CHAPTER 27

My father was already awake by the time I entered the infirmary. I could hear him before the door was opened, suffering from heavy, debilitating coughs. Each of his breaths sounded like stone grating against stone. He wretched and hacked, trying to catch a breath between the fits. Each time it made my body wince.

Tugwort . The note from Tarron had revealed the poison that'd been laced on the dagger. Thank Altar, the Creator – anyone – that Althea had plenty of the antidote spare.

My father was going to live, but that didn't take away from the knowledge that anyone close to me was under threat.

Tarron's note was rushed and apologetic, explaining he required rest before completing the necessary healing of my father's wounds. It also explained how it could take days to rid his body of the poison, since the antidote wasn't as ‘fresh' as it had been when Althea picked it. This part of his message was tactical, in case anyone else read it. The mention of Tarron needing rest, how it would take time to heal my father, only benefited the need for them both to leave for the Oakstorm Court.

The perfect cover-up.

I panicked, as Althea let me enter the room alone, that a healer would stumble across the mark on my father's ribs, revealing him for what he was. A Hunter, but worrying about that outcome would do nothing to prevent it.

Getting him out of Aurelia would.

Tarron would rest and – as promised – take Father from here to keep him safe, even if his past didn't suggest he deserved it.

"You're back… back for me," Father rasped, our eyes locking across the room.

"I'll leave you to it," Althea said, offering me a sympathetic smile. "Shout if you need me."

With that, she left me, my father and his secrets alone.

He looked like shit warmed up. At least my presence seemed to calm his coughing into small, manageable rasps. He lifted a hand, his arm shaking as though it weighed a tonne, and beckoned me to his bedside.

My feet were slow, like wading through mud, their own refusal to heed his silent command. But still, I joined him, wanting nothing more than to lay my head on his chest and hold onto him. Father winced, and not from the pain his body was in, but more from the expression that creased my face, one he was all too familiar with.

Disappointment.

"Did you expect me to leave you alone?" I asked, taking my seat, chair squeaking violently against the tiled floor.

"I did, actually. I've… been told of your plans to ship me off to the summer court."

Father opened his mouth to speak, but I quickly pressed a finger to my lips and gestured towards the now closed door. Althea had stayed outside the infirmary, but I was confident the walls would do little to muffle our conversation. Only when I was right by his side did I dare a whisper.

"We must be careful," I warned. "If they hear us, it will not end well for you or for me."

"Son," he said, face pinched with dread. Did he know what I knew? His red-rimmed eyes searched my face for a reason for my distance. "Tell me what is bothering you. I can see it in your eyes."

I placed my hands by my side, pinching nails into my palms to stop them from shaking. "You."

Father tried to push himself up to sitting, but another wave of coughing overtook him. I waited for it to pass, not offering a hand to hold for comfort. I wanted to, desperately, but felt wrong to award him such things after uncovering yet another secret he'd kept from me.

This one I understood the need to keep secret. If he was a fey-hunter, and I was part-fey, it only created more questions.

Finally, after he caught his breath enough, he continued. "I remember the blade piercing my skin. When I woke in this bed, I searched my chest for the mark but found nothing. Not a scratch or scar. There… there were no scars. Everything, all marks of the past, had healed. Even scars I'd created to hide the past."

"I saw it," I muttered, eyes stinging. I refused to spill a tear until I understood what emotion brought them forth, anger or sadness. "The inking on your ribs."

Father's eyes widened and paled lips pulled taut. "I thought as much."

"Tell me it was forced on you," I pleaded. "Some nasty brand from terrible people. Please," I choked on the sudden urge to cry. "Tell me I'm wrong."

He lowered his tired eyes, and my heart sunk.

"I prayed you'd never see it. But when I woke here – alive – I tricked myself into believing that no one saw it. Because if they did, if they discovered the mark of my sordid past inked on my skin, they'd have me killed."

I shook my head, feeling the copper tang swell in my mouth as I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from shouting. "What is that even supposed to mean!? You are a… you were… I don't fucking understand. Help me understand!"

There was no one in the room to listen to us. But that didn't stop me from trying to control myself.

Father reached a hand to grab mine, but I pulled away. I could hardly hold his gaze for fear of breaking down, let alone allow the comfort of his touch.

