“Bullshit! I’ve been there, Darice, and seen the number of times your mother has told him he could have time with you, and then he comes back alone with some ridiculous, fabricated reason why she couldn’t let you go at the last minute. Honestly, I was stunned she allowed you to come with him for Endurance. But for the fact it would relegate you to perpetual infant status, I’m sure she would have backed out of this, too.”

He shook his head in blatant denial. “She’s told me how often she’s begged him to spend time with me and he refuses. How many times I’ve invited him, myself, to games and he has never come to one! Not once. He wants nothing to do with me.”

“Can’t imagine why he’d want to avoid you,” Thia mumbled, then she let out a rude laugh. “Face the truth, Dare, your mother’s a liar. She’s manipulative and a bully.”

He shot to his feet. “Take that back!”

“I won’t take back the truth. Had your mother not fed illegal drugs to your father, for years, he wouldn’t have died when he did.”

Clenching his fists, he glared at her. “What lie is this?”

“No lie. Honest truth. Contrary to your mother’s bullshit, your father’s body was recovered. Uncle Hauk didn’t leave him as scavenger meat as your mother claims. With a dozen broken bones, he dragged Keris’s body back, and kept watch over it until they were picked up.”

Darice scoffed bitterly. “You don’t know that. You weren’t there.”

Still, Thia gave him no quarter. “Neither were you! And for your information, I do know. Fain has the autopsy, and the order, signed by your mother, to burn Keris’s body so that no one would ever discover the truth of what she’d done. Fain was there, alone, when Keris was cremated. She didn’t even have the decency to attend his last rites. Then your mother buried all the evidence that showed Keris had enough drugs in his body at the time of death that he would have most likely overdosed had he not fallen first.”

“If any of that’s true, why does she blame Dancer for it?”

“Because he’s the only one who was there when Keris died. He alone knows how high Keris was and he knows she’s the real culprit.”

Darice stood toe-to-toe with Thia. “Then why hasn’t he told anyone? Huh?”