فصل سی و هشتم

38

His Father’s Name

Vidal found his way back easily. The labyrinth didn’t try to keep him in. He had done what had been foretold, but he was not supposed to meet his fate inside its endless circles. The world outside would take care of him.

They were waiting for him—Mercedes; her brother, Pedro; and the men from the forest. They were marking the end of Vidal’s path with their bodies, standing side by side outside the labyrinth in a half circle that mirrored the stone arch. The moment had finally arrived—Vidal felt as if he’d lived it a thousand times in his dreams. The moment to prove he was his father’s son and to show his own son what a man’s life was all about.

Stepping out from under the arch, Vidal returned the rebels’ hostile glances one by one, until his eyes found Mercedes. She didn’t move as he walked toward her with his son. Pedro was standing by her side. Vidal never knew he’d fought both sister and brother. He held his son out to the woman who had cut—but not killed—him.

“My son.” The world needed to hear it one more time. And the child had to live, for he would live through him, as his father had in him, with every breath he took.

Mercedes accepted the baby. Of course. She was a woman, she wouldn’t harm a child, not even his.

Slowly—as had been the ritual of his life—Vidal took the watch from his pocket and cradled it in his hands. This is it, he thought. The glorious ending. He was ready to step over the edge. Despite his dead soldiers and the burning mill reddening the sky, he felt no fear.

The spirit of his father filled him. Made him whole.

Mercedes stepped back to her brother’s side, the baby in her arms while Vidal stared at the watch’s shattered face, its hands counting away his last moments as meticulously, as it had counted away all the years since his father’s death. He could still hear the ticking, even after he closed his fingers around the silver.

Vidal cleared his throat, eating the fear when it tried to rise, swallowing it. They would see no trace of it on his stiffening face.

“Tell my son—” He took a deep breath. It was not as easy as he’d imagined it, yearning for this moment in front of a mirror, playing with Death, the razor in his hand. “Tell my son what time his father died. Tell him that I—” “No!” Mercedes interrupted, pressing his son to her chest. “He won’t know your name.”

Blood drained from Vidal’s face. For the first time in his life he felt terror. This was the moment he’d always dreamt—the one he’d rehearsed in the mirror every morning. Honor in death. This couldn’t be going so wrong, it just couldn’t. His mind was racing.

Pedro raised his pistol and shot him in the face. The bullet shattered Vidal’s cheekbone and severed his optic nerve on the way to his brain. There it lodged in the back of his cranium. The entry wound cried a single tear of blood. Such an insignificant wound, but Death was nesting in it.

With a regretful groan, Vidal collapsed at the feet of the men he had come to hunt. And like that, he was gone.

His son began to cry in Mercedes’s arms.