Аполлион

“You did see him.” Her gaze moved to the window behind us. Early-morning sunlight sliced over the frost-covered glass. “He was in the library the night we spoke of your mother and him.”

I could only stare. I knew someone had been in there. “The books that fell over—that was him?”

She nodded.

How many times had I been close to the man—to my father—without knowing? A hurricane of disappointment swelled inside me. “And… and he knows I’m his daughter?”

“Yes, he knows.” She reached out with her free hand, gently touching the skin of my face, near a bruise that was already starting to heal. “He would recognize you anywhere. You look so much like your mother.”

That bite of sadness strengthened and I pulled back. “Then why didn’t he talk to me?”

Laadan looked away, her chin lowering.

“I tried talking to him, Laadan. In the stairwell, but he just… stared at me. And why didn’t he come up to me in the library? I know he couldn’t just announce who he was, but why…” My throat tightened. “Why didn’t he want to talk to me, at least?”

Her head snapped toward me. “Oh, honey, he wanted to talk to you more than anything, but it’s not that simple.”

“Seems simple to me. You open your mouth and talk.” I struggled to sit still. Had he heard of my escapades? Gods know rumors of my problems with authority had traveled far and wide. Had he been embarrassed as a trained Sentinel? Worse yet, as a father? “I just don’t understand.”

She took a breath. “He was close to you a lot when you were there and you didn’t know, but it was also very dangerous for him to be seen around you. The truth of what he is, what your mother was, and what you are, was too much of a risk. You already had too many eyes on you.”

The conversation Seth and I had overheard came back to me. We already have one here. Anger sparked and was quick to ignite a fire inside me. Marcus… Marcus had known, and now that it was all out in the open, we were so going to talk about that.

“What I told you in the library that night? That he would be proud of you because of who you have become and not what you will become?” She clasped my fisted hand in her gentle grip. “That is the truth. From the moment you arrived back at the Covenant last summer, I did my best to keep him up-to-date on how you were. Your mother… she didn’t know what had happened to him and Alexander wanted it that way. In a way, death was easier than the truth.”

I blinked away sudden tears and wanted to pull my hand free, but like always, Laadan’s calming nature was disarming.

“Things are more complicated than you realize, Alex. He couldn’t talk to you.”

Shaking my head, I tried and failed to understand that. I’d think that a father would’ve done anything to speak to his daughter just once.

Laadan squeezed my hands and let go. “The Masters always suspected that your father was different, and that perhaps he was influencing other servants. They treated him quite cruelly. He cannot talk to you, Alex. They removed half his tongue.”

I balked at what she said. I’d heard her wrong. There were no other options. “No. I saw him talking with another servant in the dining hall.”

She shook her head sadly. “If anything, you saw a servant talking tohim.”

Forcing myself to remember the morning after I’d been slipped the Brew more clearly, I tried to see my father and the younger servant. Things had looked tense and his back had been to me most of the time. I’d assumed that he’d been talking by the reaction of the other servant.

I hadn’tseen him talk.

Shooting to my feet, I heard Laadan’s little gasp of surprise. Even I was a little shocked by how fast I moved. The marks of the Apollyon appeared on my skin and tingled as they glided in various directions. She couldn’t see them, but some innate sense coaxed her to scoot back.

“They cut out his tongue?” Power surged over my skin.

“Yes.”

That was it. I was going to take out the Council and every freaking Master on this planet. Bad, dangerous thoughts, but gods, how could they do something like that?

“How can I be so surprised?” I said out loud, and then laughed madly. “How am I surprised by this, Laadan?”

There was no answer.

Turning away, I struggled to control my fury. Already I could hear the branches slapping along the side of the cabin. Knowing my luck, I’d probably cause an earthquake. Controlling the elements was easy, but I’d learned through the Awakening that my emotions affected them, made them violent and unpredictable.

As did the amount of aether, the essence of the gods, that coursed through my veins.