I stop. Mind blank. Unable to understand what I’m seeing. Unable to trust myself enough to believe.
“Hail, Diago,” says my father.
LIX
MY FATHER.
Black hair and sun-dark skin. Tall and powerful and graceful, commanding and kind, a deep love in his eyes. The very image of a king. And so, so much more to me.
It is him. It ishim.
I am too stunned to do anything but watch as he strides the few steps toward me, careless of the fact I still hold a weapon. Wraps me in an embrace that is as comforting as it is fierce. The feel familiar. His scent, familiar. I just stand there for an extra second. Held.
Then I am dropping my spear and curling my arm around him and burying my head in his shoulder, shedding great tears of disbelieving, unbridled joy.
“How?” I get it out between sobs and laughter. The physicality of him is impossible. All else is forgotten, in that moment. “How?Everyone said you were dead. Fadrique said he saw youdie!” My voice cracks. Something released in me that I didn’t even know had built up, all these years. “I should have looked anyway. All this time. Gods. I’m so sorry, Father.” The name makes it real. I can barely choke it out.
He laughs. A joyous sound, thick with emotion. He strokes my hair. “I think perhaps in this, Diago, I can forgive you,” he whispers. He tightens his embrace. “I have missed you, Son.”
We stand like that, surrounded by night, the crackling fire carving us a small, warm hollow.
And for the first time in almost five years, I feel safe, and loved, and that maybe—just maybe—everything is going to be alright.
FINALLY THE OVERJOYED SHOCK RECEDES ENOUGH FORme to reluctantly release my grip, wipe my nose and step back. Still barely daring to believe it. My smile feels as though it will never leave my face. My father’s expression is the same as he drinks in the sight of me. He motions me onto aseat atop a boulder, then sits opposite. Assesses me. “Trying to decide which questions come first?”
I bark a laugh. Still dazed. “Yes.” A deep breath. Two. My elation filled now with a need for answers. “Fadrique said you were hanged.”
His gaze never leaves mine, but something sad bleeds into it.
“I was. There is a power that the Catenan Military have discovered. An aspect of Will that few in our world are able to use. It can raise the dead.” He says it so simply, so unadorned, that I’m sure I’ve misunderstood.
“You were actually dead?”
“Iamdead, Diago. My heart no longer beats. When I breathe it is through habit, not necessity.” He says it carefully, pushing back his sleeve and showing me a medallion wrapped tight around it, the image of a scarab engraved on the thin stone disc. “This is a Vitaerium—a powerful one. It’s what’s letting me be here like this, but it still only lends life, not restores it. Without it, I am a corpse.”
Silence as I struggle with it. Anyone else, I would be outraged at the audacity of the claim. “Oh.”
He sees my doubt. Comes over and crouches in front of me. Grabs my hand and presses it to his chest.
He is warm but there is no movement, no faint thud beneath my palm no matter how long I wait.
After several seconds I take my hand away again. Watch him as he resumes his seat. There’s a moment in which I’m suddenly uncertain, don’t know how to feel, but then he smiles again. The way his eyes crinkle is my lost childhood and there islifein them, no matter what afflicts him.
“They first woke me not long after the invasion. A month, maybe. I don’t know the exact timing. And no,” he adds gently. “They wanted to question me, but I don’t think they did the same for … to your mother or Ysa.” His voice wavers, just slightly. A scar as deep and unhealed as my own.
I nod. Heartbroken and unsurprised and understanding that he had to dash the hope before it could form. And I realise there are things he may not yet have heard. “Cari … Cari and I tried to get out, but she …”
I can’t finish. Tears welling again, and then a sob as I lean forward and it all rushes back. My little sister drifting from that hellish underwater tunnel, tied to me, hair ghostly in the silver light. I promised her we could make it. She was so small in death.
“I know.” He’s at my side. On his knees. His arms around me, his forehead against mine as we weep together. “I know.”
We stay like that for a long time.
Finally I draw a shaking breath. “So they questioned you.” I have had years to grieve, and all that time I have wondered why I needed to. Why the Hierarchy did what they did. “About what?” My father is—was—a king, but our little island nation should barely have been of interest to the Republic. At the naumachia, Estevan implied that their attack was about the weapon he was going to use, but that vague hint is the most I learned in years of searching.
“The Cataclysm. The Gate. The three worlds. All of it.” He sees my frown. “How much do you know?”
“Not much, clearly.”
