“What? Help him?” Her words were scathing, as though they were alight with the same flames that continued to swarm the walls of Comman Dur. “Maybe if you’d been honest with me once you realized who I was we could’ve had a conversation about it. Then you’d know we were on the same side. That we always were.” Still she didn’t look at him.

“I—I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“I don’t want your apology. Hold him for me.”

“Bry, you’re too weak…”

“I need to do this. Please.”

He was still worried about her, but he wouldn’t refuse her anything. And, it seemed, neither would her father, who made no attempt to flee or fight back as Ludo approached him. He grabbed those charred arms, which were hot to the touch, guiding them behind the man. “This is for my brother,” he said. “This is for Gado.”

Bryony

That fire still lived inside her, roiling heat and flames pushing against her will, but she refused to let it consume her. She’d not given her life to be trained as a weapon all those years ago only to be defeated now. Ludo might want this as much as she did, but she had to be the one to deliver the killing stroke.

Her father had yet to respond to her latest judgment, a truth that grated on her. She wanted to hear him confess. “Well? Do you have nothing to say for yourself?”

His eyes locked on hers and she tried to read them but found them as indecipherable as an ancient long-lost language. “I never stopped loving you,” he said. “Nor your mother.”

She forced steel into her expression, refusing to let her resolve falter. “Then…why?” she growled, staggering forward, shrugging away the assistance offered by Dagr.

“Quit this place. Break bread with me. I will explain everything.”

A wave of dizziness washed over her, but she fought it off like she’d fought off everything that tried to harm her over the last two decades. “We’re long past that. It’s simple. You could’ve helped save Mother. You could’ve protected me from…this.” With that final word, she drew her pant leg up to reveal her false leg, the one she’d learned to live with, to accept, to use with as much prowess and skill as one might use a real leg. More even.

Finally, his unreadable expression broke, his eyes watering as he visibly winced. “I—I didn’t know.”

“That’s because you weren’t there when you were supposed to be. It was your job. Your only job.”

“I know.”

“Then why?” She heard the shredding of her own voice as she repeated the question that had no answer, at least none she could accept.