"We all have a past we hide from. Give it time, and you will too. It's a lesson my own parents neglected to teach me."

"So you're blaming them for becoming someone who hunts innocent people?"

Father winced but didn't tell me I was wrong.

"I thought I'd mutilated the inking enough to hide it beneath a bed of scars. It disgusted me, knowing it would curse my skin for an eternity. But that issue was resolved when my fellow comrades discovered what I did. They… they carved the ink out of me themselves as punishment. I wasn't supposed to live through it. I knew, in time, my wrong-doings would come back and deliver me my just punishment. And now it's back, and all the other scars I'd gotten during the years are gone. But now you know."

I didn't want to blink for fear my mind would paint a picture of my father, held down by Hunters, as they took a knife and mutilated his skin. I once craved the stories of his past, now I wanted to run from them.

"Would you have ever told me?" I looked at him finally, truly searching for his soul in his tired gaze. It sickened me to think Father had used a blade to scar his own skin, an echo of the pain that must have caused gripped at my stomach. "Or did you become complicit by adding that secret onto your ever-growing list of them?"

"Truly, I wish that was one secret I'd take to my grave," he admitted softly. My heart cracked, not into two, but into a scattering of a million pieces. "But that luxury of lies is no more. Sit with me, and I'll tell you everything."

"Everything?" I scoffed, almost laughing aloud in a sharp bark. "This is a reoccurring theme of our conversations, Father. I find something out, you have nowhere to hide and promise me answers. What will it be next? What else hides in the dark trunk of lies that you have so perfectly kept locked?"

"Sit, son." His voice darkened like it would when I was younger and he reprimanded me for misbehaving. In that moment, I was like a child again, beckoned to his call. "I understand you are angry… but let me try and make sense of this for you. You don't owe me the chance to speak, but I owe you the opportunity to listen."

Father was struggling to speak, his sentences broken by breathless, raspy growls that came from his chest. He did well to keep the coughing at bay. He clearly felt some urgency to tell me his truth, even if I would have a hard time believing what he had to say.

"Fine," I said, anxiety fluttering like a flock of birds in my chest. "Talk."

Father shifted his legs in the bed, making room for me to perch at the end. I took it without hesitation this time.

"I was a troubled child," he began, eyes drifting as though he focused on everything and nothing all at once. "It's not an excuse, far from it, but it led to me being tangled with the wrong people, in the wrong groups at the right time. Grove has always struggled for coin and comfort, even more so when I was a young man. It resulted in resentment igniting in the hearts of many. And I admit that kindling was a raging inferno within me far before I was offered a way to exploit it. To join the Hunters, under the employment of the Hand, was an honour. A way of fixing the scales of balance that greatly tipped in favour of the fey beyond the Wychwood border. We were sold stories of the lack of struggle and undeserved power when we were living only a breath away. Whilst we fought to even put food on the table. At the time, it was an easy choice to join the legion of… Hunters ." He fumbled over the word as though it truly disgusted him. "In hindsight, a lot of us joined in blindness, encouraged by the promise of payment in return for the capture and deliverance of fey to the capital. It was easy work for us in Grove, being so close to the border, we were the first to intercept those who wandered far from the safety of their lands. We got paid handsomely for it, which encouraged those in our group to work harder, and longer. When you give someone something they've never had, it makes it harder to imagine life without it again. Coin did that. It warped the lines of right and wrong."

I listened without interrupting, trying to understand his reasoning but being unable to connect to his struggle. We hadn't exactly had a lot of money like those in Lockinge or the surrounding towns and villages. But it wouldn't have led me to hunt the innocent. I'd been up close and personal with a Hunter, with a bloodied axe ready to meet the soft skin of my neck. Was the executioner motivated by coin to kill? Or had time warped the motivations of the Hunters now into something else? Something darker.

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" I said, voice numb and cold. "Because I admit I'm finding that emotion rather hard to grasp at the moment."

"I'm not going to tell you how to feel about me. That is your decision. But perhaps you will change your mind when I finish my story."

I waved a hand, both of us noticing how it shook. "I'm all ears."

