I didn’t reactivate the security wards I keep around the apartment.
“What are you doing here?” I’m holding a vial of components to activate a fireball and I keep my voice down, praying to all the gods that Elethior doesn’t hear.
Dad folds his arms over his chest. “I’m done letting you ignore us. You won’t respond to any of my messages—”
“So you astral project to me? Atten o’clock at night?”
Oh my gods. If he’d astral projected ten minutes later, once Elethior and I were—
Nausea burns in my stomach.
“What should I have done?” he barks. “Continued to let you drive this wedge between us? I knew you’d be home now.”
The stairs creak.
My ribs ache with the deep, panicked breath I shove into them. “Dad,quiet—”
“I’ve stood aside while you’ve treated us disrespectfully for years, but this ends now.” He plants his hands on his hips. “You’re going to drop this victim act. I need to know that once you graduate, you’ll be making something of yourself. How much damage have you done to your career already? You’re still working with Elethior Tourael?”
Alarm has me stumbling closer to him. “Dad,stop—don’t—”
“If you’re willing to treat your own family so disdainfully, how are you behaving around him? Have you told him who you are?”
“Dad—”
“Like it or not, the Arcane Forces is a part of you. It’s a connection you can use to improve your partnership with Elethior. Your project—it’s that safety net spell, isn’t it?”
He knows about my project generally, the way I’d go on about it when I was younger. After I started at Camp Merethyl, but before I realized I couldn’t trust him anymore.
Gods, that ache is one of the many that never heals, and I rub at my chest as if that’ll stifle it.
There was a time when I thought he’d help me develop this safety net spell. When I thought he’d help me with everything. He loved spell work as much as I did and he was this powerful, decorated soldier—he’d help me fix this.
He’dhelp.
“Yes, but—”
“Good. Sebastian,use this. Tell Elethior where you got the idea. Connect it to Camp Merethyl.”
All the blood rushes from my head to my toes in a scalding tidal wave, leaving me swaying.
One of the training courses everyone undergoes there involves sharpening your focus in component control. That’s where he thinks the idea came from: a simple first-year training course.
Get out, get out, GET OUT.
“I’m not talking to him about that.” I speak through my teeth, hands in knotted fists, the fireball vial clenched so tight the lip bites into my palm. “I don’t need—”
“I wish I could say I’m surprised you haven’t brought it up, but this is precisely how I was afraid you’d been behaving. You’re limiting yourself,again.You’re sabotaging yourself,again.I can no longer stand aside and watch you—”
“No one’s asking you to watch. That job application must be ramping up, huh? You’re worried my new BFF might report to his family that Colonel Walsh’s son really is a screwup, and it’ll reflect badly onyou.”
Dad’s used to people kowtowing to him—his soldiers, my siblings, my mom. Even me, usually. But every once in a while, I surprise him. Every once in a while, I remind him that I did inherit something from him: his anger.
“Howdareyou speak to me that way,” he bellows. “You ignore my calls and ignore your mother’s attempts to reach out, and I come to you, offering to extend a—”
He’s gone.
I blink, but his astral projection has vanished.
