Instead, it had a sparking purple rock resting below it.
A shard of Solkar’s Heart.
An unmistakable dagger.
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“I took it out of your father myself.”
In the setting sun filtering in through the balcony windows, his shadow elongated on the table, looming over mine. Just like it had when he’d defended me against Silas.
Back when we were still enemies. When I still knew how to hate him.
He’d had the dagger then.
I shook my head. “When did you find out it’s yours?”
“When I visited Calyx the other day. He has been testing it since the wedding.”
“That’s why you wanted to talk,” I whispered.
Foolish me, I’d placed the blame on my own mistakes.
“Yes.”
“You should have insisted,” was all I said.
Silence.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you until now,” he said. “I wanted to make sure it was mine before I told you, so we knew what we were facing. I knew that if I revealed this when we met, you would have thought I’d killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Then you were recuperating after Orion and–I waited to tell you.” The words tumbled past his lips urgently. “I swear, on everything and everyone I care for in this world, on my homeland and all of my existence, that I didn’t kill your father.”
“I believe you.”
Silence.
This time it seemed to stretch for infinity, the distance between us turning into a chasm.
“Say something,” he begged.
“I need to be alone.” I still didn’t turn. “Get out.”
Chapter 20
Allie
My boots crunched the ice and snow with no remorse.
No strange light pulses tried to stop me.
No civilians stood in my way.
Even Mrs. Mallowmere, the sweets shop owner who had shown me nothing but kindness, had looked at me strangely when I’d arrived on her doorstep the second she’d opened, asking for pyrroot in a monotone voice I didn’t recognize.
If I couldn’t sleep, I could at least make myself useful.
