Page 47 of Ashborne Phoenix

‘Petulant toddler.’

I swallowed a strangled laugh. ‘Fair. But truly, you should go. Return tonight. I don’t want to risk you being recognized if we need you later.’

‘I will leave soon. I fly high. It’s unlikely any of your human eyes could see me clearly enough—but we need to speak.’

I blinked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Your thoughts… they’re dark.’

‘I’m tense about my mother and the power and all her claims about the old blood—nothing that we can actually do anything about. I know that. Whatever the impacts on Grace, or the baby, we can’t change them now.’

‘But I see you, Voski. See the ways you see yourself in this. I knew you when that power gripped your heart. I saw you then—I see you now. And you are not the same man.’

His compliment made me uncomfortable. ‘At the time, you told me I wasn’t bad to begin with.’

‘You were entrenched in evil, but your deepest heart was clear to me. Evil was not what you desired, only what you knew. And now, even less so. Now you seek to fight for good.’

‘I touched the power tonight, Kham. I used it.’

He growled. ‘To what purpose? Did you use those skills to harm another?’

‘Of course not, but it’s natural to feel nervous when there might be a baby and they’re all focused on—’

‘That’s not what I speak of, and I think you know it,’ he said bluntly.

I frowned. ‘Then… what do you mean?’

There was a sense of him drawing closer—like a father, dropping to squat, to bring himself eye level with his son. My heart, already tender after the reunion with Grace, squeezed.

‘You see yourself as a leaf on the wind. A twig caught in the river’s current. As if this power controls you, rather than the other way around.’

‘I’m not—’

‘What is your deepest fear in this? What is the part that makes you cold—the piece you’re hiding in the shadow and don’t want to reveal to me? Bring it out and let us examine it in the light. There is no other way.’

I tensed. ‘I will—I promise. When I have Grace out of this and we’re safe, you and I can turn this all over for weeks if you want—’

‘Now, Voski. You cannot win the battle against secrets and deception, unless you combat them with light and truth.’

I went still. Stiffened. ‘I can’t do this now, Kham. I don’t have the energy to—’

‘I am not asking you to finish healing. I’m telling you to speak what is true. Speak what grips you. Trust me not to flinch.’

Would he flinch? I doubted it. But I also suspected he’d only tell me not to worry—a skill I’d never mastered. How, precisely, some men could set aside the monster of fear, as if it didn’t exist, I did not know. I never walked fearlessly. Only prepared.

‘Tell me,’ Kham said, his tone gentle, but firm.

‘I fear that if I get this wrong, my mother will get the baby and if that happens… I’ve sentenced my own flesh and blood to the same torment—’

‘You will not let her take him.’

Every nerve in my body sang, tingling at that statement. ‘Him?’ I asked. The word would have been faint if I’d tried to speak it. ‘So… she is pregnant? You know that?’

‘No,’ Kham growled. ‘I only meant to speak to your fear: You half-believe the child exists already. Already see him in your mind. If you’re right, I know you’ll abandon all to keep him safe.’

I swallowed. Was he telling the truth? Or only trying to keep me calm?

‘I don’t lie to you, Voski,’ he growled.