Forcing himself to keep going, Cut laid his conscience at the altar of wrongness. “I’m not blaming Bonnie. I’m not blaming my past or the morals I’d been fed. I’m blaming myself for being so fucking weak to stop it. Two of my children are dead. One is disabled for life. But you came back from the grave to teach me the lesson I needed to learn.”

Kestrel isn’t dead.

He’ll come back to me because I made it safe for him to do so.

My eyes stung thinking of what my brother would say if he saw what I’d done. Would he hate me or understand? Would he fear me or celebrate? “What lesson?”

Silence fell as Cut worked out how best to deliver his epiphany.

He forgot I could taste his confession as clearly as a drop of expensive cognac on my tongue.

“That I’m no better than a Weaver. That being a Hawk doesn’t grant immunity or power over another’s life. That I’m not the monster I tried to be.”

Silence reigned once again.

I had no reply. He didn’t need one.

I played with the knife, running the blade through my fingers. His head never left my shoulder, his arms useless by his sides.

He couldn’t move even if he wanted to, but I felt he didn’t want to. This rare precious moment would never come again, and we needed to touch, to say sorry deeper than words.

Ten minutes could’ve past or ten hours—I lost track of time. My thoughts were with ghosts of people I’d lost. Of tragedies that’d come to an end but would never be forgotten.

Finally, my father forced his head off my shoulder and smiled sadly. “You’re a good son, Jethro. I’m proud of the man you turned out to be, even after I screwed you up. I wish I could say sorry to Nila for taking the Debt Inheritance too far. I had the power all along to stop it, just as my father did, and I chose not to. I also wish I could apologise to my brother for what I did and to Rose for how terribly I treated her. So many things to apologise for.” He sucked in a breath, his arms and legs like discarded puppet strings. He couldn’t sit up. He could barely breathe. “So many things I’ve done.”

I’d done that to him. I’d shown him what he’d become, and he’d finally accepted his actions were bad, but his soul…it wasn’t as decayed as he feared.

Shifting, I kissed his temple. “I believe you.”

His sigh expelled more than just worry but his entire scorecard of wrongdoings. He exhaled his past, living the final moments in the present. “I’m ready to go, Kite. I want to go. Let me die and find peace. Let me fix the wrongs our family have caused.”

My heart charged faster. As awful as it’d been breaking my father, forcing him to be honest and true, I didn’t think I could kill him.

Not now.

Not now we’d connected like we always should’ve—man to man. Father to son.

Another tear rolled down my cheek. “I accept your apology, and I grant you my forgiveness.” I passed him the knife. “I don’t have the power to grant redemption for what you did to Jaz or Kes or Emma or Rose or the other people you hurt, but I do promise they will know you regretted it before you passed. If they can, they will forgive you in time.”

Cut clenched his jaw as I moved away.

I accidentally knocked his painful limbs to squat in front of him. “I can’t kill you, Dad.”

Dad.

I hadn’t used that word since Jasmine’s disability.

Not since the last time he’d deserved such an adoring title.

Cut smiled, his golden eyes matching mine in the darkness. “I’ve always loved you. You know that, don’t you?”

I wanted to say I didn’t. That when he shot me in the parlour. That when he hurt my sister in the barn. That every day I strived for his respect and love, I didn’t know what was beneath his sadism.

But I refused to lie to a dying man.

I’d known. And that was why I trusted that eventually, one day, the goodness inside him would win. That he wouldn’t remain as awful as he had.

A childish hope and finally, it had come true.

Only for him to die.

“Kite…before I go…I want to do something to right my mistakes.” His voice ached with sorrow. “Something to protect you all from the instructions I set beyond the grave.”

If I didn’t sense his sincerity, I wouldn’t have believed he could feel so much regret. But he did—mountains of it. Chasms of it. He truly hated what he’d done. To everyone, not just to Jasmine and me but also to Nila and Kes and Daniel. And Rose. Most of all Rose.

I stared at him. He wanted something…something to…

“A piece of paper? Is that what you need?”

Cut smiled crookedly. “You always were a mind reader.”

“Even when you tried to beat it out of me.”

The truth in our words was just that. Truth. Not judgement or accusation. Just a statement of what was.

Cut nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Climbing wearily to my feet, I moved toward the large table with implements of destruction and opened a rickety draw. Inside, I found a mouse-chewed notepad and a gnawed-on pencil.

Taking both back to my father, I sat back down and passed them to him.

He tried to take them, but his arms wouldn’t work. The tendons failing to transmit instructions.

He sighed. “You’ll have to do it.”

He didn’t lay blame. Just spoke the facts. He accepted his punishment and didn’t hate me—if anything, he was grateful to have paid for his trespasses.