Chương 126: Chapter 123: A Father's Duty.

I was past the guard before he had finished his explanation. One moment he was explaining just when my father had woken up, and the next the doors of the manor were swinging shut behind me. Somewhere behind me were footsteps and voices. I ignored both. Maids clustered along the corridors in twos and threes. A tray sat abandoned on a side table. One of the younger girls had a hand pressed to her mouth, and her eyes were wet. If the guard's word alone had not been proof enough, then this was.

I took the stairs three at a time. I pushed the door open. Anias was the only one inside. She was speaking and her words cut off the second the door gave way. She was standing beside the bed. Propped against the headboard was my father, and he was awake. He was still thin. Emaciated, even. The pillows seemed too large around him, and the hand resting on the white sheets was all sharp bone beneath pale skin. I stopped in the doorway. He was not really my father. I was not really his daughter.

I had repaid a debt, and that was all. Something inside my chest loosened anyway. A single tear ran down the right side of his face. He did not seem to notice it.

"My dear girl," he said. His voice was hoarse. It was the voice of a man who had not used it in some time. A glass of water drifted toward him on a thread of purple light. He ignored it. Behind me, Violet's voice rose from the corridor.

"Hey, what the hell's the big idea-""Let them talk!" Damian hissed. There was a muffled thump. Someone swore.

"Yes," Estovan said a second later.

"That would be wise. Please, let's let them talk." So that was why none of them had barged in behind me. I would have to thank Estovan for it later. Anias met my eyes, and withdrew to the wall without a word. I did not know why I was nervous. I had slain a dragon. I had stood in the center of a square and shown an entire District a burning sword. I had faced down a Goddess and a man who had tried to kill me in my sleep, and I had not flinched at any of it. Meeting one man in one bed should have been nothing at all.

My hands still fidgeted. I was sweating more than I had any reason to.

"Come here," my father said.

"You've grown, Esra. Let me look at you." I stepped forward. He looked at me for a long time, and I watched him age a year in the space of a few seconds. He was weighing the child he remembered, against the girl who stood in front of him now, and he did not like what he saw.

"You look tired," he said.

"Like you've been carrying something you didn't ask for. For a very long time."

"Something like that." I could not quite meet his eyes. He gave a rueful huff that turned into a cough and back into a huff. Then he pushed himself upright. I heard the effort of it in his breath, saw it in the tremor that ran the length of his arm as he raised a shaking hand toward me. I did not understand at first. Then I did. I stepped in, and he brushed my hair back from my face. The gesture was clumsy, as if he was relearning the weight of his own arm. Perhaps he was.

A strand of white caught between two of his fingers before he let it fall.

"You look tired," he said again.

"But stronger than I remember. Maybe that's the price of being stronger. I'm sorry you had to pay it." His hand fell.

"Anias has only just begun telling me what I missed, and already half of it is hard to believe. She's never lied before. I'm sorry, my dear girl. That you had to do any of it." Something in me ached. My eyes stung, and I did not understand why. He was not my father. I had known him a handful of weeks. Liar. Vaelin's voice was soft in the back of my mind. Gentle, almost kind. It's just one lie, Vaelin. I told him. The answer came slowly, and it was longer than the blade usually cared to be. Saved you. Sacrificed.

Not true father, perhaps. Duty done. I had nothing to say to that. For Vaelin, that was practically a speech. I knew what he meant easily enough, even if I did not want to.

"I'm glad you're awake, Father." My voice came out more halting than I would have liked.

"A lot of things changed. And I had to do a lot of things. And it's- well, it's been hard."

"I'm sorry, Esra." His hand found mine where it rested on the blanket.

"I stood between you and that Hero. And then I left you alone anyway."

"You protected me that day," I said.

"You fought a Hero, and you lived. I'm proud of you." I had said the words before I'd known I was saying them, and now it was too late to take them back. Duke Adrian looked at me, and then he pulled me in. The hug was fierce, but it was not what it had once been. The first time I ever left my room, this man had held me so hard I could not breathe. Now I was the one who held him carefully, half afraid that the strength in my arms might be too much for what was left of him.

The door opened and closed softly behind me. Anias was gone, and we were alone. Eventually we drew apart. Neither of us seemed to know how to do it without making the moment strange, so the moment became strange anyway.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"Like I've been on a forced march for three months and only now sat down to breathe." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"We'll bring a healer. We were already going to bring one when you woke, no matter how well you seemed."

"Good." He settled deeper into the pillows.

"I have no intention of arguing with good sense." The silence lasted for about three seconds.

"Anias tells me you're the one who woke me. From what that Hero's blade did to me." My shoulders went still.

"I cut away what he left behind. Yes."

"That is possible for exactly three kinds of people." He lifted one skeletal finger.

"Someone with an absurdly strong Gift." A second finger.

"A Hero." A third finger joined them after some effort.

"Or a God. Anias told me which you were. I've never known her to lie. And still-""-it's hard to believe?" I offered.

"Just so." He smiled.

"Show me." I extended my arm to the side and pulled. Crimson flooded the room, drowned the lamplight, turned the white sheets and the pale walls and my father's gaunt face all the color of blood. I watched him. And he only looked sad.

"That is Illiana's blade," he said. And he said her name with tenderness.

"It is." The First Sword had said something like this too. And now my father had done the same thing. All I knew of the woman was her heroic deeds, her long legacy of service, that had all ended one day when she had walked into a throne room and nearly ended a King. My father gathered himself. His gaze lifted from Vaelin to me.

"And you used it to slay a dragon. Not just any dragon either, Vyranthos. You went into the Wastes and killed a beast out of legend."

"With help," I said.

