answered without conscious thought. Seeing my father again, when it wasn’t really him, would just be cruel, but I couldn’t deny it was a hard draw on the heart. I saw Bahlin throw open the bathroom door. Apparently I’d shouted out in my sleep. Bahlin padded over to me, wearing only a towel, and gently rubbed my head. It was the strangest feeling, nothing like being in the same plane with him.
“I didn’t think so, but I wanted to give you the option,” Tyr said. “You are a wise woman to love them as they were, Maddy, and not try to hold on to other than their memories.”
I cleared my throat before I said softly, “No offense, but you’d never be him.”
“As I said, wise. Now please, go on.”
I struggled with my heart and mind to let go of the want to see my dad’s image again. It was the greatest act of will I’d ever accomplished. “Tarrek instructed Maddox to kill me. This way, if there was no Niteclif, there would be no real punishment. Like Bahlin said, without a Niteclif, chaos reigned. Jossel was killed not for any special power, but because he overheard the discussion between the fae. That’s why his body has never shown up. Maddox just did away with it.”
“And the attempted murder of the Niteclif?” Tyr prompted. He continued to rub my forehead, and the thoughts seemed to come easier for the contact.
“Tarrek put up the runes to help ensure Maddox’s success. When Maddox failed to kill me, Tarrek was furious. When I was taken to the sithen, he couldn’t risk that I would wake up and identify Maddox while Maddox was still alive. So he stayed with me, day and night, and had his lover, Gretta, make a poison draught to kill me. When I awoke and announced the shooter in front of both him and Bahlin, he had to kill Maddox for fear that Maddox would turn him in as the plotter. So he left, ostensibly to go tell his parents of Maddox’s treachery, but he was gone too long. He did tell his parents of Maddox’s sentence, but not before he killed him and ordered someone to dispose of the body. When Gretta took it upon herself to attempt to kill me after the meeting and she was killed, he must have been very angry.”
“The heavens shook with his wrath,” Tyr said in all seriousness. “He’s a powerful member of the Tuatha de Dannan, Maddy. You cannot underestimate him, especially within his own sithen. There he is nearly undefeatable. You must do all you can to prevent him returning there, for I fear his parents will not turn him over to justice.”
I nodded, afraid of the same thing though with no justifiable reason other than the fierceness of Tarrek’s mother in defending Maddox even after his death sentence.
Tyr motioned for me to continue, saying, “Do not stop again. I believe you have the right of it.”
I nodded, just needing movement. I got up and walked around the room, varying my stride and burning off anxiety I could feel even now. In my sleep I twitched, and Bahlin resumed petting my head. It was slightly distracting.
I picked up my last thread. “When Bahlin and I escaped the sithen, we were out of his immediate reach. He went to the hotel, performed simple magic to disguise himself as Hellion, and destroyed my room looking for the Niteclif family tree. It would have saved him time to know where the room was as he’d been there less than five days prior.
“He reached out to me in a dream walk, intent on testing his power to see if he could kill me in my sleep. What better way to dispose of the Niteclif at this point than to have her show up dead in her lover’s, his nemesis’s, bed? So he came to me, but Bahlin saved me. The ironic thing is, you tried to save me that night, too, didn’t you? You were the light in the forest.”
Tyr shrugged elegantly, watching me as I paused my pacing about the room. “I told you that I would have saved you some of this heartache if I could, Maddy. I meant it. You are a child of my blood, bone of my bone, and I wish you absolutely no ill will. But some things one cannot be saved from.”
I gave a curt nod before continuing, thinking this was sage advice. “Stealing the family tree, Tarrek sent