“O doe da,” he answered. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Da.”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears. Rowan sat up against the pillows and pulled Lily down on top of him. “I’m sorry. I should stop talking about fathers,” he said. “You just lost yours.”
“It’s not that. I know it should be that, but it isn’t,” she admitted.
“Then what is it?”
“You loved your father. You miss him because he meant the world to you and now he’s gone. I’ve always missed my father because he was never there. Him being dead doesn’t feel that much different.” Lily looked up at Rowan. “Your loss hurts more, but it’s so beautiful. You know that, right?”
Rowan nodded, brushing her cheek. “I’m lucky. He made me who I am and because of that I’ll always have him with me.”
*
Carrick slipped into camp while everyone was still throwing gifts at Lily’s head. It was easy, actually. This used to be his tribe, and even though Carrick had to alter his face slightly with a glamour so no one recognized him, he still knew how to speak and act like he was one of them. He even saw some familiar faces as he made his way through the tents. That could be useful. In the turmoil of Lily’s return, Carrick walked right in.
Carrick knew that going after Alaric was pointless. Even with a glamour he wouldn’t be able to get close to the sachem without possessing the right password, but Alaric wasn’t Carrick’s target, anyway. There was someone at this camp who Lillian wanted even more than Alaric.
Hakan, the builder.
Lillian had no idea where Chenoa and Keme were hidden, but she knew that Hakan had to be traveling with Alaric. The bombs were touchy contraptions, and someone who understood how they worked needed to be there to tend to them. Hakan was one of the few who were qualified, and Lillian knew he’d been traveling with Alaric for two months now. It was finding Alaric that had been the problem.
The sachem had a lot of experience eluding Lillian, who could scour the minds of even the most loyal Outlanders for any scrap of information if she managed to claim them. To protect himself, and the personnel that came with him, Alaric had divided his tribe into thirteen factions. Each faction stayed close to a city and came equipped with a body double who looked like Alaric. No faction, except for the one he traveled with, knew where Alaric really was. But Lillian knew Rowan. She knew he would take Lily directly to Alaric, leading Carrick to his target. They intended to get a lot of information out of Hakan, and Carrick had Lillian’s permission to use his unique skill set in order to do just that.
Carrick wanted to go after Alaric. His bitterness toward his old sachem ran deep, and it stretched back to when Carrick and his father had been thrown out of the tribe and left to wander on their own. There had never been any proof that Carrick and his father had killed that little girl, but Alaric didn’t wait for proof. He knew who’d done it. When Alaric seized power ten years ago, he’d thrown Carrick and his father out of the tribe with only a mock trial. Alaric had left them at the mercy of the Woven—and he’d left Carrick at the mercy of his father. They’d settle that score someday. But tonight, it was Hakan’s turn.
It took Carrick a few hours of wandering around the camp to find a carriage that looked heavier than the others. Lillian had told him that the carriage with the bomb would be completely lined with lead in order to contain the poison inside. Carrick checked the wheels, looking for the ones that sank the deepest. When he found the right carriage, he blended into the shadows to wait.
Lillian had laid eyes on Hakan herself. She’d given Carrick the memory of what Hakan looked like, and when Carrick saw him approaching the carriage just before noon the next day, he simply walked up behind him and hit him on the head.
He’d take Hakan elsewhere to begin the questioning.