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“A great deal. ”
“So now you’re questioning him, but he has a means of controlling you . . . and that’s me?”
Loran shook his head. “You misunderstood. I’m not questioning him. I’ve always known who he is. What I’m questioning, thanks to a girl with a tooth-rattling kick, is who I am. ”
She hugged her knees, unsure what to say. She’d hoped that finding her father would lead to her knowing herself better. She’d never considered it might also happen the other way around. “So . . . who are you?”
His gaze fell to his boots. “I don’t know where to start, Aria. This is new to me. I want to tell you so much, but I don’t want to burden you with more than you want to know. ”
“I want to know everything. ”
He lifted his eyes, and Aria saw a change in them. She thought it was surprise at first. Then she realized it was tenderness.
“My family,” he began, “and yours, has been in the service of the Horn Blood Lords for generations. We are soldiers and advisers who hold the highest military positions. It’s the life I was born to, the one I knew I’d lead eventually, but twenty years ago, when I was close to your age, I wanted nothing to do with it. When I asked my father for a few years to be on my own, he granted me one. It was more than I had expected. ”
Loran had music in his voice. It was beautiful.
“I’d only been traveling a month when a Hover chased me down on the edge of the Shield Valley. I found myself inside a Dweller Pod, a place I’d only ever heard about in rumors. ”
Loran glanced behind him, out to the beach. “There is no forgiveness in the north. We do things a certain way, as you know by now. So when I was taken captive, I expected something along the lines of what happened to Peregrine. Your mother was the first person I saw when I came to. She did not look frightening. ” He smiled to himself then, lost in an image of Lumina that Aria wished she could share. “She promised I wouldn’t be mistreated. She told me I would go home one day. I heard sincerity in her voice. I heard kindness. I believed her. ”
As he spoke, Aria felt like she was wearing a Smarteye. Part of her listening to Loran. Part of her in a Realm in which Lumina was a young researcher, fascinated by an Outsider.
“From that moment on, I didn’t worry. I had left Rim to see what was different from what I knew. ” He lifted his shoulders. “I couldn’t have landed in a better place.
“Her studies dealt with adaptations to stress. Dwellers, she explained, had less resilience to it than we do. Sometimes she’d put me into simulations in the Realms, but most of the time she asked me questions about the Outside. Eventually, she was answering my questions. ” He ran a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know the exact moment that I fell in love with her, but I will never forget the moment she told me she was with child.
“As much as I cared for her, Aria, and I did, very deeply, I realized I would never be accepted into her world. Her people would never be mine. She couldn’t come to the outside with me, either. I knew that, but I still asked her a thousand times. But she wanted our child to grow up in safety. In the end, we both agreed the Pod would be the best place for you. ”
Aria bit her lip until it stung. Our child. For a few seconds, the words flapped around her mind like bats. “So you left?”
Loran nodded. “I had to. When I returned to Rim, I’d been gone exactly a year. Leaving her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. ”
A sense of unreality seeped through her as she stared at him. Her eyes filled, and her lungs felt like they were going to explode.
“What is it, Aria?”
“I lost my mother, and I lost Perry. If I started to care . . . ”
Her tears came like a torrent. They came so violently, with such an eruption, that she could only yield to them, letting the pain shake her, unravel her piece by piece.
After a long while, her grief shaped into something different.
Surprise.
Loran’s arms wrapped around her, holding her. When she looked up, she saw concern on his face—intense concern— and a flicker of something else.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he said, answering her unspoken question, “but this is my first act as your father. At least it feels that way to me. And it’s . . . very fulfilling. ”
She brushed her fingers over her eyes. “I want to try. I want to give us a chance too. ”
They weren’t the prettiest words she’d ever spoken, but they were a start. And judging by Loran’s smile, they were enough.
They turned toward the open hatch at the same time, following the sound that carried from outside. Drums pounding in the distance.
“We’d better go,” Loran said.
Sable’s party had begun.
