Page 151 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

“It’s okay, Basten,” I whisper.

His lips purse like he’s chewing something distasteful. He makes a show of resting his hand on the quiver strap across his chest. This time, when I tug my hand out of his, he reluctantly lets me go.

My footsteps echo hollowly as I cross the stone floor to my father, where after a pause, I wrap myarms around his broad chest. Truth be told, I meant for the hug to be perfunctory. When it comes to paternal hugs, I’m woefully lacking. Charlin Darrow used to pull my small limbs off his neck and curse me whenever I tried.

So, when Vale sincerely surrounds me with his thick arms, his beard tickling my cheek, I swallow down a lump of emotion. I didn’t know it could feel like this. Paternal. Protective. Vale isn’t human, so rationally, I know better than to believe that we’ll ever have a functional father-daughter relationship.

But this?

This makes me want to cry for all the years I went without it. For whatcould be.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” He speaks softly. “You forced my hand.”

Peeking around Vale’s shoulder, my gaze lands heavily on Artain. He looks like he’s lost a good twenty pounds in the last week. His skin has a sickly pallor from the dungeon’s low light. Perhaps a few new wrinkles around his sneer. I don’t feel anything for him but resentment—hewas the one who forced the Night Hunt, not me.

“I wish things had happened differently, too,” I confess, chewing on my bottom lip. “But I’m grateful to have you as my father. The next time we meet, I’d like to start afresh. No lies this time. As soon as we arrive safely in Old Coros, I’ll send a messenger crow to let you know. Basten and I will win over the Astagnonian people for you—and then, when you come, we’ll be a family.”

“Yes.” My father’s hands fall away, though the ghost of them holds on a little longer.

I take a step back, adjusting my cloak around my shoulders. I add, “In the meantime, take care of that grumpy faehorse. I wish there was someone who could play riddles with the goldenclaws?—”

When I look up from smoothing my cloak’s folds, there’s a knife in Vale’s hand.

And my heart stops.

I know that knife. It’s the Serpent Knife from the fae artifact room. The one used in the Sacrifice of the Golden Child. To turn the fae into gods.

Time suddenly seems to move strangely. Too fast. Too slow. I feel like I’m hovering above myself, watching the blood drain out of my face.

“Sabine!” Basten screams my name as his footsteps sprint across the floor.

Time slows.

Vale grabs my wrist with godly speed. I should tug away. I should at leasttry. But I can’t break free of the crushing realization of what’s about to happen.

I was right, I think dimly. When my father first showed me this knife, I felt a jolt of unease, of foreboding.

“The Tale of the Golden Child,” I murmur quietly, almost in a trance. “You brought me here to…to sacrifice me. Didn’t you? This whole time, this was the plan. To bleed me out on your altar.”

“Human sacrificeisrequired.” Vale’s rasping voice is sickeningly matter-of-fact. Remorseless. Utterly cold as ice.

My blood roars between my ears with enough force that it feels like my skull is on the verge of splitting open. I try to jerk my arm away, but he holds on tight.

He tilts his head. “A deathless death.”

“Sabine!” Basten yells again, sprinting, this time so close that his fingers almost brush my sleeve.

But he isn’t fastenough.

Not this time.

A second before he can pull me away, my father stabs the Serpent Knife into my heart.

It’s a violent, brutal move. My ribs crunch as the blade stabs all the way to the hilt, pain bursting across my chest in searing waves.

Vale lets go of the knife and takes a step back.

I stare at him in disbelief.

---