Page 36 of Wicked Crown

ChapterEight

Dad.The word soured on Perry’s tongue.This man didn’t deserve to be called a father.Not after leaving him and Lili without any warning, without any guidance on being a witch in a human world.His father had aged from the powerful, take-on-the-Senate revolutionary he’d remembered as a kid.Or maybe he’d always been this stuffy has-been.

“Perry.”Surprise and maybe relief crashed through his father’s uptight professor look.“I hear you kept the name Lili gave you.”

“No, no, no.You don’t get to talk about her.”Years of history cut between them like a blade.“She was your stepdaughter, my sister—and you just left her.Long before the Revelare slaughtered her.”Perry’s powers rushed to the surface, and Vori reached for him.

“I’ve got you.”Her calm reassurance hid her massive drain of his power.While the knockoff healing charms spread magic slowly, she did the opposite, sucking in one quick draw the crackling energy that’d wrapped him like a live wire garrote.

“Thanks.”He stepped closer to her, and she didn’t move away.“Vori, meet my father—Mitch.”

“We’ve met,” his father said.“She threatened me.”

“The same still holds if you tell anyone we were here,” Vori said oh-so-sweetly.“We can’t have you jeopardizing your son’s safety.”She walked toward the maze of shelves, sticking to the middle of the rows while dodging flying books.“I’ll let you have some privacy.”

Perry stared at her.Shehadcome here for him.Not for the amethyst.Not for anyone else.But for him.She wandered away, trailing a look over her shoulder that sent something reckless and wonderful through him.

Mitch jacked his already stiff posture another inch or two higher.“You’re my son.I wouldn’t put you in danger.”

“Right.”Perry would cut this short for all their sakes.“Your preachy promise would be so much better if it didn’t have years of super deadbeat dad backing it.We didn’t come here for trouble.You took my property when the Senate locked me up, yes?”

“I was holding it for you.”

“Spare me the not-so-righteous indignation.I don’t care what you do with any of it.Except I had an amethyst.You can keep everything else, but I need that back.”

“I don’t want your possessions.I want my son.”

Perry had dreamed of those words as a kid shuffled from one group home to another.Now, they didn’t mean all that much.“Then you shouldn’t have vanished all those years ago.”

“I came back when you needed me.In the prison.I was trying to get you out.”

“Ineededyou as a scared little kid.You showed up when it was convenient to your cause of taking down the Senate.Where were you when Lili and I were dumped into the foster system?Or when the Revelare butchered her?When they threatened to kill me if I didn’t join?To kill you?To kill the family you’d never let me know?”

“I couldn’t introduce you to your cousins.The Senate exiled me.My sister and her husband refused to acknowledge me as kin.”

Perry didn’t miss the irony.“You’d felt the pain of rejection by your own family, yet you and my mother did the same to me?To Lili?She was her daughter.Did that mean nothing?Do you know how she died?Alone?Terrified?Sacrificed by a demon cult?Offered up to the Revelare as a vessel for whatever demon they summoned to possess her body?”

Mitch flinched.“I heard later.I snuck back to LA despite the Senate’s banishment, but not in time to protect her.I watched you from a distance while you were in law school.”

“Working my way through with three jobs and a slew of student loans?Funny.I don’t remember seeing you at graduation with all the other parents.”

“You know better than most that the Senate punishes anyone it wants whenever it wants however it wants.I couldn’t risk them knowing I was here.”

“So you came back without bothering to let your son know, to do what—hide in a bookshop?”

“To seek sanctuary with a powerful demon hybrid who hates the old guard as much as we do.Now that the Senate has mostly fallen, we can all be together again.”

“Lili is gone.”The old hurt ripped open again.“We can never be together again as a family.Now, do you have my amethyst?”

His father glanced toward Vori, who trailed one manicured nail along a shelf.A slim black book followed her as if it was this weird shop’s version of a puppy.“It’s about her, isn’t it?”

Perry didn’t confirm or deny.The man didn’t deserve answers.“Do you have my stuff or not?”

“Do you know who she is?Whatshe is?She’s definitely not a witch.”

“Enough.”He’d thought much of the same when he’d first seen her other skin, but now, it was too much to hear it from this man who had abandoned him.“Vori was the one who came looking for me, who risked her life and her family to rescue me.”

“She swore me to secrecy over information about you.As if I wouldn’t take care of my own son.”

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