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“What?” I stepped closer to Sig and held both my hands up like he was a physical force I was trying to hold back. “Sutherland isn’t… He’s not… I don’t think that’s the best idea.”
“Secret, when your father worked for the West Coast council, they deemed him more than capable of doing tasks for them. When you reported back after the California debacle, didn’t you tell me he’d managed to recreate an entire Tiffany window on his own?”
“Yes.”
“Then surely he’s able to walk two blocks to a hotel and inform your friends you are alive and well and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”
Maybe I was being overprotective, but I had good reason to be. “Everything he did with the council was before his time with The Doctor.”
“Please call the man by his name. Giving titles and nicknames to things creates an unnecessary mythos around them. You’ve made this man a monster in your own mind, but he is just a man, and a dead one at that. Use his given name.”
I tried and fumbled the first time, then finally said, “Friedrich Kesteral.”
“There you go.”
“Sutherland was kept with Dr. Kesteral longer than Holden or I were. We still don’t know what was done to him because he won’t talk about it. But I felt his pain. He shared his dream with me, and I knew his fear and everything he experienced. He might have been functional before, but he’s practically a child now. I don’t think—”
“Even a child can deliver a message. And I assure you once I give him the order, there will be no difficulty.”
Sutherland was part of Sig’s bloodline the same as I was. If he told my father to cross the street clucking like a chicken the entire way, Sutherland would be compelled to do it.
Though, considering my father’s general state of mind, he was probably on the brink of clucking like a chicken most days anyway.
I nodded grimly, accepting Sig’s decision, and Holden left the chamber to go find the other three. Once I was alone with the Tribunal leader, he got to his feet and came to stand before me. I had to crane my neck to glance up at him.
“As much as I can,” he said, “I promise nothing bad will happen to you tonight.”
His kind expression was too much to bear, and I had to look away. “You can’t make that promise.”
He placed his fingers under my chin and lifted my face so I had to meet his gaze. His ice-blue eyes were narrowed seriously, and he’d brushed his pale blond hair off his face so there was nothing to distract me from all the razor-sharp lines of his cheek and jawbones. A Greek sculptor could not have imagined a man more finely constructed than Sig.
He was almost old enough he could have posed for them.
“Do not confuse my threats for apathy. You are one of the most precious, most dear
things in the world to me. I have protected you for the eight years I have known you, and you’ve never made things easy for me.”
“It’s not like I try to find trouble.”
“You do, though. A day without conflict for you would be impossible to imagine.”
“I’ve imagined it lots of times.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll learn to live that way, hmm?”
“Guessing today won’t be that day.”
He shook his head and put both hands on my shoulders, his thumbs tracing the sensitive skin at my throat. I wondered if he was feeling for a pulse.
“I think we both knew a day would come when the world learned what you truly were. You weren’t careful enough about hiding the truth. Each year someone new found out. It was only a matter of time.”
“The truth didn’t bother you,” I reminded him.
“I’ve always known your worth. From the first moment I laid eyes on you, I could sense what you would become. I didn’t need Calliope’s prophecies to know that.”
“Calliope’s what?” The Oracle had said a lot of things about fate to me, and making decisions that would impact the course of my life, but this was the first anyone had told me about a prophecy.
“It’s not important.”
