Page 133 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

“Perhaps it’s because you’ve grown smaller,” Ark said before he could stop himself. He approached and sat on the edge of the bed.

A faint curve tugged at the corner of Kassenor’s mouth. “Illness has a way of humbling even the proud.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like a demon who’s been dying for over fifty years.”

Ark nodded slowly. Now that they were at the edge of the abyss, the honesty was startling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kassenor studied him. “What would you have done differently?”

Ark opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t have an answer. Would he have been less angry? Less resentful? Or would he have simply traded one kind of distance for another?

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Kassenor’s gaze softened. “Neither do I.”

Ark looked at the man who had once loomed like a mountain in his boyhood—the hollowed cheeks, the too-thin hands, the unmistakable evidence of decades spent fighting a battle no one else could see.

“Why did you keep it from me and Oromon?” Ark pressed, his voice low. “You’d rather push us away and have us think you don’t . . . care. Why?”

Pain shone in his father’s eyes, and he didn’t say anything for a long time, his throat working. “I didn’t want you, and your brother, to carry this burden,” he said. “I thought if I kept it from you, I could protect you both from it. That, perhaps, when the end comes, we’d be so far apart you wouldn’t grieve for the loss, since I was never there to begin with.”

Ark let out a laugh—raw, full of disbelief. It had clawed its way out of him, unbidden, like the only response his body had left. “Even if I didn’t grieve your death,” he said, the words scraping out, “I would’ve mourned the loss of what could’ve been.”

He stared at his father, his eyes burning. “Instead, I widened the chasm between us. I spurned everything you wanted to give me—out of spite. Politics, especially politics. In my heart, I thought it was your greatest love.” He paused, his voice dropping. “So I built my own world, convinced myself I didn’t need your approval—that I was better off without it. But I was just building a different kind of distance, wasn’t I? A way to prove I could succeed without you, while still aching for you to notice.”

Ark leaned forward, his voice rough. “Do you know what it does to a boy? To practice a spell until his hands shake—all for a moment of his father’s attention? Only to be told the Daemar is busy?” He shook his head. “‘Busy’ was the weapon you gave me to bludgeon my own worth with for more than thirty years.”

His chest was heaving. He couldn’t stay here—couldn’t breathe. He felt like his heart was tearing at the seams. He started to rise, to pull away, to find somewhere the walls weren’t closing in.

A trembling hand caught his wrist. “Arkenoth.” His father’s voice was barely a whisper. “Don’t go.”

Ark froze. He looked down at the hand on his wrist—the pale, fragile fingers, the veins visible beneath the skin. This was the hand that had held the Regency Council in its grip. Now it could barely hold him.

Slowly, he sat back down. He didn’t pull his hand away. He let his father hold it, let the thin fingers curl around his.

“I chose ‘busy’ over ‘broken,’” Kassenor said. “I thought the former would make you strong, and the latter would only make you fearful.” He finally met Ark’s gaze. “And I was ashamed. Not of you. Never you, or your brother. I was ashamed to have you see the mighty Daemar brought low by his body’s limitations. If you had known I was crumbling⁠—”

“I wanted a father,” Ark cut in. “Not a monument.”

His father’s lips quirked into a smile again. “How ironic that I wanted to be that rock for you.”

“I would’ve taken you broken, sick, trembling, if it meant I got to have you.”

“Would you have preferred to watch it happen in real time? Would you have felt better knowing each missed dinner was because I couldn’t rise from bed, or hold a fork without trembling? That some days I didn’t even have enough energy to send a magic missive?”

“Yes,” Ark insisted, his voice turning vehement. “I would.”

Kassenor’s eyes closed, a spasm of pain crossing his features. “I wanted your anger to be a fuel. I never meant for it to be a prison.”

“My anger wasn’t fuel. It was a wall. I built it so high I couldn’t see you on the other side. And now . . .” His voice broke as he looked down at their joined hands. “Now there’s no time left to tear it down.”

Kassenor squeezed him. The strength in it was not to be overlooked. “Do not fret. I’ve been proclaimed as dying since I was three years old. My first physician declared I wouldn’t live to see my tenth birthday, then twenty, then thirty . . .” His eyes strayed to Delphyne’s figure, standing beside the fireplace on the other side of the room. “Ask your mother. One of the physicians swore I wouldn’t live long enough to witness the birth of my own sons. The truth is, Arkenoth, physicians hardly know anything. Mortals have proven, time and again, to be stubborn enough to outlive their fates. I will simply be another example.”

Ark laid his other hand over his father’s, hoping—praying—he was right.

Kassenor’s eyes drifted closed for a moment. “I know what my distance cost you,” he murmured. “I know what I chose. And though I regret the distance I carved between us, I don’t regret protecting you and your brother from watching me waste away day by day.”