Eli and Bolan both nod, then fall thoughtfully silent. I look down at the contraception pill in my palm. Eli is right. This is notthe time to add more complications — however welcome they might be — to our lives.
I take the pill.
Eli steps back to pour me a glass of water. I drink it.
Bolan kisses my temple, flashing me a grin. “Apparently, I need shoes.” Then he saunters out of the kitchen.
Eli takes the still half-full glass from me, sets it on the counter, then pulls me into his arms. I tilt my head up, face pressed into his neck.
“We’ll take care of them,” he murmurs.
“I don’t doubt it for one second,” I whisper back.
I stepthrough the door to my father’s study. He’s waiting for me by the windows, through which sunlight glints off the fresh snow dusting the mountain peaks that surround Waterfell Castle. I can’t remember the last time I saw my father in casual slacks and a cable-knit sweater. He has no tumbler of whiskey at hand, no chosen flanking him, to mitigate the weight of this conversation.
I carry my backpack with Armin’s urn in one hand, and a puffy jacket in the other. The jacket is for my father. I’m already wearing all my winter gear. Though with the sun streaming through the windows, I already know I won’t need as many layers as I anticipated.
The flight from London passed quickly. Kitty spent most of her time rotating between window seats, taking pictures and texting each one to all of us. Tommy slid into the seat next to me — beating out both Bolan and Sully — then stubbornly didn’t move from it while playing games on his new tablet andeating from a small mountain of snacks Christoph kept steadily supplied.
“Mirth,” my father says, his tone tired— but warmer than he’s been with me for a long while.
No doubt he can feel the power contentedly twined around me. But … I also hope it’s more than that. More than just the relief that I’ve accepted my role, my duties wholly.
“Did you want me to come down?” he asks, without turning to look at me.
I’ve abandoned my soul-bound mates, along with Tommy and Kitty, to Anne and Eleanor, slipping away to get dressed and grab the jacket before seeking out my father.
Not that I didn’t know exactly where he was from the moment I set foot on the property. My sensitivity to that, to the intersection point itself, is strange but not uncomfortable.
“Do you remember the lookout over the river that you took us to as children?”
He turns to me then. Backlit, his face is in shadow. “Of course.”
“It’s one of Armin’s favorite spots. Was. Was one of his favorite spots.”
My father’s bright-purple gaze falls to my backpack, then to the jacket in my other hand. Then he looks at his empty mantel for a long moment.
I hold the jacket out to him. He steps over to take it, pulling it on and partially zipping it up. I meet his heavy gaze, so much experience churning in those eyes, which are just a shade lighter than my own. Almost a century of life, choices, mistakes, love, grief, regrets.
I don’t look away from any of it as I hold my hand out to him.
He grasps it, his touch no warmer than my own.
Then his essence snaps out, slicing into me, burrowing into my skin and pulling me apart.
I close my eyes and just bear it silently.
I’m nowhere. And also everywhere. Disintegrated and shifting, with only my father’s hand holding me from being lost forever.
Then my feet crunch through snow. My next breath is icy and crisp. And I’m in one piece again.
Teleportation.
I pull my sunglasses out of my pocket, putting them on before opening my eyes. But the vista is so bright that I need to blink more than a few times to adjust to it.
My father squeezes my hand gently, then releases me.
He’s teleported us to a sheltered spot on the sheer face of a mountain. Not a cave, but a niche carved out of the stone. A wide shelf of sorts. There’s a proper name for it, no doubt. My father would know, but I don’t ask. Because this isn’t that sort of moment.
