"And your father is still the man you're supposed to go home to."
"He's still my father." His voice doesn't change. "That's the part I've never figured out what to do with."
I cap the salve and step back. He pulls his shirt down and turns, and his face is open in a way that makes my chest tighten, the way people look when they've said something out loud they've only ever carried in silence.
"When Seraphina's people first started coming at you," he says, "and then the House politics started treating you like a problem that needed solving, it was exactly the same language. Contamination risk. Null endangering the bloodline. I heard my father's voice in all of it." He leans back against the ledge, looking at the debris-scattered floor instead of at me. "I couldn't ignore it twice."
"You could have," I say. "Most people would have."
"Most people didn't watch what happened when they ignored it the first time."
The rookery is quiet. Somewhere far above, through the open vault, I can hear wind moving across the top of the tower.
"She would have been good at this, I think," he says. "Surviving here. She was apparently stubborn. The record noted that too, under 'behavioral observations.' My father's people found it worth documenting that she didn't cooperate." He almost smiles. "You remind me of that, sometimes."
"Of your mother's stubbornness."
"Of someone who refuses to be made small." He looks up then, straight at me. "It's inconvenient, for the record. It would be considerably easier if you were manageable."
"Sorry to be an inconvenience."
"No you're not."
"No," I agree. "I'm not."
I cross the space between us. Not fast. He watches me come without moving, without the braced tension he usually carries when I'm close.
I reach up and touch his face. Just my palm against his jaw, nothing more than that.
He goes very still.
Then, slowly, he leans into it. His eyes drop closed for just a second, and the exhale that leaves him is quiet and controlled and costs him something I don't have a name for.
The warmth of the rookery walls is all around us. His fire signature hums at the edge of my awareness, not threatening, just present, like standing next to something alive and large that has decided, for the moment, not to move.
Then he turns his face away. Not sharply. Just away.
"Don't," he says.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing exactly what you think you're doing." His voice is quiet. "And I need you to stop."
I lower my hand. "Thane—"
"Don't give me hope." He says it to the floor, not to me. "I can't afford it. You have Ryder's bond pulling at you and Caspian's attention on you and a prophecy that the entire council is watching, and I have a father who would send people here to do what that drainage channel just failed to do if he thought I was forming any kind of attachment to a null." He finally looks at me again. "I can protect you from other people's choices. I can't protect you from mine if I let this go somewhere."
"You're protecting me by keeping me at a distance."
"I'm protecting both of us." He stands, putting space between us, and when he picks his jacket up from the ledge, his hands are steady. "You should go before someone finds you here and draws conclusions that make your situation worse."
"My situation," I say, "is already about as complicated as it gets."
"It can always get more complicated. Take it from someone with experience."
I watch him for a moment. His back is half turned, jacket in hand, and he's looking up at the broken drainage channel with a professional focus that doesn't quite cover what's underneath it.
"She would have liked you," I say. "Your mother. I think she would have found you extremely frustrating and liked you anyway."
