to be getting to him—his hands tighten on the armrests again, and the glassy look has come back to his eyes. “I know… I have no right to your trust, but I ask you—beg you—for a chance to earn it. To get to know you again. And to meet the daughter I never knew existed.”
