The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

inn?”
He nodded as the torches flickered behind him.
A picture of my father formed in my mind, his features
hazy as he kept glancing out the window of the inn, looking
and searching for something or someone. Later that night,
he’d said to someone who lingered in the shadows of my
mind, “This is my daughter.”
I couldn’t…I couldn’t breathe as I stared at Alastir. His
voice. His laugh. It had always sounded so familiar to me. I’d
thought it reminded me of Vikter. I’d been wrong.
“I came to meet them, give them safe passage,” he
said, his voice growing weary.
“She doesn’t know,” my father had told that shadow in
my memory that I could never fully latch on to. Images
flashed rapid-fire behind my eyes, snapshots of memories—
recollections I wasn’t sure were real or fragments of
nightmares. My father…his smile had been all wrong before
he looked over his shoulder. “Understood,” was the
phantom voice’s response. Now I knew who that voice had
belonged to.
“Your parents should’ve known better than to share
what they knew with anyone.” Alastir shook his head again,
this time sadly. “And you were right to assume that they
were attempting to flee Solis, to get as far away from the
kingdom as they could. They were. They knew the truth. But
you see, Penellaphe, your mother and father always knew
exactly what the Ascended were.”
I jerked back, barely feeling the pain in my wrists and
legs. “No.”
“Yes,” he insisted. But there was no way this was the
truth. I knew my parents were good people. I remembered
that. Good people wouldn’t have stood by, doing nothing, if
they knew the truth of the Ascended. Realized what
happened when children were given over during the Rite.
Good people didn’t stay silent. They were not complicit.