Glimmerglass

“Believe me, Dana,” my father continued. “As far as Avalon is concerned, my claim on you is undisputed. Your mother isn’t here, but I am. That’s all that would matter.” He reached for me, but I twitched out of his grasp.

“You don’t get to touch me and act all paternal. Not after that speech!”

He raised his eyebrows. “Would you have preferred I lie to you? Because although I long ago turned my back on the Courts of Faerie, I was a key player there once upon a time, and one does not survive long without learning to lie with frightful facility.”

I didn’t fool myself into thinking he wouldn’t turn that skill on me in a heartbeat if he thought it would profit him. Hell, for all I knew, everything he’d told me today had been a complete fabrication. But the ugly truth was, if he wanted to keep me here, he could. That was one thing I was certain he wasn’t lying about.

Without another word to my father, I stood and walked away, climbing the stairs to my room while my father pla

Chapter Twenty

It was a very long afternoon. After talking to my father, I sat in my room brooding for longer than I’d like to admit. The phone rang on and off, and although I was sort of tempted to eavesdrop, I was probably better off not knowing.

Fi

Saying he was okay was overly optimistic. I could tell by the careful way he walked and the tightness at the corners of his mouth that he was still in pain. Even Dad could tell, because he quickly urged the Knight to take a seat. Fi

“Are you well enough to guard her?” my dad asked. I guess his compassion only went so far.

Fi

“Can’t you find someone who isn’t hurt?” I asked Dad, biting my lip as I looked at Fi

“I can manage,” Fi

Dad nodded his agreement and turned to me. “Even at less than a hundred percent, you won’t find a better guardian than Fi

I didn’t bother to argue. I prefer to save my energy for battles I can win.

Dad left about ten minutes later, and I wondered what I was supposed to do for di

Fi

“Please don’t get up!” I said, although he was already on his feet. “Do you need something?” My mind kept flashing back to the sight of his beaten and bloody face, to the knife stabbing through his shoulder until the tip was buried in the floor. And as brave and strong as he was, he hadn’t been able to completely muffle a scream when the paramedic had pulled the blade out.

“I’m not an invalid,” he said, and proceeded to amble toward the kitchen.

I was horrified when he started pulling food from the fridge and I realized he meant to cook. That answered my question about di

“You are not cooking,” I told him in a voice I’d used on my mother when she was too drunk to be allowed near an open flame.

His response was to arch one brow at me while he continued gathering ingredients. It looked like he was pla

“I’ve been cooking since I was about six,” I told him. “I can handle making spaghetti. Please sit down.”

My voice cracked a bit, to my embarrassment. But after what he’d gone through today on my account, it made something deep inside me ache to see him doing this for me when I could do it myself. I had come to Avalon partly in search of someone to take care of me, to let me be the child I’d never gotten the chance to be. Fu

Fi

“But—”

“If you’d succeeded in having me sent home, I’d be in my own kitchen cooking my own di

I swallowed hard a couple of times, hating the fact that I felt like crying over something so stupid as who was going to cook di

Fi

“Dana, I appreciate your concern for me,” he said. “But the truth is, you were hurt far more than I was.”

That opened the floodgates, and the waterworks started no matter how hard I tried to hold them off. I covered my face with both hands, still trying for all I was worth to force the tears back into my eyes. Fi

Fi

“I’m a Knight of Faerie,” he said. “I have been a Knight since I turned eighteen, and that was … a while ago. I have been run through with swords, shot with arrows and with bullets, tortured in ways I will not describe to you. It is my job, and knowing full well what that job entails, I choose to do it.”

“But they could have killed you!” I protested, trying to wipe away the last of my tears with the soaked handkerchief.

Fi

I shook my head. “So is cooking di

“It is tonight. Let me do this one small thing to help atone for having been used as a weapon against you. Please.”

Back in the good old days, when I lived with my mom, I’d gotten used to wi

“Fine!” I said with poor grace.

But Fi

Fi

He was back to his usual taciturn self, but since I now knew he was capable of something resembling a conversation, and since I still had a lot of questions about the attack, I decided to grill him while we were eating.