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Even after the door closed, Dasen stared at it unsure of what had just happened. Had his father actually just come into this room and apologized for being “an ass”? He wiped away the tears that had escaped down his face and tried to understand what he had just heard. His father admitted to putting his company before his son, to not being able to look at him, to abandoning him. When he had needed him most, his father had run away. He had not been too busy, he had willfully abandoned his son.
Dasen tried to put himself in his father’s place but couldn’t. Wasn’t he supposed to be the adult? Weren’t adults supposed to be strong for their children? How could he have done that to him? How were a bunch of mills, a pile of contracts and money more important than his son? And on top of that, all the lies about this fool’s errand. It had nothing to do with fate, with the Order’s plan. It was all to preserve the only thing he really cared about, Ronigan & Galbridge.
Dasen rose from his chair, extinguished his lamp, and pulled off his clothes in a huff. He found the silk nightshirt in his bag, yanked it over his head and sat on the narrow, but well-stuffed, bed. His frustration came to a boil, and he punched the mattress, teeth grinding. He knew it was stupid to be jealous of an inanimate object, but he wanted to destroy Ronigan & Galbridge. And like a spurned lover, he began plotting his revenge. At that moment, he wanted to join Tethina just to get control of Ipid’s company and tear it apart.
Lying in his bed beneath a single cotton sheet, he listened to the rain hitting the roof and plotted. But as his anger faded toward sleep, his thoughts kept returning to Tethina. “Be her friend,” his father had said. Dasen had nearly missed it, but now that one comment would not leave him. He thought about Tethina as a person, about what the letter said about her. Her aunt had said that the villagers might hurt her. He could only imagine that they hated her. He had seen the young men and women of these villages. They were far more conservative than in the city. Dresses drug on the ground, necklines nearly to their ears. Women did not work that he saw, did not do any serving at the inns, did not even venture into the establishments. How could the Tethina from the letter have emerged from this?
A girl with no friends, Dasen realized with a yawn. How else could she so flaunt the rules? Because she has nothing to lose, no relationships at risk. And no desire to establish any. Is she even capable of having a friend?
His mind grew muddled as he drifted toward sleep, but images of himself alone in the library, aloof and removed from his fellow students, played in his first moments of dream. Am I any better than Tethina, than my father? There was something there. Dasen could almost find it, almost understand what his father was trying to say. In the morning, he would put it together. He rolled over and heard the rain taper to a drizzle, tiny patters on his window that carried him to sleep.
Chapter 5
From Across the Clouded Range Page 12
