A Sparrow Stole My Place as Heir novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: A Father's Reasons
My father was waiting for me on the Sky Terrace, alone, with no guards.
He stood at the stone rail in his plain night robe, looking down at the dark Mortal World.
Only a few lights burned down there.
"Sit," he said.
"I'll stand."
"As you like."
For a while he said nothing.
He was a big man gone soft with grief, his gold beard grey now, and he had stood by that rail every night since my mother died.
"The Vault is open," I said. "The seal is cut."
"I know."
"You gave him the key."
"I did."
He said it plainly.
"Why?"
"Because of your sisters," he said.
He turned around.
"After your mother, this house was a tomb. Nine daughters sat at my table for twelve years and not one of them laughed. They said grace and ate and went to their rooms. Do you know what that is, for a father?"
"I never laughed either."
"No," he said. "You studied."
It was said without cruelty, which made it worse.
"Then the sparrow came," he said. "He sat at your mother's window and sang, and the next morning Thessaly was at breakfast. She told a joke, Daelan. I hadn't heard her voice that way in a decade. I asked him how he knew the song, and he said the Mortal World had a thousand lullabies and this was only one of them. I let him in."
"And the key?"
"He asked to sing at her bier. I thought, why not? He's only a bird." My father rubbed his face. "I didn't think he would take anything."
I opened the Atlas against my arm and turned to the page of the Vault.
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