Page 113 of Rejected Hollow

"No. Of course you don't." He smiled and gestured toward the chair. "Sit down, Kaelen."

This time, I did.

He settled into the chair opposite mine with the same pleasant composure he brought to everything, as if this were an ordinary conversation between father and son.

"A Hollow survives a Moonrun without being caught," he began. "Then she walks into the Red, puts her hands on a man who should have been beyond saving, and somehow puts him back together. After that, she is sent against a senior swan with a staff—"

"Sabotaged staff," I said. "Varga gave her a sabotaged staff."

"Did he?" My father lifted his eyebrows with mild interest. "How enterprising of him."

He did not bother pretending surprise.

Then he continued.

"And at the last possible moment, this Hollow shifts into a wolf. Not merely any wolf, either. A black one. A black wolf that half the Council has seen often enough on my son to recognize immediately." He turned his glass slowly between his fingers. "You rejected her in front of the entire school. Everyone heard you do it. Yet the bond appears to have ignored you."

"It will break."

"Will it?"

His voice remained quiet.

"A true rejection finishes the bond quickly. A day, perhaps two. It has been three months." He leaned forward slightly. "So there are only two possibilities that interest me. Either you did not mean the rejection, which would be sentimental and foolish, or she is capable of forming a bond that does not require permission. I find the second possibility considerably more concerning."

"She's a Hollow," I said. "You heard the registrar."

"I heard the registrar." He sat back again and studied me over the rim of his glass. "Do you know what she is?"

"No."

"No," he agreed. "I suppose you wouldn't. You were never as curious as your mother."

For a moment I saw my mother again in the courtyard at the Iron Seat, standing in the snow with her hair coming loose around her face.

I said nothing.

My father set his glass down.

"Here is what will happen. On Bond Night, in front of the school and the envoys, you will perform a Severing. You will do it properly, with the knife and the words, so there is no room for doubt afterward. Not for the Council. Not for the school. Not for her." He paused. "Then you will stand beside Delphine Marrow and announce your match. Her father has been patient, and the Wardens appreciate conclusions that leave nothing untidy."

"And if I refuse?"

For the first time, he looked genuinely surprised that I had asked.

"Then a Hollow who can carry the wolf of a Vance falls under the Accord's provisions for aberrant bonds," he said. "The Council will deal with her before the Solstice. Quietly and efficiently." He lifted his glass and took another sip. "I would sign the order myself. You know that."

I did know.

I had seen his signature at the bottom of a cull order once before.

I had been seventeen, and snow had covered the courtyard at the Iron Seat. They brought my mother outside wearing a silver collar and a thin gray dress. She was not snarling or foaming at the mouth. She did not look like anything the Red was supposed to turn a person into.

She looked like my mother.

She was thin and frightened, and her hair was falling out of its pins.

My father had rested one hand on my shoulder, in almost the same place he had touched me that morning in front of the school.