"With a great deal of help. And with men who paid for it with their lives."

"That was dangerous."

"It was." I braced for it. This was the moment I had feared when I chose to wake him up at all. The moment he took the reins back into his own hands and told me I was a child who had reached too far. Instead he said, "Did you have a good reason?" I blinked.

"What?" Whatever I had readied myself for, it had not been that.

"For going, Esra. Did you have a good reason?"

"Iron Hollow needed help." I let Vaelin fade and the room returned to its ordinary colors.

"The dragon was driving away the animals they hunted. Iron Hollow was starving, and House Veyne had left them to manage alone for years. They were our responsibility."

"I see." He looked down at his hands.

"That is a good reason. A noble one." The answer disarmed me more effectively than anger would have.

"Anias said you conducted yourself well in my absence, and-" He stopped. Shook his head.

"What am I saying? I'm speaking to my own daughter like she's giving me a report." His eyes found mine.

"I mean that I'm proud of you, Esra." I went very still. I tried to remember whether anyone had ever said those exact words to me. Not the mother who had hidden my real scores and shown me false ones. She certainly never had. Had anyone else? I tried to think, and I found no memory at all. The words sounded better than I had ever let myself imagine they would. Then my father doubled over, coughing.

I reached for the glass and brought it to him and he waved it off, and when he drew his hand back from his mouth there was blood in the palm. It was purple. My stomach dropped. It was the same purple that had pulsed around him in the form of a cage. Had I missed something? Had I done what I'd done poorly? Was this my fault?

"It's fine." He was already steadying.

"Just my body throwing off the last of what that Hero left in me." I did not know whether that was true, or whether he was simply doing what fathers did in front of their daughters. I chose to believe him. And I decided that there would be a healer through that door the moment I stepped out of it.

"You should rest," I said.

"I have had enough resting for one lifetime." He wiped his palm on a cloth before I could stop him.

"Talk to me, my dear. Anias told me the story in pieces, and I would like the rest." So I told him. Or I told him the version of everything I could bear to say. The hours went by, and the light through the window slowly dimmed, until it faded entirely. The first Council meeting. Duke Indri, dead in his own manor. I told him the truth, or at least as far as I could tell him without mentioning Violet, and it took my father a good while to accept it. They had been friends. Close friends.

Still, he had closed his eyes and told me to go on, and so I did. The artifacts we had recovered and still hadn't decided what to do with. My attempts at courting the three Counts. The expedition. The dragon. Our return. My meetings with Cordelia. The parade. My intention to win the King's Tournament, and the reason why. His questions were sharper than a sick man's should have been. He asked how many soldiers we had lost in the Wastes. How much grain Solair had promised and for how long.

Whether Calloway's welfare programs were recurring costs or temporary ones. Whether Sterling had accepted the expansion of his budget without complaint. Whether I had already sold the Artifacts I had picked out. He was reserved for much of it. He was not reserved at all when I mentioned the assassin.

"And the man talked? With a Magical Contract on his tongue?"

"… Vaelin can cut contracts," I said. It was true. It was not all of the truth. My father looked at me. Really looked. I felt as though I was standing in front of the Goddess again, in front of eyes that saw more than they should. He did not ask, and I was grateful for it. He knew there was more. He chose not to make me say it. I did not have a word for what I felt then. Some strange mix of gratitude and shame, maybe? In my retelling, I recalled plenty of questions I wanted to ask him.

My mother was the most obvious one, but there were certainly others. Today wasn't the time for any of them. Not when he was so obviously tired. When I had finished, he was quiet for a long while.

"I didn't think so much could happen so fast," he said at last.

"It felt like years," I said.

"It was barely a couple of months." We sat in the silence for a little while. It was not an uncomfortable one. At least, not as uncomfortable as it had been at the start.

"I'm meeting Duke Thalos tomorrow," I said.

"Greenward used a writ bearing his seal to block every Veyne access point in the district. He's made Count Sterling's job ten times harder."

"Thalos isn't an evil man," my father said.

"He's only a tired one. He has a lot more on his plate than the other four- than the others. Remember that, and you'll manage him well enough."

"You're..." I chose my next words carefully.

"You're not going to tell me not to go?" He stared at me, genuinely puzzled.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you're awake now. And I'm only the acting head." He gestured at himself. At the bones of his own arm, the hand that would not quite stop shaking.

"Things are miles past the point where doing nothing is a choice. And I'm in no shape to do more good than harm." He let the arm fall.

"Anias speaks well of you. When I talk to Estovan, I expect he will too." He was quiet a moment. When he spoke again it was slower.

"I always worried about you," he said.

"You were always so quiet. So far away inside yourself. Everyone told me I should be stricter with you. To force you out of that room, take away the books, make you attend dinners and lessons until you remembered how to be a proper daughter." His gaze dropped to the cloth stained purple in his lap.

"Every time I tried, it only made things worse. You'd retreat farther. Eat less. Speak less. So I stopped trying." He shook his head.

"Perhaps that was just me failing twice over." There were too many answers I could have given, and none of them belonged in this room. Perhaps none of them were mine to give. My father reached over and patted my hair. His hand still shook, but less than it had before.

"I'll help where I can, as soon as some of the strength comes back," he said.

"Until I'm on my feet, act as if you were Duchess Veyne. I'll speak to the Counts myself, though you've already earned their respect well enough on your own."

"You… really mean that?" He nodded. I found myself hugging him again, and this time it was I who reached first. He was not really my father, and I was not really Esra. And sitting there, with his arm settling around my shoulders, it did not feel strange at all. I didn't know what my father waking up meant, either for my own plans or for the plans everyone else had for me. Right now, I decided that it really didn't matter.