White Stag (Permafrost #1)(45)
It took me a minute to find my voice. “Of course I miss you! I think about you every day!”
He thrust the knife toward me, and I stepped back. “Did you? Or were you too busy becoming part goblin to notice?”
The warmth drained from my body. “You can’t speak,” I said. “When were you going to tell me I was born on the border of the worlds? When were you going to let me know a goblin would take me away once I turned eighteen?”
My father spat, “I would’ve expected you to weasel your way out of it like you did with everything else.”
“You lied to me,” I shouted. “Maybe not by words themselves, but by omission! You knew what would happen to me and fed poison in my ear!”
He narrowed his eyes. “And all that poison still couldn’t stop you from becoming a goblin’s lapdog. But you have a chance to redeem yourself now.”
My fingers curled into fists. “I am not Soren’s lapdog. I am my own person and I make my own choices, and I don’t need redemption from you.”
His face turned dark at my words, and he gestured wildly around him. “You’re corrupted, then. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember walking in the ashes? This is what he did! All of it! This is what he and his kind do!”
“And are we any better?” The burning inside of my reached its peak. “We raid and steal and capture! Why is it okay for us and not for them?”
“They’re monsters, Janneke. You should know that by now, after all they’ve done.”
One by one, the dead appeared beside him. My six beautiful sisters with their faces marred and bodies scarred, my mother who bled from a wound in her breast, three children with crushed-in skulls, a man almost ripped in half, a woman whose scalp hung from her head. They stood there in silence, but the anger in their eyes spoke for them.
I stared back at them calmly, meeting each and every one of their gazes. They could blame me for their deaths and call me a traitor for surviving under Soren. They could replay the horrors they’d gone through over and over until every image was engraved in my brain. They could remind me of Lydian pounding away inside my body, tearing chunks of flesh out of my breast until it was so full of infection it had to be removed.
They could do all those things, but they could not make me feel ashamed.
It’s a wonderful thing. Donnar’s voice rode on the wind. Being able to choose. It’s a wonderful thing to know and not have that knowledge destroy you. It’s a terrible burden to bear alone. I don’t envy you, child.
I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders, staring my father directly in the eye. “It wasn’t Soren’s fault the village was raided. It wasn’t Soren’s fault that I am who I am. And it’s not my fault either. If you really were my father, you wouldn’t try to guilt me into admitting it.”
The man before me laughed bitterly. “You think this is an illusion? I am your father. You are my daughter.” His laughter died, and a tear slid down his face. “You were my pride and joy, my little shadow, my Janneke. You can still be that. You can be here, with me and your sisters and mother and those who love you for eternity. You could escape from those monsters, who poison your mind day and night. Who make you believe they care.”
My gaze was steely, but inside, my heart was breaking. This was my family, whom I’d mourned and missed and prayed for each night. Yet when I looked at them all, their faces were full of contempt, of pent-up anger and jealousy and mistrust. If you really were my father, you wouldn’t try to guilt me into admitting it. This man twisted in rage wasn’t the father who raised me. The hate he spoke, which he tried to instill in me so many years ago, that was real and true and powerful, but it was something I could understand because I knew now how much it was mixed with his fear for me. But even at my father’s worst, he would never ask me to take my own life. My family would never blame me for their fate. These things before me … whatever they were, they weren’t them.
Promise me you’ll never hurt yourself. I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt. It was as if he were right next to me, whispering in my ear. Did I do something wrong? I thought touch was how humans established bonds of trust? That infuriating smirk that he saved just for me. Is it normal for your kind to do that? Does your kind normally have that really cute nose crinkle when they make certain facial expressions, especially ones of humor or anger? Maddening, self-centered, arrogant, vain, passionate, protective, concerned, playful, teasing: all the things Soren was. And maybe he was a monster too. But if he was, then so was I.
My father turned the small knife over and over in his hand, the iron barely tainting his flesh. Even with the antler bone grip, just holding it would be agony. I bit my lip, the scars across my body burning.
“Why won’t you let me die?” I asked the she-goblin hovering over me. In the dark room it was hard to tell if her hair was naturally red or if it was just my blood. There was so much blood.
The she-goblin huffed. “If it were up to me, I would. But it isn’t up to me. I’m just following orders.” She plunged another needle deep into my arm until I was silent.
The man that replaced her had white hair that hung just past his hips. His eyes burned into me from a chair across the room as I feigned sleep. If I woke, something terrible would follow. I knew it in my bones. But I was past the point of death; the infection in my body was no more and the deadly fever had broken.