Lord of the Night

Chapter 10: Dad

Fraschkit landed the warper in Pataklasa. Together, we found the mayor and delivered the warning to stay underground during an attack. Then Fraschkit continued onward to see her family in Torglasa.

I watched the warper shrink into the skyline. When it dipped out of sight behind a hill, I could no longer justify delaying the inevitable. With a deep breath, I trudged toward my father's home.

Just outside town, I found his tiny shanty perched among rows of wilted crops in sandy soil. The roof sagged, and the paint was peeling. The crooked sign hanging from the door knocker read: VOSGAR THE GUARDIAN. Chained to the crumbling front steps was a terranean warper almost as large as the shack. The Guardians had allowed my father to keep it so he could visit me in the rebel base whenever he so chose.

He hadn't visited me once.

The door swung open, and my father's broad frame filled the doorway. In the year since I had last seen him, he had lost more hair, leaving only scraggly gray curls just above his ears. White film blurred his dark eyes, and his once impressive physique had whittled away like a rotten oak tree.

As he hobbled down the steps toward me, nerves tightened my chest. What if he didn't recognize me? Or worse—what if he recognized me and still told me to leave?

I tapped my shoulder and tipped my head in respect.

He pulled me into an embrace.

I blinked at him for several breathless seconds, torn between tentative hope and trepidation. What had happened in the last year to make him greet me like this?

"Hey, Dad," I said cautiously. "It's good to see you."

"I've missed you so much, Hefgar," he said.

Well, there it was. Hefgar.

A sigh deflated my chest, and I extricated myself from his embrace. "I'm not Hefgar, Dad. I'm Remgar."

My father cocked his head and squinted past me. "Then where is Hefgar?"

I swallowed and shook my head.

My father's mouth dropped open with a strangled croak. Then tears brightened his eyes. "Oh, First Guardian, it's true, isn't it? My nightmare—it all happened?" He blinked, and his tears trickled down his ruddy cheeks. "And your mother, too? She's..."

"It's just us now, Dad. It's been just us for a long time."

"I knew this would happen." He paced back and forth in front of me, and his voice dropped to an almost incoherent mumble. "I had a nightmare beforehand, didn't I? A premonition." He dug the heels of his hands into his temples. "Didn't I warn them what was coming?"

"Yes, you warned them, but they went anyway. They said true Guardians aren't ruled by fear."

He barked a grating laugh that deteriorated into a sob halfway through. "And look where their bravery got them! Thank the First Guardian at least you were smart enough not to follow them."

My jaw clenched.

His eyes focused on me, and his heavy eyebrows pulled close together. I could see him trying to sift through his memories and reassemble the jagged pieces of his mind. Any second now, he would remember what really happened: that his wife and older son had not died for their bravery.

They had died for my cowardice.

Before he could rediscover the truth, I cleared my throat. "May I come in?"

He blinked, and I watched his thoughts scatter. Then he nodded and swung an arm toward the door.

The inside of his home had deteriorated even more than the outside. Dirty dishes piled around the room, clothing lay in heaps, and book pages were stapled across the walls and marked up with slanted capital letters.