Page 8 of Keeping Sarah

Maverick smirked. “Plus, if you don’t agree to let us come with you, you’ll have to explain to Sarah why you got your ass handed to you by three old guys.”

I smiled and clapped his shoulder. “A team of six it is, then.”

CHAPTER 3

Deacon

“Iknow you want to help rescue Sarah, but you help no one by killing yourself,” my father insisted.

“I know my limits," I grumbled irritably.

Ode laughed. “You almost fell when you scooted off the bed in the infirmary, Deacon. You have to accept that youhavelimits before you can know them. I’ll be right back.”

She left, no doubt to check on Mock back aboard my ship.

Seated in my father’s parlor, I was ensconced in the concern and love and too many eyes of my family and our allies. Silence made me drink broth to build my strength. Jac’s android, Camp Deo, was almost as concerned for me as she was for the twins and kept checking on my condition.

On the other end of the spectrum, my father seemed just as weak as I felt. He was pale—not only from being a ghost—and his eyes were tired.

His padded benches were more comfortable than those I grew up with in my parents’ home. In his life, my father had eschewed comfort for what was proper. Until he had his affair with Silence Bateen. It seemed her love had helped him realize practicality could also be valuable.Strange thing for a princess to do.

I exhaled my frustration out my nose. “This is my hell.”

Father’s hard eyes softened. “I know, Son. I know. Recuperation always feels impossible when your loved ones are in danger.”

“Did you feel this way during the war?” I asked him. “Most of our family are soldiers, they—"

“I felt this way aboutyou, Deacon. You and your brothers.” His eyes dimmed, as though he was thinking back to those times. “Trying times tend to make us…insular. I thought only of my sons, and the safety of the women of our home.”

“And Silence,” I noted, who’d once beenmyfiancée.

“And eventually, Silence,” he admitted quietly.

“When did you two—"

“Not until she was an adult, I assure you,” he cut in. “I had noticed she was blossoming into a stunning young woman of course. I had eyes,” he said facetiously as he smirked. “But I never so much as spoke to her until she came of age. And even then, our conversations started about you.”

Silence smiled sweetly at him, as she refilled my mug with more broth. “Valor had already arranged our union,” she said, intimating mine and hers. “But he wanted me to consent to it. I was surprised. I had never thought anyone would think to ask me for such a thing. So, I—"

“Wait.” I looked to my father in confusion. “I thought you already had her consent for our unionbeforeyou asked Justice to give his blessing to it.”

He shook his head. “Originally, I had believed Justice had spoken to her,offeringthe union. Not using it as a reward for his favorite general, unbeknownst to Silence. But once I knew that was not the case, I had to speak to her myself. I needed to know she wanted the union.” Father gulped, then admitted, “It was during our conversations that we fell in love.”

Their affair had crushed me in the beginning. But after my father had been executed for the affair by the Ruler Justice Bateen, Silence’s own father, everything changed. Justice had imprisoned his pregnant daughter, afraid of his people’s wrath should he have executed their favorite princess. It had all happened so fast that I hardly had the time to comprehend all the implications, before I had decided to overthrow Justice. Watching my father and Silence dote on one another, their love so obvious a blind man could see it, I could not hold it against them.

Though in the beginning, I had tried. I wanted to hate them for it. For the public humiliation of it all. But I was dedicated to my father, even as my mother tried to poison me against him. Understandable, given everything from her perspective. She came from a proud family and my father’s affair with a younger woman burned away what little warmth she had left. But watching her turn her back on him at his public beheading…it made everything worse.

I understood it—Justice would have taken all wealth and properties associated with my father, according to the deal she had made with him. But as his son witnessing his father’s execution, seeing my mother abandon him in his final living hour…

So I did not hold Silence’s love against him. Not anymore.

Ode scurried in, reading off of her tablet. “Three days.”

“Hmm?” I had no clue what she was referring to.

“I don’t want you up and around for at least three days.”

“Absolutely not.” I tried to stand but fell back against the bench.

---