Ihad walked the path to my family home a thousand times over the course of my life, and every one of them had been a relief.
Of course there had been times where I’d been quarreling with Teller or avoiding a confrontation with one of my parents, but our little cottage on the marsh had always been my safe harbor, the one place where I was loved and truly accepted.
Even in the aftermath of my mother’s disappearance, when her empty chair was a constant and horribly painful reminder of her absence, our house remained a place of hope—a lighthouse in the dark, stormy sea that might someday draw her safely back home.
Until today.
Today, for the first time, every step felt like a steady march into the frozen tundra of hell.
Everything was wrong.Everything.
My career was over. I had no prospects to replace it and, thanks to my penchant for taking on the center’s most indigent clients, no savings.
The Guardians now saw me as an enemy. Though I had brushed off Henri’s warnings, I had to admit I was frightened. I knew too well the lengths they were willing to go to stop anyone they deemed a threat.
I wasn’t ready to give up on my goal of taking down the Descended. The murder I’d witnessed in Paradise Row had struck a match in me that couldn’t be snuffed. I felt a calling from the deepest pits of my soul that this was a war I was meant to fight, a blood debt I was born to repay, but I refused to stoop to the Guardians’ level to do it. I’d find my own way to bring justice to Emarion—even if I had to do it alone.
But it wasn’t justmyfuture that worried me.
Teller’s dream was dead, and he didn’t even know it. He’d spent his life studying to be the best and brightest in the hopes the final payoff would be an invitation to Sophos. That was the only outcome that might have made walking away from Lily worth the pain. Learning the truth now would destroy him.
My father was about to march off to war. Growing up, I’d eagerly devoured every crumb of his thrilling tales of battle, but the threats in those stories had existed only in his memories and my imagination. The enemies he now faced were very real—and very well-armed, thanks to me.
My mother was still missing, and I was no closer to finding her than I’d ever been. With the door closed on my access to the palace, my hope of finding answers was slim, at best.
And Luther...
What he’d said. What he’d done.
What I’dfelt.
I waded through my messy, complicated thoughts of him as I trudged through the door. All I wanted was to slump into the nearest armchair and surrender to exhaustion and the throbbing headache I couldn’t seem to shake, but one look at my father, seated at the kitchen table with hands clasped and hard lines on his brow, stopped me in my tracks.
“Sit down.”
I recognized that tone. That steel in his eyes, the stiffness of his shoulders.
The voice of the Commander.
I knew better than to put up a fight when he was like this. He would be obeyed, one way or another.
Wordlessly, I pulled out the chair across from him and sank into it.
“I learned some interesting things today.”
So did I, I thought, though my lips remained firmly shut.
“I went to Lumnos City last night to find you, but no mortals were being let through. Then I went to the healers’ center, thinking you would wait there to be called for, but you never returned. So I assumed you had come home, but you were not here, either.”
I shifted in my seat.
“It reminded me so much of a different day when I scoured this city searching for another missing member of our family.”
My eyes dropped guiltily. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Turns out my worry was unfounded, since you were in such good hands at the palace.”
I stared at the table with raptfascination, focus fixed anywhere but on him.