I was drifting on the edge of consciousness, my head still hazy from deep sleep, however I was beginning to hear the murmurs of conversation outside the bedroom door.

“I don’t know what she remembers,” a gruff male voice spoke.

“Why don’t you ask?” Asked the soft voice of a woman.

“What if she’s calm when she awakes? I wouldn’t want to be the one to bring back her anxieties, this has clearly been overwhelming for her. I don’t want to be responsible for an emotional overload.”

“I think it would be an emotional overload anyway.”

“I guess…” the voice sighed dramatically. “I just feel so guilty”

“Why?”

“She thought I was dead.” As soon as the male voice uttered that sentence, I knew instantly who was speaking, and who they were talking about.

“I know,” said Isadora, “and I suppose you have a right to feel guilty, but you did it for her own good.”

“But was it her own good? Maybe that’s what I thought at the time, but it was quite a rushed decision. What if faking my death wasn’t the best idea if I was only going to see her again? Obviously, I didn’t know that I would, but a part of me always hoped…” He trailed off again. “She was never meant to see me again after I was ‘murdered,’” said The Man. Michael. My dad.

“I’ve given lots of advice over my life and I think fate comes for us in different ways. Maybe she was meant to come back into your life.”

“Maybe.” He sounded unsure, but accepting, seemingly the strangest mix of emotion.

As if a signal had switched at that word, Michael opened the door and stepped into the room alone – I could tell because Isadora’ soft footsteps quietly trailed away – and took a slow, deep breath as if working up the courage to do something.

I kept my eyes shut tight, hoping he wouldn’t know I’d overheard their conversation. Obviously I wanted to scream and cry and be angry, and so did my body apparently, from the influx of boiling energy coursing through my veins. Somehow, my heart was saying otherwise.

It was beating with such an intensity, but somehow I knew it wasn’t because of any negative emotion. Isadora’s words played in my head: ‘maybe she was meant to come back into your life.’ Something told me she was true. I knew well enough by now that destiny and fate where real things, and they were the reason I had come back into my father. The reason we were here together.

A small smile played on my lips, and I had to use all my energy to not visibly change my expression too much.

I tried not to move but instinctively flinched as I heard footsteps approach the bed, pulling me from the hope swelling pathetically in my chest.

“Are you awake?” Michael asked softly.

“Yeah,” I whispered, slightly ashamed of my eavesdropping. My voice sounded croaky and tired, but I suspected that also had something to do with the fact that I had died.

“How are you feeling?” He asked softly, sitting down beside my feet.

I tried to raise my head, to sit, to look him in the eyes, but I couldn’t. Was it physical fatigue or was my body just refusing to look at the man who I thought had died a long time ago? I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, my words barely audible. “Sorry.” It didn’t sound like my voice. It was small and weak, like a whisper.

“It’s okay if you don’t know how to feel.” Dad’s voice was soft and understanding, infinitely different from the many other times I’d heard him speak over the past few weeks. It was warm and filled my stomach with hope, bringing back an abundance of memories I’d desperately tried to squash down after his death.

“You’re alive.” It was all I could say. The words tumbled from my tongue before I could stop them, and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. We’d already spoken about this. Yes: he is in fact alive.

“I am.”

“You lied.” Once again, the words came before I could stop them, but many months of pent-up emotion towards the so-called ‘death’ of my father was finally returning, making their escape, and all memory of Isadora’s hopeful words disappeared from my brain.

“I did.” It was all he said.

I lifted my head, just enough to meet his own emerald eyes, and saw everything. The guilt. The regret. The sadness.

There was a part of me that wanted to make him cry. Wanted to make him sob and tell me how much he missed me and how he will forever regret missing some of the most important months of my life. Obviously I now knew there was a reason I’d never seen him cry before – apparently full-blood Mythics didn’t have the ability – but there was a part of me that also knew making him feel more pain than he already did would just make me feel worse about the whole situation. He was feeling enough regret and guilt.

“And I am so, so sorry. I completely understand if you’re angry; you have every right to be. And I will explain, I promise, but not right now. You’ve been through enough.” He spoke softly, his voice wobbling slightly. She knew that if he could, he would in fact be crying right now. Probably completely breaking down. Just because full-blood Mythics couldn’t physically show their pain through tears, they could most definitely feel it.

“Okay.” I wanted to argue, to scream, to hold him here until he told me why he’d caused me so much anguish, yet something stopped me.

Instead, I gathered every ounce of strength I had left and sat up from my cocoon of blankets, shuffled over to him, and wrapped him up in the tightest hug I could muster. “I missed you,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

He tensed and didn’t move his arms, and for a second I thought he was going to push me away, and leave me again. He couldn’t leave. So many people had. Just as I was about to pull away and apologize for my sudden movements, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and hugged me back, tight and full of love.

Father and daughter. Daughter and father.

“I love you, so, so much Kaitlin. Do you know that?”

I nodded, the rising emotion in my chest making it impossible to speak. We stayed like that for a long time, before Isadora opened the door and we pulled away hesitantly.

“I’ve made everyone dinner,” she uttered, her words sweet and understanding. “We don’t have much, but I cooked some chicken. I hope that’s okay?”

“Of course,” Dad nodded.

“The others are already eating, and I’ve instructed them not to ask any questions,” she said sympathetically, before leaving the room.

As soon as she’d closed the door, Dad spoke up again. “Are you coming, Kay, or do you want to stay here a little while longer?”

I tossed the question around in my head for a while. My limbs where sore and heavy, my eyes tired and stinging from all the crying that had happened over the last twenty-four hours.

But just as I thought about the tears and inevitably the sadness, some other part of me snapped. Somewhere in the deepest darkest depths of my mind, memories of the earlier events and small whisps of moments where conjured in my brain.

The image of Jake moments before he’d stabbed me, his eyes vacant and mouth twisted with fury. An image of Yas appeared, sprawled on the floor with a dagger twisted into her chest. Stephanie, uttering the final words of the family being back together. Those words made sense now.

Mother. Father. Daughter. A family. The family had been back together, if only for a fleeting moment. The thought of it stabbed in my gut, the blade of realisation twisting sharply.

“Kay?” Dad asked, his voice pulling me out of my thoughts. His voice was raised, as though it wasn’t the first time he’d called my name.

“Yeah?” I asked, my voice sounding like a drone.

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t want to be trapped in these thoughts. I didn’t want to be alone with them. I knew that as soon as I had some time to myself – where I wasn’t deep in sleep – I would remember all the details of the fight the night before. But I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to keep those memories at bay for as long as I could.

Maybe I should ask a Witch to wipe my memory. The thought was amusing but it seemed I didn’t have the ability to smile. My cheeks hurt. My jaw hurt. My head hurt. Everything hurt.

And even if they didn’t, and I felt fine – physically, at least –I still didn’t think I would be able to smile. I didn’t think I would be able to smile ever again.