He leaned forward again. “Girl, you listen to your father.”
Oh shit. He was worse than Diandra when he had something to say.
He kept at me. “I do not want to lose you. I’ll tell you that right now, you go again, it would break my heart. But you go, I would know you went and that grandbaby of mine would have his daddy and you… you would have him too. And I can see by that dead in your eyes that if you went back, you’d have what I had, what I’ve held precious all these years, what I had with your mother before she was lost to us. And I know this, darlin’, I had to go to a whole other f**kin’ world where primitive people lived and I had to piss in the trees and take a shit by a river, I do not f**kin’ care. Your mother was there, that is where I’d f**kin’ be.”
My eyes filled with tears and I whispered, “Pop.”
“And I’ll go on to tell you this, it would be a hard drive, the hardest in my life, but you want me to take you, I’ll drive you to that witch and I’ll hug you hard before you go but you’ll go knowin’ that even though I’ll miss you, I’ll be happy for you, knowin’ you had what I lost.”
I closed my eyes and looked away.
Then I said to the wall. “You don’t get it. He… it was… the whole thing was hard, being with him, adapting to that world, but I stuck by him.” I looked back at Pop. “I stuck by him with every trial thrown at me and when I say that, Pop, I mean I watched women plunging knives in their stomachs and men having their legs cut off and heads sliced clean from their bodies.” Pop’s eyes got big but I kept going. “And I took a man’s life… well, one and half men actually but… whatever. I stuck by it. I stuck by Lahn. Through everything that world and he threw at me. He had one trial, Pop, one and he didn’t have to witness anything that turned his stomach, he didn’t take his first life, he didn’t get betrayed by someone he cared about and nearly lose his life because of it. He just had to believe in me. Simple. Just believe in me. He didn’t. He killed what I felt for him. He killed it dead. I don’t have the power to go back and Circe doesn’t have the power to send me. And I’m not going to that witch, Pop. I’m never going back. I’ll miss it, I made friends, I had a pet tigress who could talk to me and I was a f**king queen for God’s sake. Life was strange and it was insane but it was also good. But I’m not going back. Ever. If what he killed in me never comes alive again, so be it. I’ll have what you had and I’ll make do. I’ll have his child and just like you, that’s going to be good enough for me.”
Pop stared at me and I held his eyes.
Then he came to the realization he’d come to often in my life and that was the fact that when I made up my mind about something, when my heart led me down the path I was determined to take, he wasn’t going to be able to sway me.
I knew this when he asked, “You were a queen?”
I closed my eyes, sucked in breath then opened them. “Yes, the true, golden warrior queen of the Korwahk nation.”
He blinked then muttered, “Holy f**k.”
“Damn straight,” I muttered back and, f**k me, I did it proudly.
He kept staring at me. Then he asked, “Girl, how do you kill half a man? They got half men there?”
I relaxed. Then I grinned.
Then I said, “Pick me up for Circe’s party, I’ll tell you stories on the way there.”
He shook his head as he stood, muttering, “Not sure I wanna know.”
This was probably wise.
His eyes came to me.
“But I’m gonna listen,” he said softly.
Yep, that was Pop. He’d always listen.
“Then I’ll tell you,” I said softly back.
He nodded. Then, “His name was Lahn?”
I clenched my teeth to battle the pain. When I had it in check, I nodded. “Dax Lahn, king of Korwahk and the mightiest warrior of the Korwahk Horde.”
Pop’s lips twitched. Then he noted, “Girl, you aimed high. Proud ‘a you, catchin’ the eye of a king.”
I rolled my eyes.
Pop moved to the door and I opened the drawer with my purse in it. As I was standing, I noticed he hadn’t moved through and I stopped and looked at him.
“You sure, darlin’?” he whispered.
I nodded. I was sure. Very sure. It hurt, every day, all day.
But I was sure.