Page 47 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

He cleared his throat, a single tear trailing down his cheek that I hadn’t seen when I’d been a child and his back was to me. It was the final straw in my restraint, pulling a strangled sob from my throat. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to try to suppress it as my childlike voice rang out when he took the first step forward.

“Daddy, no!”

He stepped through me, the mists of my dreamlike body parting to allow him to pass as I turned to watch him go. He put one foot in front of the other, and I had a newfound appreciation for the strength required in something that seemed so simple under other circumstances.

Knowing he was walking to his death took a different kind of strength, a peace with one’s life that I didn’t know I had any longer. There was so much left for me to do, so many wrongs left to right.

It had been easy enough to walk to my death when there was no one counting on me. It had been easy to justify it to myself. The world would go on, my loved ones would heal in time, the wounds of my loss scabbing over enough to get through the day.

I may not have been a parent, and I didn’t know if that was ever in the Fates for me given what I knew of the evils of this world, but I knew what it was to feel responsible for the lives of others now. I knew what it was to feel the pain of letting them down.

“Hush now, Child,” a deep male voice said behind me. I spun to glareat the man who had taken up his place behind my six-year-old self, placing stern, rough hands against my shoulders. I stilled, everything in me going taut as I realized this had been the place where it all began. That the tears streaking my cheeks had been what made Byron spend the next fourteen years tormenting me, preparing me for a life as his wife even then. “What’s her name?” he asked my mother, lifting a lock of wavy, dark hair from my shoulder. He twirled it around his fingers, forcing me to glance back at him.

“Estrella, my Lord,” my mother said, her brow furrowing in confusion even as she forced her body into a curtsy. Her face twisted with the pain of it, and my anger over Byron’s need for ceremony even in such dire situations only rose.

At the front of the fields, my father was readying himself to die. These were the last moments my mother could look upon the man she loved more than anything, and instead of having the privilege of embracing those moments, she was stuck entertaining a pompous and arrogant lord who cared nothing for her grief.

My hand tingled with warmth, magic coating the surface of my skin as I glanced down at my fingertips. They throbbed with pain as I gritted my teeth, feeling as if my fingers had pulled the agony from my heart and trapped it there. My breathing was uneven, ragged and rough, and I could do nothing to stop the strangled scream that wanted to escape. Pain and fear and hatred mixed together, marking me in a way I would never escape. Stained in the paint of the night sky, those fingers were so different from the unblemished skin of my child self. Of the innocence I’d lost to monsters like Byron—a reminder of what they’d turned me into.

My nails elongated where my hand rested at my side, forming the familiar black talons I’d seen on Caldris when he was lost to his feral side and his anger won out over his senses—when he called to the storms and made the earth shake with his rage.

Byron lowered himself to kneel at the younger me’s side. He was the same height as me when he placed a single one of his knees on the earth, putting his blue eyes level with hers. His silver, coiffed hair was far more polished than anything about her dirt-streaked face.

I’d spent my morning playing with Loris in the woods, racing through the trees without a single thought for what the day might bring. The adults all knew better, but I’d been foolish—blinded by the innocence of a child who didn’t understand the ways of the world around me yet.

Byron raised a hand, a handkerchief clutched in his grasp. He used it to wipe at her cheeks, using the moisture of her tears to wipe the dirt from her face. I glanced forward toward where my father approached the Veil, turning back to look at us while the High Priest watched the exchange in irritation.

Younger me’s voice shook as she forced out the words, her breath catching as she tried to avoid panic. “Please don’t take my daddy.” She didn’t yet understand that men like Byron didn’t do anything that was of no benefit to them. She couldn’t comprehend that the man who seemed so interested in becoming her friend wanted her weak and afraid. He wanted her fatherless and available for the taking.

Byron could have intervened. I knew that now, given his offer to save me from the very same sacrifice, but he’d never wanted to.

I closed my eyes, watching the hope die on the girl’s face as Lord Byron tilted his head to the side. “Please don’t take my daddy,my Lord,” he said, correcting her etiquette as she forced her head to nod enthusiastically. “You think your grief is more important than the safety of Nothrek?”

I swallowed, pinching my eyes closed as my mother’s eyes flew wide and she turned to Byron to make excuses for her daughter. To explain that I was just a child, that I didn’t know what I was saying. He held up a hand to silence her without so much as glancing away from me.

“No, my Lord,” she said, stumbling over the words she knew she was supposed to say. What did a child care for the safety of the Kingdom when her father was about to die before her?

“I’ll ask you this, Estrella. Would you give yourself in his place? Who would you offer to save him?” he asked, and I ground my teeth together at the guiding words. At the deception in them, the hope he gave only to rip it away.

I saw it now for the test it had been, an evaluation of how much I would come to love and inspire love in my children one day. All because of the impression my father had left on me, on the ability to love fully and completely.

He’d been grooming me, even then and there. Even on that day.

“I’d give myself,” she sobbed, ignoring my mother’s shocked protest behind me. It felt like the brave thing to say, and I remembered being so proud of the words as I jutted my chin out and pursed my lips.

I’d been so proud in that moment, and looking back, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the moment I was meant to tear down the Veil. If Byron had deviated from what the Fates predetermined. How would I have returned to Alfheimr and the Cradle as I was meant to, or would I have just… died?

Byron smiled, his face lighting with something disturbing as he stroked a hand over her hair. “Unfortunately, The Father has already made his choice, Child,” he said, grasping a handful of her hair and turning her to face the Veil where the High Priest nodded finally and my father dropped to his knees before him. He scolded the child, shaking her head from side to side when she pinched her eyes closed to avoid seeing. “He makes this sacrifice for all of us. The least you can do is bear witness to it, Estrella.”

“We thank you for your sacrifice, Macario Barlowe of Mistfell. May you find peace in your next existence, warmly embraced by The Father,” the High Priest said, his voice spreading through the gardens as he touched his dagger to my father’s throat.

Behind me, the child version of myself whimpered as Byron pulled harder at her hair anytime she tried to close her eyes, forcing her with the pain I could still feel yanking at my scalp after all these years. He leaned over her, his voice seething as his nostrils flared. “Do not disappoint me, Child.”

My father’s throat split as I watched, the stream of blood falling to the ground before him. His head rolled back, his eyes connecting with mine briefly.

It was enough. That agony of loss flooded me, becoming something so all-consuming that I didn’t know where I ended and where I began. My body was weightless, everything around me going dark as I was lost to that pure hatred that came from my pain.

When light returned to my vision, I found myself staring up at Byron. His hand was buried inmyhair and my mother stood before me sobbing as my father died. Tears stained my cheeks with wet, and Byron’s blue gaze tracked each and every one with interest.

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