Page 40 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
The thinning hair, the same shade as my own dark locks.
The strong arms which had wrapped around me whenever I had a nightmare as a child.
The rest of the world faded as a roar resounded in my ears.
I’m not ready.
“Daddy?” I choked out the name I hadn’t used since I was six and became the Protectorate’s heir.
The next few moments passed in a desperate blur.
I forgot all about the arrows, the massacre, the chaos, the bodies I’d crawled over, and rushed to my father’s side.
I must have tossed the bow in my frenzy, because I had both hands free to circle them around him, hugging his body to mine like he’d done to me too many times to count.
He was slumped face down, a dagger with a strange stone embedded in his back.
Not an errant arrow.
This was an assassination, done when he’d had his back turned.
I was distantly aware a sickly green mist began invading the edges of our sacred circle.
Frantic, I turned him around.
The tip of the dagger stuck out of his chest.
He’d been impaled straight through the heart, his blood tainting the silver and blue of his clothes.
His eyes and lips were closed. He looked almost peaceful in death.
The leader of the Protectorate had beenmurdered.
My father was dead.
A sob tore at my throat as my frenzied hands pressed against his chest, as if I could bring him back.
I called to the dry well of power inside me, but got nothing in response. Not even a lone trickle of desperate magic.
Only desperate silence.
The mist stalked closer.
“Please,” I cried out to anyone and everyone. “Please!”
Tears rushed down my cheeks as I struggled to pull his body underneath the olive tree, as if the power of Dria Vegheara’s legacy could bring him back to me and protect us from the mist.
He was still so warm.
He still smelled like him. Like old parchment, warm evenings spent in the garden, and long hugs I hadn’t appreciated enough.
Out of my mind, I even splashed some of the spring water onto his face, as if it could magically awaken him. The olive leaves rattled, as if mourning the loss as well.
“Please,” I cried harder, the unflinching Huntress in me gone and wailing in the recesses of my mind. “Don’t leave me alone. Not like this.”
The mist followed.
I didn’t care.
