Chapter 291: Expired Apology
CRASH.
Shards of white ceramic scattered across the tiles, catching the light, reflecting the stunned expression on his face.
"What—" August’s hand shot out, grabbing Arkai’s wrist, pulling his hands up, checking for cuts or blood, for anything that would explain why his son was standing frozen in a kitchen full of broken dishes with his jaw on the floor. "Hey, are you okay? Are you hurt?"
Arkai could not speak. His mind was racing, spinning, trying to fit this new knowledge into the shape of his father that he had carried his whole life.
The man who had been strict and proper, who had been August Dawnoro in every way that mattered—
"Father..." The word ca out weak. Almost breathless. He never knew that!
Not even in the real world!
In neither life had his father told him this!
This man—
Arkai’s mind was racing, turning.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Was this world truly the sa as the real world? Or were there many iterations, many fates, tangled all over each other, woven into sothing that looked almost the sa but was actually many, all happening at once, all just slightly different?
He hated that he would never know. Hated the thought that there were things about his parents, about his mother, about the life they had lived before he was born that would always be hidden from him. But still—
Sienna had been the sa. The way she had gotten lost as a child, the way he had found her in the freezing cold, the way she had looked at him with those wide, desperate eyes. That was the sa in both worlds.
Ines was the sa. The way she held herself, the way she moved through the Dawnoro house like a woman who had never quite learned to be comfortable in it, the way she looked at her daughter like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. That was the sa.
Roarke was the sa. His right hand, his brother, the man who had followed him through everything and would, Arkai knew, follow him through anything. That was the sa.
Was his father and his mother also—
He stopped the thought before it could finish.
Arkai laughed. Even the sound of his own laugh surprised him, bursting out of his chest before he could stop it. "Why didn’t you ever tell ?!"
He asked with a rising voice, cracking. "Even in your death bed—" The words slipped out, and August’s face did sothing complicated.
"Are you cursing
to die?" August’s voice was sharp, but his hand was still holding Arkai’s wrist, still checking for cuts. "I’m still alive, you brat! What do you an death bed?"
"AHAHAHAHAH—!"
Arkai laughed harder. His whole body shook with it. He leaned against the counter, gasping for air, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. "And what—" He could barely get the words out. "—because you made her pregnant, you ran away with her to a cabin in the woods?!"
August’s face went red. "SHUT UP!"
"AHAHAHWAHAHAHHWAHWAH—" Arkai’s laughter echoed off the kitchen walls, bounced off the pots and pans, and filled the room with sothing that had been missing from his father’s house for a very, very long ti.
"YOU—BRAT! I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE—"
"HAHAHAHAH—"
August stood there, holding a dish towel, his face the color of a sunset, his son laughing at him, and for a mont, he looked like a young man again.
A young man in love, living in a cabin, washing dishes for a woman who hated them. A young man who had not yet beco the patriarch.
But this ti... it was his son.
Who was laughing at him.
His son, who had grown up to be taller than him, sharper than him, more patient than him.
"Father, I..." Arkai’s laughter faded, though the trace of it still lingered at the corners of his mouth, softening his face. "I demand an apology."
August turned to find a broom. His hands needed sothing to do. His voice, when it ca, was gruff and dismissive. "For what? For making you drop the plate?"
"No, Father." Arkai’s voice was quiet. He squatted, gathering pieces, his fingers careful and his eyes fixed on the broken shards in his hands.
"For slapping
when you thought I was about to rape Sienna. For locking
in the dungeon for months and beating . For never giving
a chance to explain. Or listen. Or believe ."
August’s hand tightened on the broom.
The kitchen was very quiet since the water had stopped running. The pile of dishes sat forgotten.
It was true that so broken pieces could not be put back together. But you picked them up anyway, because leaving them broken on the floor was not an option.
Those dark days. The months in the dungeon. The lash, the closed fists, the way every attempt to explain, to defend, to make his father understand had been t with silence or rage.
At the ti, the man had already made up his mind and would not be moved.
Arkai had never blad his father. Not then, not in the real world, not in the years after.
How it must have looked? A son, found in his room with a sister he tied to the bed. A father, walking in at the worst possible mont, seeing the worst possible thing.
He understood. He truly did.
But he had wished... just... that his father had asked. That his father had looked at him and seen the son he had raised, the son who would never do what he had been accused of.
Ever.
He wished his father had, in the long years after, in the quiet monts when they sat together and said nothing, found the words to say I was wrong.
On his deathbed, he had not.
He had looked at his son with eyes that knew, with eyes that carried the weight of everything he had done and everything he had failed to do, and he had said nothing. Nothing at all.
"What..." August’s eyes wide now. "What are you saying...?" He couldn’t understand. "What even..."
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