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I spit out a curse as he drops Benedict’s limp body.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demand.
He turns to face me, eyes snapping with impatience. “Keep your damn voice down. Have I taught you nothing? I let my guard down, and I was kidnapped. You?”
“I volunteered.” I shake my head in bewilderment, but I follow his instructions and speak more quietly. He bends down to pick up his knife from the ground. He also picks up a large rock and a strip of cloth. He’s made a sling-shot from some of the cloth on his boxer shorts. The rock is bloodied; he must have used it to stun Benedict before moving in for the kill. Damn, he’s good.
He gestures at me and points at the tree line, and we melt back into the forest. My mind is racing. My father is here.My fucking father.The man who paid doctors to break my face apart, the man who’s been lying to me my entire life.
“What about my brothers?” I say in a low voice.
“No, they’re not here. They were both on the estate when I was taken. I was in town, and it had been so long since I faced any threat that I got sloppy. Let that be a lesson to you. Men like us must always be on alert.” He’s not looking at me as he speaks, his eyes sweeping his surroundings. I follow suit. We’re searching for crushed grass, footprints, snapped branches, anything that would show where the other challengers are.
“Men like us?” My voice is a low, furious snarl. “What kind of men are we exactly,Father?”
He pauses and briefly glances my way. “We’re monsters.”
I chuckle darkly. “Is that so?”
“I’m sorry, Bastien. I failed you when you were younger.” He glances toward me “There were a lot of things I should have told you, things that would have made life easier for you.” Then his watchful gaze returns to the forest around us.
“Yes, why didn’t you?” I whisper as we move through the underbrush.
“Because I didn’t want you to turn out like me, with my fucked-up compulsions. I hoped that my sickness came from my upbringing, which was brutal and evil. I was praying you could be cured. Living the way I do is dangerous. It puts me and everyone I love at risk. This is a burden, Bastien, and I hate that I passed it on to you.”
“You fucked up my life and drove me away. You let me think I was somehow deformed from the inside out.” Heat courses through my body, and I clench my knife tighter.
“I know.” There’s remorse in his tone, and I’m about to tell him to fuck off when he continues. “I did what I thought was right for the family and hurt you instead. It’s eaten away at me and hurt your mother, which is much worse. I am sorry. I am very, very sorry.” His voice is rough with a regret I’ve never heard before, and I spare him a quick glance. Pain twists his face, deepening the lines and making him look much older.
There’s a crack running through the walls that encircled my heart. I’ve needed to hear those words for so long. I never admitted to myself how much I needed to be able to love my parents. Perhaps I’m more human than I thought.
I pause a moment, listening intently, but all I hear are the sounds of the forest—the wind whispering through the trees, and the bright musical notes of birdsong.
I return my attention to my father. “That’s not our greatest concern at the moment,” I say as we continue our swift, silent creep. “The family charter says only one of us is allowed to walk out of here alive.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” my father says. “This is what we’re going to do. We work as a team until the end. Then you do what you have to do. Take care of your mother and the family for me. Live to keep them safe. Promise me that.”
Kill my own father? I’ve been so angry with him many times that I thought I wanted to kill him, but presented with the opportunity, everything inside me rebels. He fucked up my life for the past ten years, he stole my face, and his simple apology isn’t enough to make up for that. But he’s my father. He created me, and he loves me, and he is telling me now that he’d die for me.
I won’t let him.
“We’ll appeal to the council,” I growl. “They eat, breathe, and shit the charter. You didn’t volunteer.”
My father grabs my upper arm with an impressively strong grip. “Promise me,” he repeats, his eyes blazing.
“Fine, you son of a bitch,” I bark at him. But I’m lying. I won’t kill my father. I’ll find a way to save him, and myself, and Camille, and…
Fuck. Fuck the charter, fuck these stupid rules, fuck the challenge.
They forced him here against his will.
Frustration boils up inside me, but instantly, I wrap it up in cotton wool and store it for later. Just as my father would want me to. He taught me that. Don’t let your emotions control you. They’re your emotions. You own them, and you have the power to use them in the way that is most advantageous at the moment.
So I maintain my crystalline focus and keep moving and scanning our surroundings.
We come to a running stream, and kneel and drink, the ice-cold water running down our parched throats. Then I grab some mud to smear on myself because I’ve sweated off some of my camouflage dirt, and my father follows suit.
“Did you know about this branch of the family?” I murmur to my father.
