Chapter 75: Disgraced

He has to bring this to me now, to feel his own weak sense of responsibility when I can't do as he asks. I'm saved from having to humiliate my father when Ethpeal interjects herself, pushing him back and away from me.

"And why," she asks in a cold and terrible voice, "are you here if Oleksander is in such danger?" We all wait for a response, but he simply stares at me, mute and anguished. She turns her back on him when he doesn't answer. "Charlotte," she says, tone low, bitter chill gone from her words, "what do you want us to do?"