Chapter 307: A Wooden Dragon

"Yes," said Thorne.

"He wasn’t talking to you."

"No."

"He was talking to me." Morgana replied.

"Yes."

She nodded slowly.

Behind her, in the tall window, something made a faint sound. It was a tiny crystalline note, like a fingernail on glass. She did not turn around. She felt Draeven’s eyes flick past her shoulder and then come back, and she knew without looking that a thin crack was running across the pane behind her head.

Nobody said a word about it.

She was grateful, and she did not know why.

"Morgana," said Draeven.

He had crossed the room without a sound. Now he crouched in front of her chair, as Thorne had done that morning in the bath, bringing his face level with hers. His hands rested on his knees. He did not touch her.

"You don’t need to speak," he said. "Not yet. Not until you are ready."

"I’m ready."

"You do not have to be."

"I want to." She set the cup on the arm of the chair. Her fingers were shaking, and she pressed them into her lap. "I think I have to. I think if I don’t say it now, I won’t say it at all."

He waited.

She drew a long, careful breath.

"My mother told me my father was dead."

The words fell into the quiet.

Nobody moved. Even Kaelen, at the window, had gone still. She felt three pairs of eyes on her, and kept her own on a spot on the rug, a small worn patch where the pattern had faded.

"She told me when I was small," she said. "I was perhaps four. I asked where he was. Other children had fathers. I wanted to know why I didn’t." She swallowed. "She said he was gone. That he’d died before I was born. That it was a long time ago, and it hurt her too much to talk about it, and that I should not ask again."

"And you didn’t," said Draeven softly.

"No." A tiny, unsteady smile. "She cried and I never asked again."

"Did she ever say how?"

"No. Only that it was a sickness. Or an accident. Sometimes it was one and sometimes it was the other." She frowned. "I used to think I’d remembered it wrong. Now I think she just never decided which one to tell me."

"She was lying," said Kaelen quietly.

"Yes." Morgana’s voice cracked. "I think she was."

"Why?"

"I don’t know." She pressed her lips together. "That’s the part I can’t....I don’t know. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know his name. I don’t know what he looks like, or where he came from, or why she’d tell me he was dead if he wasn’t." Her breath hitched. "I know nothing."

"Nothing?" said Thorne.

"There was a carving."

She had not meant to say it. It had come up out of the bottom of her memory.

"A wooden dragon. No bigger than my palm." She held up her hand, and saw how it trembled. "She kept it on the mantel. In a little hollow in the stone. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I used to look at it, in the evenings, when she wasn’t there, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world." She dropped her hand. "I asked once where it came from. She said, ’A friend.’ And she took it down, and put it in a drawer, and never took it out again."

"A friend," said Draeven.

"That’s what she said."

"Carved by someone with skill."

"It was lovely. Every scale." Her eyes stung. "It was the only beautiful thing in that house. And it was a dragon."

Kaelen had turned from the window. His face was still, and pale, and his eyes burned with a very bright, dangerous light. He looked at the carving that she was seeing in her mind. He looked at Thorne. Thorne looked at Draeven.

None of them said what they were thinking.

"That’s all," Morgana said. "That’s all I know."

"It’s more than we had," said Draeven gently.

"There’s something else."

He waited.

She closed her eyes.

Tell them everything, said a pale voice, in a pale room. You don’t belong to them. You belong to yourself.

Never show them, said another. Never.

She breathed in.

"Astraea told me," she said, "that he’s alive."

The air changed.

It happened instantly. A cold went through the study, a deeper cold than the frost on the sill, and the temperature seemed to drop and rise at once. She heard Kaelen’s breath hiss. She heard Thorne take a single step forward. She felt Draeven’s hands, on his knees, go very still.

"She said it plainly," Morgana whispered. "When I went to her chambers. She said my father is alive, and that he knows I exist, and that he is looking for me." She opened her eyes. "I didn’t tell you. In the study, the other day. When you asked what she said. I told you the rest. I left that out."

"Why?" said Draeven.

It wasn’t an accusation. It was only a question, quiet and open.

"Because I didn’t know how to say it." Her voice shook. "Because I’d spent eighteen years believing something, and she said it in four sentences, and I didn’t know if it was true. And because...." She stopped. "Because if I said it out loud, it would be real."

Nobody spoke.

"And today he said it," she said. "Carrick. Your father sends his regards. And I stood there, and I thought, oh.It is.It’s real." A tear slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away, furiously. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have....."

"Stop."

Draeven’s hand had moved.

He had taken hers. It was a quiet movement, swift and gentle, and his fingers closed warm around her own. His eyes were steady and gold and very close.

"You owe us nothing," he said. "Not an apology. Not an explanation. You told us when you could. That is all anyone may ask."

"But it might have...."

"It would have changed nothing." He held her gaze. "Carrick would have come. He would have said what he said. We would have stood where we stood. All that has altered is that you carry it a little lighter now."