I'd believed that story for two hundred years. It made sense. It explained the running, the locked doors, the pattern I knocked to get into my own home. It explained why my father drifted in and out of my life like weather — always returning, never permanent.
But it didn't explain why my mother flinched at mirrors. It didn't explain why she checked my hands while I slept, or why she asked about my dreams with the careful tone of someone bracing for a specific answer. It didn't explain the way she'd saidyour father's bloodline runs strongwith a voice that sounded rehearsed rather than remembered.
If we were running from Milan's enemies, why did the fear seem to live inside our house rather than outside it?
I pressed the thought down. Buried it.
I told myself the wrongness I felt was only the inability to accept that something good had finally found me.
I was wrong about all of it.
CHAPTER 12
REFUSAL
Ada
My father summoned me on the third day after Hakan received his blessing.
I'd been expecting it — dreading it, truthfully. The court had been buzzing since Hakan walked out of the Golden Throne Hall with the Light God's approval to court me. A nobody apprentice granted permission to pursue the heir to the Light Court. It was unprecedented. Scandalous. The kind of thing that made noble ladies clutch their pearls and whisper behind their fans.
But my father had said yes. And I needed to know why.
The throne hall was empty when I arrived, the usual crowd of courtiers and petitioners dismissed. Only Gün Ata remained, seated not on his formal throne but in the smaller chair he used for private audiences. Golden light pooled around him like liquid sunshine, warm and welcoming.
"Ada." He smiled when he saw me, and the expression was so genuine, so fatherly, that my throat tightened. "Come. Sit with me."
I crossed the marble floor, my footsteps echoing in the vast space, and settled onto the cushion at his feet. It was where I'd sat as a child, listening to him tell stories of the old wars, of heroes and monsters and the eternal battle between light and shadow.
"I suppose Hakan told you about our meeting," he said. Not a question.
"The same evening. He was trying very hard not to look pleased with himself."
My father laughed — a real one, warm and brief. "He has that quality. The pride he tries to swallow and can't quite manage." His hand found my hair, stroking gently. "I liked him, Ada. More than I expected to. He asked my permission to court you, formally, properly, and when I pressed him harder than courtesy required — about his family, his mother, his father — he didn't flinch. Most men twice his age wouldn't have held my gaze through half of what I asked him."
He paused. Something shifted in his expression. Recognition, almost. As though he'd found what he'd been looking for.
"There is something remarkable about that young man, Ada. Something I suspect even he doesn't fully understand yet."
Tears pricked my eyes. I'd spent so many years expecting opposition. Expecting my father to arrange some cold political marriage with a pure-blooded lord I could barely tolerate. To hear him speak of Hakan with approval — with genuine warmth —
"I don't understand," I whispered. "Everyone said you would refuse. That I'd have to fight for —"
"You thought I would deny you happiness?" He cupped my chin, tilting my face up to meet his eyes. "You are my daughter. My heir. When I look at you, I see everything I have ever loved about this realm." His thumb brushed away the tear that had escaped down my cheek. "If Hakan makes you happy, then he has my blessing. Fully and completely."
I threw my arms around him, burying my face against his chest the way I had as a child. His arms encircled me, solid and warm, and for a moment everything was perfect.
"Thank you," I choked out. "Thank you, Baba."
"There is nothing to thank me for." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I see great potential in that young man. Great potential indeed."
Something about the way he said it made me pause. I pulled back slightly, searching his face. His expression was gentle, loving, everything a father's should be. But his eyes...
His eyes watched me the way they watched the court. Measuring. Calculating. The eyes of a god who had ruled for centuries and learned to see every angle, every possibility, every piece on the board.
"Baba?" I asked quietly. "Is something wrong?"
The calculating look vanished so quickly I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.
