“Yeah, okay,” I say, my gaze meeting Soren’s once more before I follow my dad, leaving Kathleen, who motions for me to go.
As he and I walk through the twilight sunset, along the beach toward what looks like a harbor with a few ships in the bay. His one free hand holds a lantern to guide us, squeaking slightly on its chains. I eye his bandaged stump. “How are you?” I ask.
He raises the rounded thing. “Well, at least every time I look at this, I know he’s down in the seas, alive, and absolutelymiserable.”
I admit, that gives me some comfort, too. “What will you do without it?”
“It’s my left hand, so it's not as important as my right. Probably get a weapon to replace it.” He lowers it to look me over. “I’ll find help if I need it, don’t you worry.”
“Where?” I ask, my heart racing. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
He takes his sweet time to reply as he surveys the path we’re on, the gentle crashing waves of the shoreline right next to us. “I got a letter from Corvus. Skull’s Row is in disarray, but not lost. Blackwell did a half-assed job at leading even if he was never chosen to lead. They want me to return, and I’ll be taking Liam Rackham to pay off our debt for his help. I’ll get my new hand there.”
“Is it safe? What if they just kill you?”
“I don’t think they will. I don’t have to hide anymore, and with Donna and Rorge, we’ll make it happen. They have alargenetwork themselves. And… well, I’mfree.”
Free.Free to leave me, I guess. I cross my arms, the air slightly cooler with the sun setting. “So you’re really going back?”
“Aye,” he says, and I realize we’re not just nearing the harbor, but he’s taking me along one of the piers as a ship is being emptied, the fading sunset silhouetting every line of rope. “Soren still needs to periodically visit, with all the shit that’s gone down.”
Dad is leaving me with him. In some way, it’s nice to have the approval, but in another, it feels like he’s just handing me off. “What about Matthias? We killed him. He has to have people there that will hate us.”
“He was a cunt that only had two friends in there, and one was Blackwell. Either the other one accepts his place, or we’ll exile him. Of which Soren will be a deciding factor. Tempest has also declared Corvus take the reign, and I don’t think many want to challenge her right now, not since she wears Blackwell’s soul in a conch around her neck. It helps I can see any auras that aren’t friendly; I know how to disappear.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever get over realizing my father isn’t the man I thought he was, but at least I don’t have to wade through those feelings alone. Not anymore. Of course, it’s nice to have him after pining for him for over a decade. I just… had different visions for what that would be like.
Time to let that go, too.
We come to a halt on the pier as quite a few men unload a moderately sized vessel. I raise my brows when I see a necklace of wolf teeth around their necks. “Tempest is here?”
“Those are men she let me borrow as I regather mine. She was pleased to hear that Jesper was sent to suffer the siren’scurse.” He nears them as one carries something that looks like a painting covered in cloth, some of the wooden beams creaking underfoot. “And she’s delivering things I stashed at her island many years ago.” He looks down at me, the lantern casting long shadows up his face. “I half wonder if she’s just giving these things back to me to get them away from her lands.”
“Were you two friends, at one point?”
“Allies. Strained from Cypress, but a siren—Melona, specifically—told her that saving my ass would keep her daughter safe, one day. Since we helped with Blackwell, and since you saved Moriganna, Tempest is willing to put all that behind us.”
Referencing back to my encounter with the sirens is odd, not having intended for that to create long-lasting debts to be paid. I just wanted them free, so I could fulfill whatever Cypress wanted out of me. Not one did it cross my mind that it would help me in the future.A future I didn’t know I’d have.
We near the painting, and he hands me the lantern, not an ounce of self-pity in his eyes as we both understand it’s because of his injury that he can only do one thing at a time. He lifts off the canvas fabric for it to reveal?—
I clasp my hand over my mouth as if I’ve seen a ghost.
It’s of my mother.
Probably when I was a few years old.
It’s almost cruel to see her face, so stagnant and forever that way, dramatically lit with the lantern against the darker sky. I’d gut anyone who would evenattemptto ruin this. Hells, if I had money, I’d pay an artist to recreate this for safekeeping. I kneel down in front of it, staring at the almond shape of her eyes, the artist capturing her smirking grin perfectly.
“What is all of this?” I ask, my head moving all around as I pay more attention to the things that are still being carried off, placing the lantern on the pier.
“Your mother’s things. And some of mine.”
“What?” I ask, my voice cracking as I look up at my dad, standing to face him, my lungs straining to breathe.
“After you had been secured with Melona, I returned to our home and had my men gather what I told them to. It would be important to your mother that you’d have it.” His voice trails off, looking down at the painting behind me. “I hate how still she is. How I can’t make her come to life. I—” he trails off, blinking rapidly as his jaw juts to the side. “I talk to her, often. I don’t know if she hears me where she is… but I miss her.”
I turn slightly so I can look back at it, my breath hitching for a second time at seeing her. “They even got the beauty mark on her jaw.”