"It all changed when I met your mother. Julianne Icethorn. The most incredible woman I've ever had the pleasure of meeting in this life. No one would compare to her, not before and certainly not after." The words conjured the icy coil and brought it to life within me. I was not prepared for this part of the story, nor did I believe it would lead here. "She was a captive from a neighbouring party of Hunters who'd come from another town and made claim to our lands and the bounty on it. We turned on one another. My party overtook theirs and claimed their bounty, because we believed it was rightfully ours. Julianne was with them. Our story is far longer, but between travelling from the border of Wychwood to Lockinge, I'd a change of heart, and it was your mother who contributed to that. We escaped together, fled and lived off the land until you were born. She couldn't return home, not whilst she carried you, and I couldn't return to Grove as a deserter either."

"But you did," I interrupted, a sheen of wetness covering my eyes; one blink, and it would release the tears down my cheeks. "You not only returned, but with me, proof of your affair with her."

"My relationship with your mother was far more than an affair. It was love. True, honest and frightening. When she left us, I'd no choice but to return to Grove. I changed everything I could about myself, my name, even my appearance with the help of your mother's friend. He created a glamour, shifting my features, that would last for as long as I did." His hands lifted to his face, thick, calloused fingers pulling at his cheeks as though it was a mask ready to come off. "Keeping my past a secret was easy, but hiding the truth of what you were was more difficult. Your kind were rare but not completely unheard of. It took a few years for those in Grove to grow used to you. A mundane, powerless boy. Most importantly, harmless. The more time passed, the less of a threat you were. Over the years, the talk of Hunters reduced, disbanding to whispers, and I grew comfortable knowing they'd left you alone. It'll be the gravest mistake I ever made.

"Because they did find me," I added, "And here we are."

"Yes." Father reached for my hand. I let him take it. "Here we are indeed."

I felt as though his story was short and rushed, but Father had explained the main plot with clear ease, as though he was reading from one of my favourite books as a child. He was the narrator of his own story now – the good, the bad and the downright rotten.

"I don't know who I'm looking at." My voice shook as I took in my father's face. What had it been before the glamour ? Had his hair been a different shade? His nose longer or lips thicker?

"It's the same man, the same face, you've always seen. It may not be real to me, but for you, it is. You have known no different than this face. Don't allow the thought of what was cloud what has been."

I searched father's face for the edges of his perfect mask. But he was right. It was the same I'd always seen, a face I'd know even if the world went dark for an eternity.

"Thank you," I forced out, swallowing the lump that had embedded itself in my throat. "For telling me your truth."

"It was about time." He closed his eyes as though the weight of our conversation was heavy on him. "Do they know?"

"Only one," I admitted. "A friend."

When Father conjured the strength to open his eyes, I could see fear in them. "Well, I'm still alive, struggling with pain and a chest that feels as though it is drowning, but alive."

"He's promised to keep you safe." And so far he had stuck to that promise. That had to mean something.

"And you trust this… person?"

"I don't have any other choice." I dropped his gaze. "His name is Tarron. He's the one who saved your life."

Father's eyes narrowed on me, flickering across my face as though trying to read the nuances of my expression. "Oh, my son. You can always tell deep down if someone is unworthy of your trust."

"Then yes," I said, hard and fast. "I believe I do trust him. It's not safe for you here. Tarron has assured me he'll keep you far from the action, until everything has calmed to some normalcy. I can't have you in harm's way again, nor can I risk anyone else finding out about you. I don't imagine every person in this court will take kindly to your personal redemption story."

"Understood. Tell me though, when will I see you again?" It was all he could manage to say. Father looked exhausted, to the point that he fought to keep his eyes open. I held onto him, hoping he could stay awake just a moment longer. The last part of Tarron's note was that Father would be leaving by nightfall. This was the last I would see of him. But to answer his question, I didn't know when we would be together again.

"Sleep, Dad," I replied, squeezing his hand. I could not answer him without lying. And if time was unkind, I did not want a lie to haunt our last words together. "I will do what is right and return for you when I can."

Father smiled faintly, fingers relaxing their hold on my hand. He didn't notice my lack of answer, which I was relieved about. When he replied, it was slurred words broken by a yawn. "I am proud of you… and she would've been too."