Somehow, I believed him. I nodded, hair falling in my face.
“But that would have meant sacrificing your life, everything you’d built... and I think my mother knew that was too high a cost,” I said slowly. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how my mother would have felt knowing that everything might have changed if she’d been honest, but I hoped she would have been understanding.
And it did make sense... It was just such a waste.
“But I want you to know,” my father said, “I regret not working out a better plan with you when you arrived. I never should have turned my back on you. You’re my child, and I’m proud of you.”
I blinked at him. That was the last thing I expected someone like him to say. Perhaps he regretted his treatment of me, sure, but to hear he was proud of me?
“You are?”
A grin tilted his lips. It was small, but it was more than I had seen before. It lifted my spirits slightly and a warm feeling flooded through my chest.
“Of course, I am,” he said. “You’re powerful and fiery, and don’t take crap from anyone.” He laughed. “S
o many traits that your mother had, that I’m lacking in.”
I smiled back. The similarity to my mother didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.
“I’m a bit more balanced and logical than mother,” I pointed out.
He nodded, the grin slipping. He looked back down at his palms, and his shoulders sagged. There was a solemn look on his face, his lips pressed together, eyes focused.
“Well, I hope you got some traits from me,” he said quietly, almost as though he was afraid to vocalize the words out loud.
“I think I did,” I said, lifting a shoulder. I didn’t exactly want to talk about this, not when I wasn’t sure where this was going. There was no point getting my hopes up for nothing. “So...”
Where was he leading with all this?
“So, I want you to know that although I had to lie about our connection in your trial, I am sincerely sorry,” he said, snapping out of whatever thoughts seemed to be plaguing his mind. “I needed to make sure I got the right people in my corner before I revealed the bigger plan.”
“You have a plan?” I asked, surprise obvious in my voice. I didn’t realize he had even been thinking of this. Tavlor had said he had been, but it had been difficult to fully believe. I thought we would figure it out as we went along.
“Yes.” He nodded once and then cleared his throat. His eyes found mine. “I want you to be my heir. Legally. And Tavlor and I have been researching ways to do that. Although, I am afraid to say, we haven’t really been able to come up with very much to aid us on this quest.” He inclined his head slightly to the side. “I have to assume that you’ve found something?”
I looked over at Tavlor and back to my father.
My father seemed to understand what I meant because he turned around and gestured to the corner of the room. “Tavlor, join us.”
Tavlor was by my side in a moment. He sat on the couch without touching me, but close enough so that I could feel his strength, feel his presence.
“Yes, High Warlock?” he said, tilting his chin close to his chest as a sign of respect.
“I assume you’ve found something useful, or you wouldn’t have brought Ava back here,” he said.
“Well...” Tavlor squared his shoulders towards me. “Ava had decided she wanted to come back irrespective of my feelings. I thought she would be safer where she was. However, as luck would have it, yes, we have found something.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, happiness bubbling up in my chest. We could do this. Hope filled me, something I hadn’t thought I would feel for a long time. In response to my childish gesture, Tavlor made me sound like some sort of errant child. I suppressed a giggle by biting the inside of my bottom lip.
I glanced across at my father who was looked at us strangely but didn’t ask anything.
My cheeks flamed with heat. Damn. I’d forgotten that he didn’t know how I felt about Tavlor. It was hard for me to control myself around him, hard for me to contain these feelings that seemed to permeate for him across my body, my mind, and my heart.
“Ah... yes,” I said, nodding. “Well, it wasn’t us, technically. It was Bella.”
My father’s eyebrows flicked up. “Your sister?”
“Yes, the middle one,” I said. “She’s the bookworm of the family and has an incredible eye for detail.”