Chapter 387: The table 2

She lowered the cup.

For a heartbeat the truth sat on her tongue, heavy and bitter.

I killed a man. I have killed more. I plan to kill another. The woman you loved was taken from you by someone I intend to destroy, and I am not sure I can do it without taking half the town with me.

"The exam," she said instead.

Her father’s eyebrows rose slightly.

"Tomorrow," she continued, looking down into the amber depths of her tea. "The competition. I want to do well. I’ve been practising every night, and I want to score full marks. That’s all."

There was a pause. Then Lord Silverward started to laugh.

It began as a short breath through his nose, and then it grew until his shoulders shook and he had to set his cup down before he spilled it.

It was a warm laugh, a deep one, and it filled the quiet room in a way that made Kiara want to throw a cushion at him.

"What is so funny?" she demanded.

"Forgive me, forgive me." He wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

"It is only that in all the years I have known you, I have never once heard you speak of marks. Not once. You were always the girl who finished every exam in half the time and spent the rest of it looking at the boys across the room."

"I did not."

"You did. At the last examination, you spent the entire written paper making eyes at that tall boy from Class B. Caelum, I think the name was. The academy sent me a letter about it."

Heat rose in Kiara’s cheeks. "That was long ago."

"It was. And since then the girl I knew, who spent every free hour searching for a lover, has become a girl who studies by lamplight, stares out of windows, and talks about full marks."

He leaned back and folded his hands over his stomach.

His eyes had grown sharper, kind but sharp, the eyes of a father who had been paying attention for all of her life.

"So I ask myself, what changed? Either someone put a book in your hand, or someone put something else in your heart."

Kiara opened her mouth to deny it.

But the denial did not come.

Instead, without being asked, her thoughts went to a messy-haired boy with a lazy smile and hazel eyes that had looked at her, on a moonlit rooftop, as if she were still someone worth forgiving.

The corner of her mouth lifted before she could stop it.

Lord Silverward noticed. Of course he noticed.

"Ah," he said softly.

"What?" Kiara said. "I didn’t say anything."

"You did not need to." He lifted his cup and hid a smile behind the rim. "I have seen that face on exactly one other person in my life. So. Is there a boy?"

She should have lied. A lie would have been easy and safe, and she told them every day.

But the room was warm, the tea smelled like her mother’s kitchen, and her father was looking at her with such open and uncomplicated curiosity that the words slipped out before she could catch them.

"...Maybe."

The cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

Lord Silverward stared at her.

He actually stared.

The great lord of House Silverward, who had faced down councils and nobles and the High Mage’s own envoys with a face like stone, looked at his daughter with his mouth slightly open.

"What?" Kiara snapped, her face growing hotter. "Why are you looking at me like that? You asked."

"I did. I did ask." He set the cup down carefully. "I simply did not expect you to answer. In truth, I did not expect there to be an answer to give. I thought, perhaps, a girl who ran through boys the way you do would never settle on one long enough to be called a worry."

"I did not run through boys."

"Kiara."

"Well, they were the ones who run away from me." She folded her arms and pushed out her lower lip in a pout, and for a moment she was seven years old again, and her father was a tall man with a deep voice who let her sit on his desk. "You’re being mean."

"I am being honest, which is far worse." His eyes crinkled. "Come. Tell me about him. I will not interrupt."

"You always interrupt."

"I will try not to. Begin."

Kiara looked away, out of the window, to where the gold light had faded to copper and the first lamps were being lit along the garden wall.

She was quiet for a while.

When she spoke, her voice came out lower than she meant it to.

"I met him for fun. That’s the truth. He is just a boy in my academy that nobody noticed, sitting at the back with this lazy face like he was always half asleep. I thought he’d be amusing for a few days." She turned the cup in her fingers.

"But he wasn’t boring. He was funny, in a stupid way, smart, and he kept making me laugh when I didn’t want to. We had... a lot of fun. More than just laughing."

Lord Silverward cleared his throat and became very interested in the teapot.

"And somewhere in the middle of it, I told him things. About myself. Things I haven’t said to anyone."

"What sort of things?"

"Father!" She glared at him. "That’s personal. It’s boyfriend and girlfriend stuff. I can’t tell my parents that."

He put up both hands, chuckling. "Fair enough. I withdraw the question. Go on."

She drew a slow breath.

"Then I did something wrong." The words came out quieter.

"I was selfish. I wanted something so badly that I stopped thinking about what it would cost him, and I hurt him. Properly. I didn’t see it until it was too late, and when I did, it was already done. He stopped talking to me. We didn’t speak for a while. Days. It felt a lot longer."

Her father did not interrupt. He had gone still, listening.