Beyond the Highland Myst(517)

"What?" Silvan bristled. "I'm not allowed to look at my own son?"

"You're looking at me as if you're expecting me to sprout wings, a forked tail, and cloven hooves." No matter that he was feeling as if he might. Since the moment he'd come through the stones, since the moment the thirteen had found their voices, he'd known that the battle betwixt them had moved into a new and much more dangerous arena. The ancients within him had been fed pure power when he'd opened the bridge through time.

With an immense effort of will, he shuttered, closed, tightened himself and projected pretense that all was well and fine. Using magic to conceal his darkness was an egregious error and he knew it, feeding precisely that which he endeavored to hide, but he had to do it. He dare not let Silvan see him dearly at the moment. He needed to search the Keltar library and if Silvan felt him now, God only knew what he'd do. Certainly not wave him into the inner sanctum of Keltar lore.

Silvan looked startled. "Is shape-shifting one of their arts?" he inquired, evincing utter fascination.

Typical Silvan, Dageus thought darkly, curiosity exceeding caution. He'd worried a time or two that Silvan might one day be tempted to dabble in black arts himself, out of naught more than driving curiosity. His father and Chloe shared that, an insatiable need to know.

"Nay. And you're still doing it," Dageus said coldly.

"I'm merely curious about the extent of your power." Silvan sniffed, affecting an unassuming expression. With such piercing intellect in his gaze, it was far from convincing.

"Well doona be. And doona be poking at it." Och, aye, the ancients inside him were growing more aggressive. Sensing Silvan's power, they were trying to reach for it. For him. Silvan was far richer fodder than Drustan; he'd always had a stronger center than his sons.

His father was also adept at the art of deep-listening that Dageus had never managed to perfect, a meditative regard that peeled away lies, exposing the bare bones of truth. 'Twas why the hopelessness he'd glimpsed in his da's gaze the eve he'd fled had fashed him so. He'd been afraid Silvan had seen something he himself couldn't see, and wouldn't want to.

And it was why, now, he was using all his will both to keep them in, and his father out.

"I ken it, lad," Silvan said, sounding suddenly weary. "You've changed since last I saw you."

Dageus said nothing. He'd managed to avoid looking directly into his father's gaze since the moment Chloe had fainted, taking only cursory glances. Betwixt the heightened awareness of the thirteen and the sexual storm that was raging hot and unsated inside him, he wasn't about to look him in the eyes.

When he'd carried Chloe abovestairs to his bedchamber, tucked her into bed, and whispered a soft sleep spell over her so she would rest easy through the night, Silvan had followed him and Dageus had felt his measuring regard hammering at the back of his skull.

He'd nearly not been able to let go of her. And though he'd not look at his father, he'd been grateful for his presence, for it had made short work of the dark thoughts he'd been having about bringing her only partially awake and—

"Look at me, son," Silvan said, his low voice implacable.

Dageus turned slowly, careful not to meet his gaze. He took measured breaths, one after another.

His father was standing in front of the hearth, his hands buried in the folds of his cobalt robe. In the soft light of dozens of tapers and oil globes, his white hair was a halo about his wrinkled face. Dageus knew the origin of each line. The grooves in his cheeks had appeared shortly after their mother had died, when he and Drustan had been lads of fifteen. The wide creases on his forehead had been worn into his skin by a constant raising of his brows as he pondered the mysteries of the world and the stars beyond it. The lines bracketing his mouth were from smiling or frowning, never weeping. Stoic bastard, Dageus thought suddenly. No one wept in Castle Keltar. No one knew how. Except mayhap Silvan's second wife and Dageus's next-mother, Nell.

The lines feathering Silvan's deep brown eyes, winging upward at the outer edges, were from squinting in low light as he labored over his work. Silvan was a fine scribe, possessing an enviably steady hand, and had devoted himself to recopying, with exquisitely embellished carpet pages, the older tomes whose ink had faded o'er time.

When he'd been a lad, Dageus had thought his da had the wisest eyes he'd ever seen, full of special, secret knowledge. He realized he still thought that. His da had never been toppled from his pedestal.

His gut clenched. Mayhap Silvan had never fallen, but he certainly had. "Go ahead, Da," he said tightly. "Roar at me. Tell me how I failed you. Tell me how I've been naught but a disappointment. Remind me of my oaths. Throw me out if you're of a mind to, for I've no time to waste."