“Those are what make grenadoes kill. That’s what we’re doing, Aliviana. We’re killing people. Right here, right now. We’re using Orholam’s gift to kill Orholam’s children. Most of whom are fools who could be our friends at any other time. It’s a hard world. You want me to lie about it? You want to be protected after all?”
Liv felt the blood drain out of her. Her father’s words were a sponge, sucking up her illusions, blotting up the thin joy she’d gotten from being in his presence again, in trusting someone to make her decisions for her. Something snapped.
“Father, I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t kill Tyreans, not for the Chromeria, not just because you say so.”
For a moment, she saw keen sorrow in her father’s eyes. He looked—for the first time she’d ever seen in her whole life—old, haggard. “Liv.” He paused. “At some point, you have to decide not merely what you’re going to believe, but how you’re going to believe. Are you going to believe in people, or in ideas, or in Orholam? With your heart, or with your head? Will you believe what’s in front of you, or in what you think you know? There are some things you think you know that are lies. I can’t tell you what those are, and I’m sorry for that.”
It seemed to Liv that this was his long way of explaining Fealty to One.
“What did you choose, father? Ideas or men?” Liv asked. Though she had just seen him praying, she knew her father wasn’t very religious. That part of him had died with her mother. His prayer had likely been something along the lines of: “Well done, sir. This is a beautiful sunset.” Her father rejected the idea that Orholam actually cared about individual men or women, or nations, for that matter.
She saw him blink. His mouth opened, closed rapidly. Set in a line, eyes pained. “I can’t say,” he said finally.
Can’t say because you never actually made the choice? How can you lecture me, then? But that didn’t make sense. Her father was the best man she knew.
No, that wasn’t it. Her father had lived his life because he believed in certain ideas. That was what had led him to fight against Gavin Guile, to give up everything in that fight. He’d been a man of ideals. Those ideals were what had made him stay away from the Chromeria himself, what had made him oppose his daughter going to the Chromeria. He’d been afraid that she would be corrupted by the Chromeria’s lack of ideals.
A wise fear, as it turned out, Liv thought guiltily. She had been corrupted. She had agreed to spy on Gavin. She was just as bad as everyone else at the Chromeria.
But that didn’t explain why her father was suddenly fighting for the man he should hate. The ideals hadn’t changed. If anything, Gavin being here, fighting Tyreans, should have made her father fight him all the more fiercely.
Orholam, maybe her father had been corrupted too. Maybe he’d been bought. Maybe he’d sold out his ideals just like everyone else. Her heart hurt at the very thought, but why else wouldn’t he tell her the answer to what was an obvious question? Because it would make his hypocrisy undeniable.
The whole swiving Chromeria was corrupt. It defiled everything it touched. Liv had been at the bottom. She’d seen how monochromes were treated; she’d seen how Tyreans were treated. And she’d become part of the power, too. She’d become almost a friend to the Prism himself—and she’d loved it, loved talking with a powerful man, basking in his attention. She’d loved the beautiful dresses and being treated as special and worth attention. And to keep her power, she’d sold herself—so easily, so easily. But that was how things worked at the Chromeria. It had even corrupted her father.
“Liv,” her father said. “Liv, trust me. I know it’s hard, but please.”
“Trust you? When you won’t trust me?” she asked, pained.
“Livy, please. I love you. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
And then it all became clear and it took Liv’s breath away. How could the Prism get her father to betray everything he held dear? Why would her father evade simple questions? Because he loved her. Corvan had been corrupted, but not by money or power or sex. She knew he wouldn’t sell his soul so cheaply. So what did the Prism have over Corvan?