“Where is my father?” I said with a growl. “I’m not going with you, and I’m certainly not leaving this room until you get him. I have a right to speak to him. He would want to talk to me.”
Rasslor cocked his head to the side as though assessing me. “Your father doesn’t love you, Ava,” he said, his voice gentle. I wasn’t sure why he was speaking nicely to me unless he was doing his best to try to convince me that what he was saying was the truth. “He never has, and he never will. Surely, you know this. Look deep down inside yourself and the answers are there. Your father does not care about your existence. You are nothing to him except, perhaps, a nuisance.”
Each word hit me like a well-aimed knife, straight to the heart. It was suddenly hard to breathe, but my body tense.
It was my exact worse nightmare come true and I could feel the walls around my heart cracking and tumbling down around me.
How had he known?
Tears stung my eyes despite my efforts and if I didn’t do something to hide them, Rasslor would see. I turned away, holding my breath against the need to sob. I pushed my shoulders down. I couldn’t have him see them bob up and down as a sob threatened to rip out of me.
Tavlor wasn’
t saying anything. Part of me was upset, but the other part knew there wasn’t anything he could say.
If my father truly believed I was a nuisance, the last thing I wanted was it to be confirmed. And if it wasn’t—did we want Rasslor to know my father did care for me?
Where was my father anyway?
Where was the man who had loved my mother, conceived me, and turned his back on me when I’d asked for help? The man who claimed to know nothing about me, but who refused to help me when I asked him for it. Who refused to acknowledge me as his daughter even though that was what I was?
This was his office. Surely Tavlor would have contacted him to let him know we were coming. Surely, he knew we were here. He must know we needed him.
And yet, there was no trace of him. No sign that indicated he was coming at all.
So perhaps Rasslor was right.
My father doesn’t love me... Of course, he doesn’t love me.
How could I have been so stupid as to believe otherwise?
My father didn’t even know me. But to lose one parent and to be so spectacularly rejected by the other was making me want to crawl into a ball and die a slow, embarrassed death. This giant undertaking, I was arrogant enough to believe could be overcome just because I wanted it to was a farce from the beginning. I should have stayed home. I should have stayed with my sisters and ensured this hadn’t happened in the first place.
Arguing was going on behind me and I attempted to pull myself out of my melancholy. The voices grew louder and louder the more I focused on them. There was anger. More than that, there was spite.
What were Tavlor and Rasslor yelling about? I wanted to close my eyes, to see if that might help me figure it out. But I couldn’t. He was already winning, what with his cruel truth. I couldn’t let him break me.
“Get him. Get him now!” Tavlor was practically screaming.
“He is not here,” Rasslor said. “He wants nothing to do with this situation.”
“You’re lying.” Tavlor said. I didn’t know why Tavlor was so adamant about this, but he was.
“How would you know how the High Warlock stands on this matter, you great big mutt!” Rasslor roared. “Who do you think you are, to talk to me in such a way? You will mind yourself, Tavlor, before I put you out, just as I put out the rest of the garbage.”
Tavlor’s hand whipped around Rasslor’s throat and squeezed.
My eyes widened. My mouth dropped. I never expected Tavlor, of all people, to lash out this way against a Council member.
The man’s beady eyes boggled out of his face and the skin of his cheeks went red.
I rushed over to him and placed my hand on his forearm.
“Tavlor. Stop.” I managed to say, though my words were weak and even I wouldn’t have listened to me. Not after all the nasty things he’d said to Tavlor.
“He knows where the High Warlock is,” Tavlor said, his focus on the Council member. “And he’s going to tell me.”
I sobbed, unable to hold it in. My chest ached. My heart hurt. All the hope I’d built up about my father wanting to help me... it was all gone. And in its place was only pain.