Page 88 of Hupotasso
“Stop.”
He pauses and looks up.
“What?”
“Jag, I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“Where do I start?”
“Just leave it,” he shakes his head, resuming shovelling.
“No. It has to be said. I’ve done a great deal of soul-searching since I left Mother’s hospital room. I know how unfair and unjust I’ve been to Angie, but also to you.”
“Falcon, we’ve all made mistakes…”
“No. You knew I was wrong about Angie and tried to convince me from day one. I was too stubborn to listen, blinded by paranoia and, if I’m honest, fear. I thought you wanted me to admit I had feelings for her so that you could justify your own feelings for Coquette.”
Jag snorts and stops to lean on his shovel and shake his head.
“I know,” I sigh. “It was another selfish way for me to try and deny how I was feeling. But Mother’s death, or what I believed to be her death, made me realise that it's not impossible for us to love humans. I love my mother, and try as I might to deny it, I feel the same for Angie. You didn’t want to prove that to me to justify your love for Coquette, or your devastation at her loss —you only wanted the best for me, as did Mother. You wanted me to be happy and to know what love is.”
“Falcon,” he clears his throat. “Stop.”
“No, it’s been a long time coming,” I sigh. “You’ve always wanted that for me. I should never have doubted you. I can always count on you. I hope you can forgive me for my abominable behaviour. I don’t want to be my father, and I need a kick up the ass sometimes to remind me of how to behave honourably.”
“Honourably,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “Falcon…”
“Come,” I shake my head. “I’ll send my men to finish this job. Let’s get home and have a drink. Then we have two women to find. Two special women who I realise I can’t live without.”
He stares at me for a long, long moment, before shaking his head, throwing down his shovel, and following me to the car.
69
Adam’s wife, Marianna, puts two hands on my huge stomach, and grins, and I can’t help but smile back.
Yin’s dropping me here, on their farm near a quiet Amish village, while she goes to hunt Viper.
It’s clear The Free Men haven’t done anything to get him since they started their negotiations with Falcon. I thought by advising them to go through Falcon that I’d have helped them get Isabel back, and they’d owe me for that. But Yin said they’d been bogged down in plans and discussions — so it was time she took matters into her own hands. She has a strategy, she says, that will get her into the castle with no problem, but she hasn’t shared that with me.
“The less you know, the less you can tell him if the worst happens,” she’d said. “Which it won’t, but we just need to take precautions.”
And that’s just one of the many precautions she’d put in place.
We still have a few weeks until I’m due to give birth and we can’t risk me going to a hospital, but since most of the Amish give birth at home coming to Adam and Marianna was the obvious answer.
I was fearful, at first, that I’d be putting them in danger, but Yin’s security team advised a month or more ago that the community was no longer being watched. We’d waited and watched ever since, and triple confirmed. I’d just assumed Falcon’s search party had decided I wasn’t stupid enough to go back to my family. But Yin said she’d passed on through a number of channels that The Free Men had spirited me overseas the day I’d escaped. It wasn’t too much to expect him to believe this either. One thing that everyone agreed on after seeing me on The Games was that I had a strange propensity for engendering help from others. People wanted to aid me, even if they didn’t always understand why.
I don’t really believe this. But Yin says it’s true.
Either way, word on the street is that Falcon is still occupied negotiating with The Free Men to free Isabel and her family from whoever holds them, and has agreed to exchange them for his mother.
I have to believe he’s so taken up with that task that he’s left me on the back burner.
But there’s one vampire, I know, who’s just playing a waiting game.
I turn to Yin now and reiterate what I’ve said a hundred times already.
