Chapter XII
This couldn’t be happening. I refused to believe it. Whatever else my father had been, he had always been invulnerable.
“Wake up,” I said, softly.
There was no response.
I said it again, louder. But the room was still. I wanted to believe I could hear quiet breathing in the stillness.
They had to just be sleeping deeply. Woltan and Kara couldn’t be right. I refused to believe my parents couldn’t hear me, couldn’t see me.
Sure, my father’s face was a little blue and his eyes were closed. But he’d been through a lot. I crouched down next to him where he lay, next to my mother, and I spoke a work of power: Wach.
Was there a twitch in his eyelids?
I couldn’t be sure.
I tried to speak a greater spell, pulling deep within me. It was so frustrating. There was so much magic I didn’t know.
Excitare.
Did my mother move, or was it just a flicker of the candlelight?
I put my hand to my sword, to try to pull greater power.
Anders, you need to stop. You won’t help them this way.
I pulled my hand away from my sword in a rage. What could Carolina know? Did she have parents?
I had parents once, Anders. Even the fair folk feel pain, Anders.
I blocked her out of my mind, and looked at the two bodies. I had trouble putting together what I saw with my memories. Were these the same people from just a few days ago? When I had argued with them about covering my pimples?
Now they were so silent and their skin so blue they might as well have been dead. How could they do this to me? How dare they never tell me about the dangers, about the sword I now carried at my side.
“Mother!” I yelled, but it was too late now. “Father!” I yelled.
There was no reaction. How could they do this to me — leave me all alone, without knowing what they expected from me? And now just lie their like logs, and leave me to be the parent.
Look at me, I wanted to shout at them, I’m a three-blooded prince!
But they lay there not moving a muscle, blue skinned and pale.
I touched my father’s skin and it felt stone cold, smooth and cold as marble.
This wasn’t my father. This was just some blue-tinted copy of him, that didn’t do anything. My father was gone, and I didn’t know where he was anymore. My mother was gone, and I had a cold blue statue here instead.
Someone was playing a nasty joke on me. It was all a trick, and any minute my parents were going to sit up and laugh and say, “Surprise!”
But I knew that wasn’t true. And that’s what made me so angry.
Their souls were trapped inside these bodies, their minds were there too, but if they couldn’t be contacted, what was the point? They might as well be dead.
If I could only talk with them just one more time, find out what they needed me to do.
“Anders?”
Someone was speaking to me.