This was a surreal conversation.
“How’s the child?” Roland asked.
What?
“The young girl whose blood you purified. How is she?”
I leaned forward. “Leave her out of this. Don’t talk to her, don’t haunt her dreams, or I swear, I’ll finish what my mother started. Was it the left eye or the right? Tell me, so I’ll know which to target.”
“The left.” Roland tapped his cheek below the left eye. “You’re so very like your mother. She was fierce, too.”
“You killed her.”
“Yes,” he said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t mourn her death.”
“And you tried to murder me before I was born.”
“Yes.”
“And you sent your warlord to hunt down and kill the man who raised me.”
“Yes.”
“And now you wish to have a conversation.”
Roland’s eyes turned warm. “I loved your mother. I loved your mother so much that when she wanted a child, I promised her I would give her the kind of child this world hasn’t seen for thousands of years.” He reached over and held out his hand.
Curran stepped forward.
I put my hand into Roland’s palm. His touch was warm. Magic slid against my skin.
“I poured my magic into you from the day you were conceived.”
Words appeared on my hand, turning dark and then melting back into nothing.
“I inscribed the language of power on your body while you were still in the womb. You were to be my crowning achievement, my gift to Kalina. I was in love and I was blind. Then I foresaw what I had made. Your aunt was the City Eater, your grandmother was the Scourge of Babylon, and you . . . You would destroy nations. If I let you live, if I raised you with your mother, like Kali’s fury, your rage would devour all. I tried to tell your mother. I tried to explain, but she didn’t want to listen. You were her baby, her precious one. You weren’t even born and she loved you so much. So yes. I planned to kill you in the womb. I planned to do it gently.”
“Oh well, then it’s perfectly fine,” Curran said. “As long as you choked the life out of her gently, I guess there’s no hard feelings.”
I leaned forward. “How did I turn out? Are you proud of the monster you made?”
Roland smiled. Hugh and Landon were right. It was like the sun had risen. Like digging a hole in your backyard and finding a glittering jewel in the dirt.
“Child, my dangerous one, my beautiful one. You’ve claimed your city. You shouldn’t have been able to do that for another hundred years. I’m so proud that my pride could topple mountains. If you let me, I would show you to the world. I would show the world to you.”
“So I could see it through your eyes?”
“So you could see it through your own.”
I leaned forward. “From the time I could walk till I was fifteen years old, every memory I have is about you. If I wasn’t studying about you, your children, and your kingdom, I was training to kill you or hiding from you. I was never afraid of monsters in my closet or under my bed. I was afraid you would find me. The entire purpose of my existence was so I could one day murder you.”
“Here I am. You have a sword. Why don’t you use it?”
I met his gaze. There was no point in lying. “Because I’m done living my life according to Voron’s expectations. I don’t know you. I know only what I was told. If you threaten Curran or anyone else I love, if you try to destroy this city, I’ll do everything in my power to kill you, no matter how futile it is. But I won’t do it because a dead man told me so.”
He leaned back and laughed softly. “You truly are my daughter.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
He smiled at me the way one would smile at a talented but naive child. I pictured kicking him in the head. I’d die a second later, but it would be so satisfying.
“Shall we bargain for the future of the city you love?” he asked.
“That is why you came here, isn’t it?”
He rubbed his hands, his eyes bright. He looked . . . happy. “Very well. Do you know what you did?”
“I’ve blocked your claim on Atlanta and claimed it instead.”
“Anyone crossing into Atlanta now will feel the borders of your territory. They won’t necessarily know the territory is yours, which will give you the element of surprise. A territory claimed is a challenge. It will be answered, if not by me, then by others.”
“I realize that.”
“For my part, I can’t allow you to remain in a position of visible power. You and I are invaders in this land. Our magic wasn’t born here.” Roland nodded to Curran. “Your magic was. Somewhere back in the mists of time your ancestors made a pact with a creature of this land. The blood might have been diluted through generations and mixed with that of the newcomers, but not enough to matter. You pose a threat.”
“Which is why you’ve been trying to destroy the Pack,” Curran said.
“To be fair, I haven’t really tried,” Roland said.
“The rakshasas,” I said.
“They were more of a nuisance than a real threat. They sought an alliance with me. I found them annoying, so I gave them a target as a condition of the alliance. They failed as brilliantly as I had expected.”
“And my aunt?”
My father leaned forward. “Eahrratim.” He said her name with grief as if something of great beauty had been lost forever. “Your aunt didn’t want to wake up. She did in spite of herself and when she rose, she was a mere shadow of herself. She didn’t like this new world. She was going through the motions of living, but she couldn’t permit herself to give up on life. We were taught from the earliest age that life is precious. Death must truly mean something. I wish you could’ve seen her at the height of her power. She was a force. Erra wanted something to do. I told her of the Pack. She thought it over for a few weeks and one day she told me she would go and see if she could find anything of amusement in Atlanta. She must’ve been so thrilled to have found you, her niece, in this distant age. You look like her.”
“I know,” I said. I had looked so much like her, it was eerie. Except she was more. Larger, stronger, faster, with magic that made whatever I could do pathetic. Killing her was the hardest thing I had ever done and it took both Curran and me to do it. I nearly lost Curran because of her. He’d spent eleven days in a coma.