Seven men within. Conversation stops. I was right: my father is here. It’s a shock to see his face again, but it’s a shock somewhere outside my body, something I’ll dream about tonight but am unable to feel now. He has new lines around his mouth and forehead, the latter of which deepen when he finds my face. I’ve never seen him so stupefied before. It makes me smile.
“Hello, Father.” I let the tent flap fall behind me. “I’ve decided to come home.”
My father and the men horseshoed around him stare at me like a phantom. I think my father forgot what I look like. Then again, I would appear different to him. I hadn’t yet come into my full height when I’d run. I was still a child. I blossomed into a woman in Terysos. My face isn’t as round as it once was. My hair is longer and bleached from so many days beneath the harsh sun.
But recognize he does. He schools his face—carefully, one muscle twitch at a time—so familiar, it’s like the last eight years never were. He lifts his chin, straightens his shoulders.
“Calia, my dear.” He speaks with both confusion and suspicion. “What an unexpected delight.” He gestures to two men, and they push past me outside, likely to see if I brought anything or anyone with me. With my sudden arrival, my father doesn’t know what to suspect. And he hates that.
He clears his throat, regaining a practiced calm with every breath. “I’ve been searching for you.”
I raise my chin to match his. Is our eye level even? “I know.”
His lip twitches. “Where have you been?”
I shouldn’t be surprised to be interrogated. “Terysos.”
“Lie.” He grasps the table before him. I glance to see if there’s a map on it—my father always loved to use maps like game boards, planning his conquests—but find only an open ledger, too far away for me to read. “Half the people here are from Terysos.” He tilts his heads to his companions, as though I hadn’t noticed them.
“Are they, now?” I have very little time to gain my father’s trust. I have to give him anything I can spare. Easy facts, half-truths, flattery. “But I was in Terysos. How else could I have found your army?” Half-truth. I was in Terysos. When I was fourteen. Now for a fact. “But before that, I was in Cagmar.”
“Cagmar?” one of the men repeats, like he’s tasted something strange.
My father’s brow shoots up once more. “Surely you jest.”
“Not at all.” I take another step into the room. Look around like it interests me, giving myself time to think. All tactics my father inadvertently taught me. Will he recognize them? “They keep humans as pets, just like you do.”
The twelve-year-old me would throw up at the blatancy of my words. My anger fuels them, a dull simmer, but very much alive. I have run from my father a very long time. I caused him trouble. If I were to be perfectly compliant, he would suspect me more than he does already.
With a single gesture, he dismisses the rest of the men, who scrutinize me as they slowly wind their way out. My father says, “Come immediately if you hear any sort of struggle.”
Ah, there he is. Cautious. Wise. He hasn’t forgotten why he wants me. He remembers what I am. What I can do.
He bides his time until we’re alone. The tent flap settles, and he steps around the table, strolls to my side, and seizes me by my hair.
I’m right. My eyes are level with his, until he wrenches my head to the side.
“Why, dear daughter,” he hisses in my ear, “would you come back, after all the pains I’ve taken to retrieve you, hmm? Explain that to me.”
I don’t struggle against his grip. Fear has dulled and muted, an echo in my bones. Fascinating, how quickly I remember how to react, how to breathe, how to speak. It’s been a second skin, all this time.
I feed him a sprinkle of truth. “Because I’ve been with trolls. And I realized that a life with you was better than life as a slave.” As though life with him was anything but.
He holds me like that, my neck craned to the side, as though he’s waiting for it to hurt. Then he releases me. I resume my posture as though nothing happened, keeping my hands at my side. I can rub the kinked muscles later.
Azmar, where are you now? In your room? In the dungeon? Are you angry, too? Do you hate me now? I remember him taking his own anger out on the training hall surfaces. I tuck the memory away like a prayer.
My father steps back. “You’ve riled my men.”
I hadn’t noticed, but now I hear quiet commotion beyond the walls of the tent. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep my expression dull.