“Everyone makes mistakes,” Andi said. “Some are bigger than others. It doesn’t mean we can’t forgive them. That we can’t move on. I was a kid. Kalee was, too.”
Again, she asked him, “Why didn’t you come with me? We could have run together. As a family.”
He nodded, and for a moment, she thought he was going to embrace her. Tell her that she’d made a horrible mistake, but every mistake could be fixed, could be forgiven. Maybe he’d wrap her up in his arms, tell her that he was sorry, that he should have stood by her side. That she’d done a terrible wrong to the world, but that he had, too, when he hadn’t gone with her.
Her heart leaped a little as he did stand.
But instead of coming toward her, he took a half step away. Toward the locked door.
“Was it truly easier?” Andi asked. “Pretending that you never had a daughter at all? It’s what you’ve done all these years, isn’t it?”
Suddenly she was that little girl again, desperate for her father’s approval. But when he turned, his eyes weren’t those of her father. He looked like someone else—a man with gray hair and a sagging face, seated behind a desk too small for his massive ego.
He looked like General Cortas.
“You ruined the family name that day,” her father said. Every word was a dagger to her gut. Every breath, a stab to deepen the previous wound. “Your mother and I...we worked our entire lives to become honorable members of Arcardian society. We nearly lost that, after I freed you. And if we’d gone with you? A life on the run, as fugitives? That isn’t what I promised your mother when I married her and swore to take care of her.”
Inside, her mind was screaming no, no, no. This wasn’t how their reunion was supposed to go. And yet, her father kept digging and twisting the blade.
“We kept you alive, Androma,” he whispered suddenly. “We kept you alive, and all it’s done is tear us apart from the inside out.”
“You sent me out into the galaxy alone,” Andi said. “I could have died!”
“But you didn’t,” her father said. “You survived, Androma. Because we helped set you free, even though no soldier who’d committed such a heinous crime had ever been set free before.”
“What’s done is done,” Andi said, looking past her father at the holo clock on the bedside. “You’ve made it quite clear that you no longer care for me.”
“I know you don’t understand my situation, and I would never expect you to,” her father said. “The general offered me this position as a mercy. He’s a generous man, willing to save your mother and me, even after the destruction you caused for his family. For ours. I took the job, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. To serve our planet in the most honorable way. It was the only way to show the world that we weren’t the monstrous parents your actions made us out to be.”
Andi let the truth sink into her, heavy as a rock.
Even though he’d saved her life, he’d never forgiven her.
She doubted he’d ever tried.
“So this is how it is now,” Andi said, surprised to find that her voice was strong and steady. That with each word, she felt bravery pouring back into her. “You never were on my side, were you? Your own daughter.”
Her father reached the door, placed his hand on the scanner and waited for it to unlock. When he looked back, his eyes were haunted in the same way they’d been back in her holding cell the night he’d come to give her the key. She realized now that she’d misread his look then.
She’d always thought he was mourning the years he knew they would never share together, the struggles she would face out alone in the world.
She was wrong. His words confirmed that now.
“As far as I am concerned,” he said, glancing back to meet her eyes, “my daughter died in the crash alongside Kalee Cortas. The girl I freed from that cell was not my daughter. Whether or not she knew it at the time, she had already been stolen by the Bloody Baroness.”
He stepped out the door. It slid closed behind him, locking her in silence.
She waited for the tears to come. But they never did.
Instead she sat alone, adding more tallies to her swords. Dancing with the dead inside her head.
Later, Andi strapped the swords across her back and climbed out her bedroom window. She snuck out into the night, feeling for all the world like a nameless ghost.
Chapter Seventy-Two
* * *
NOR
NOR SOLIS HAD dreamed of this moment for years, dreamed of the empowerment and relief that she would feel when her dark night finally came to an end.
Soon she would leave this place.
Soon she would take her army and conquer the stars.
The attack on Adhira had been a swift one, a wish she’d granted one of her commanders. It was a last-minute decision when she had learned from a source that the Arcardian general’s son was there.
Nor smiled.
It was only the beginning.
The sky was mercifully still tonight, the acidic rain swept away with the sighing of the wind. It had taken skill to escape her palace walls without anyone noticing, without someone following on her tail, an onslaught of questions thrown at her back.
Nor should be pleased.
But now, as she stood upon the dark remains of her former palace, the only emotion she felt was sorrow. It was as if a gaping wound had opened inside her chest, draining all the happiness from her like a black hole.
She couldn’t understand why. She should be proud that her weapon was complete, that she and her army could finally take command of the galaxy that had once exiled her system, killing millions of her people and leaving the rest to die slowly and painfully.
From here, Nor could look around and see all of Nivia. The crumbling capital city surrounded her like a shadow of lives once lived. The ancient buildings, long ago vibrant with color and life, now stood as empty shells, monuments to what they had once been.
Nor was dressed in a traveling cloak, the dark cloth flowing to the ground like a river of onyx. She smoothed the fabric as she settled down on a broken bit of stone that must once have been a garden bench.
Some of its former beauty was still evident on the stone, elegantly carved designs that she knew her mother had once loved.
This was where she used to come and sit with Nor as a child. Where she’d rock her gently in her arms, sing sweet songs to her as she gazed out at the flourishing sea of flora.
Nor had come to the old palace alone a handful of times over the years, to seek wisdom from its ruins, to gain strength when she was weak. It was easy for her to see past the destruction, to imagine a bright film laid over the entire landscape. To see what once was and pretend she was still a part of it.
A tiny princess dancing among the smoke lilies, her fingertips grazing the delicate petals as she imagined one day becoming queen.
Tonight, however, she couldn’t summon that happy image. Nothing soothed the sadness that seemed to grow within her soul—not even the closeness of her old family home.
Nor looked around the city as if it were the last time she would ever see it. The streets were barren, and the ground rumbled occasionally as a quake hit miles away.