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I didn’t particularly want to get into my recent sexcapade with Diego’s mom, of all people, and not in front of my dad.
“Well,” Dad said, holding up his glass. “All I can say about this is, it’s about damned time.”
Laughter bubbled up and I couldn’t hold it back. I shook my head. He knew how to cut the tension, that much I could count on.
Urd’s attention unfocused, and then she came back. “I have to attend to something urgent. I’ll return as soon as I can so we can begin your lessons.”
Diego agreed, and the woman disappeared. He slumped and scrubbed his face. I brushed a tousled lock of hair from his face. He lifted his head and smiled, snagging my fingers and pressing them to his lips. “Thank you.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but my dad interrupted when he stood and waltzed over. “You two can hold off on the mushy stuff ‘til later. I’m sitting next to my daughter while we talk.”
Diego jumped away, and I let out a silly squeak when my dad plopped down without waiting for us. He still had his liquor and its bottle, which had a rather sweet smell to it. The swirling nature, though, was what really got my attention.
I plucked the glass from his hand and swirled the contents before taking a sip. The sweet nectar tingled against my tongue, and went down smoother than anything I’d ever had. It also packed a surprising punch after. “Is this the fabled Olympian wine?”
“Good guess, Ace,” Dad praised.
“You’ve got your hands on some Olympian wine? How’d you manage that?” Tyr said. He’d been rather quiet through this whole ordeal, but I expected that of him. I also expected he was using his other powers as a god of justice and order to feel out everything thrown at us.
“Someone owed me a favor,” Dad said. “It’s the last of the batch that’s lasted me a long while.”
So when he meant the good stuff, he really meant it.
Dad set the bottle down on the coffee table. “I’ve missed a lot on my trip, haven’t I?”
My brow lifted. “I think I can say that about my entire life right now.”
He chuckled and took his glass back. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”
I shook my head. One thing I wasn’t was mad. “I have a feeling that what you’ll explain to me mirrors a lot of Urd’s reasoning to Diego.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ve been around a few centuries. I know Urd because I used to work for her. As a result, I’ve gained a number of enemies. I never thought about that as a consequence for the future.”
He removed his glasses and looked at them. “I was used to changing my identity and moving on to the next job.”
Knowing what I did now about the immortals and how healthy and in peak performance we became, outside of rare instances, I knew now the glasses were some sort of Clark Kent-esque disguise he took.
“What were those jobs?” I asked.
“Protecting people from Skuld’s antics.” He shook his head. “Urd was suspicious of her sister’s activities. She’d run many organizations over the centuries, and their activities always seemed too perfectly aligned with prophecies the dragons had. So Urd recruited me to infiltrate Skuld’s operation and report back to her. If I ever screwed up, I’d change my identity and get back in.”
He took a sip of his drink. “Then I met your mother, when I infiltrated Skuld’s—now going by the identity Lance—more recent organization that made a mockery of Urd, The Followers of Urd, and everything in my life changed.”
I watched him closely. There was a torrent of emotions raging in his eyes, but I also felt something calling deeper—from his soul. Kirby hadn’t had much time to talk to me about Valkyrie-specific abilities, but she said I’d know them by instinct, even if I didn’t understand them yet. And conversations about my mother always hurt him.
“I’d gone centuries avoiding romantic attachments,” he said. “My work was just too dangerous for that. I already took enough risks with making allies and friends. But Ingrid was not a force I was prepared for. And before I knew it, she was telling me she was pregnant with you.”
He shook his head. “The life we were living wasn’t good to raise a family, so I convinced her to get out of it with me. Urd already had a new life for us when I went to her.”
“And then Mother betrayed us years later.”
Dad ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what happened there, Ace. Ingrid was the perfect wife and mother. But maybe that’s where the red flag was. She was a little too perfect at it all. It could have been because of the training, or maybe I was a love-sick fool and didn’t see that she’d never really left FU. But if that was the case, I don’t know what you had to do with it for her to turn on us like that.”
Tyr, Aya, and I passed each other a knowing look. “We might, but we’ll get to that in a minute. I need to understand more why you kept the truth from me. I can understand wanting me to not know your past, but being an immortal… I just…”
Dad took my hand in his. “I planned to, Ace. I wanted you to grow up understanding this world to its fullest, but your mother asked me not to. She said she was afraid if you knew too much, you might become a target. So I struck a deal with her. I’d keep quiet, but when you came of age, or if your magic manifested before then, I wouldn’t keep things from you anymore.”
My back straightened. “What do you mean, my magic?”
