“You are my daughter, as surely as Ava was,” he said quietly. “She was the only one of my children who ever bothered to see me for who I really am. The others only ever saw power. Calliope only ever saw a philanderer. But Ava understood the love I have for you all. She understood that a man can feel things he does not express, and that lack of expression does not deplete that love.”
“I know that.” She’d been the one to insist Henry loved me no matter what. “You realize if you’d never cheated, none of this would’ve ever happened?”
“If I’d never cheated, you would have never been born.” He looked at me with lightning in his eyes, and I held his stare. “James would have never been born. Ella and Theo, Irene, Persephone—I loved my wife. My misdeeds are not her fault. But I will not apologize, to her or to any other, for bringing my children into this world. Including you.”
“Then you’re no better than she is. Love doesn’t give you a free pass to hurt your family. You do remember what family is, right?”
He tilted his head. “And what do you mean by that?”
“You never came to see me.” I dug my nails into my palms. If I could draw blood, then maybe the fury trying to claw its way out of me would have some release. “You knew what I was going through after Mom was diagnosed, but you didn’t care.”
“I have many mortal children,” he said slowly. “There was no guarantee you would pass the test, and I did not want to risk forging a connection with you in case you did not.”
“Why, because you were worried about your precious secret being revealed?”
“Because after everything your mother told me about you, I knew that if I came to see you, I would love you instantly. The pain of losing children I have never known is hard enough. But to lose one I love...” He stroked the edge of the glass coffin.
My shoulders shook with silent sobs. “I needed you. I needed someone to tell me it would be okay. I needed to know I wasn’t alone, and you couldn’t bother with me because you were too afraid to love me?”
“The council has watched over you from the beginning, playing bit parts in your life. Loving and protecting you as we did in Eden. You were never alone, Kate, even in your darkest of days.”
“But I didn’t know,” I burst. “It doesn’t make any difference if I never knew.”
“I am sorry.” His voice broke. “I am sorry for never being the father you needed. I am sorry for not being the king my people deserve. And I am so sorry for letting my daughter make the ultimate sacrifice. I do not expect you or anyone else in this world to forgive me now that she is gone, but I hope one day, for Ava’s sake, you will allow me to be your family. To be your father, as I should have been when you were growing up. It is what Ava would have wanted for us both.”
I wanted to spit in his face, to tell him to go screw himself and find another daughter who was willing to love such a manipulative creep, but the truth of what he was saying froze me in place. He was right. This was what Ava would have wanted. Not only because I needed a father, but because Walter needed a daughter who loved him despite his flaws, who understood him and gave him a chance. I’d done my best to show everyone, even Calliope and Cronus, that compassion and understanding. Ava would’ve wanted me to do the same for him. To not fail Walter like I’d failed her.
“You’re asking for more than I know how to give,” I said quietly, and all of the fight drained out of me. I focused on the image of Ava’s face again. “You hurt me. You hurt my mother, and you hurt our family.”
He set a tentative hand on my shoulder. “I know. And I will spend eternity doing what I can to make it up to you. I cannot promise much, but I do promise that you will always have me—you will always have all of us. As it should have been from the beginning.”
Pressing my swollen lips together, I nodded. After all the pain he’d caused, I couldn’t forgive him as we stood there side by side, but someday I would try. For Ava.
* * *
The glass coffin remained in the throne room for three days, and the image of Ava was never alone. At first only the council members came to see her, each of us wanting to be alone with her. After we’d all had our turn, Walter opened up the portal to Olympus, allowing others to come through without assistance.
As the hours passed and news of her death spread, gods I’d never seen before appeared in Olympus to pay their respects. Some of the names were familiar, but nothing prepared me for the sheer number Ava had touched in her life. The throne room was always full in those three days of mourning, and the veil of sadness only grew heavier with each new face.
A boy with blond curls kept vigil by the coffin, never speaking a word. Both Nicholas and Dylan joined him at different times, and while he sat stiffly at Dylan’s side, the boy seemed to relax in Nicholas’s presence.
“Eros. Eric now,” said Henry as we lingered near the hallway and watched. “Her oldest son.”
My vision blurred, and I had to excuse myself. I knew how deeply Ava had touched the rest of the council, but seeing the paths her long life had forged, the family she’d formed in the millennia she’d lived—it only reopened wounds I was sure would never fully heal.
On the third day, dawn crept across the starry ceiling. Walter called us all together, and we stood in a circle with the other gods, watching as the glass coffin filled with light. At last, as the sunrise blended away the last vestiges of night, the casket disappeared.