“When I saw the wolf, that’s when I knew,” said Alastair, still in the same quiet voice. “I guessed before, but I could convince myself that you couldn’t possibly be like him. But Constantine had a wolf just like Havoc, back when we were your age. The wolf used to go everywhere with him. Just like Havoc does with you.”
Call felt a cold shiver pass across his skin. “You said you were Constantine’s friend.”
“We were in the same apprentice group. Under Master Rufus.” It was more than Alastair had ever said about his time at the Magisterium before. “Rufus chose five students at my Iron Trial. Your mother. Her brother, Declan. Constantine Madden. Constantine’s brother, Jericho. And me.” It hurt him to tell Call this — Call could see. “By the end of our Silver Year, only four of us were alive, and Constantine had started wearing the mask. Five years later, everyone was gone but him and myself. After the Cold Massacre, he was rarely seen.”
The Cold Massacre was where Call’s mother had died. Where his leg had been destroyed. It was where Constantine Madden had removed the soul of the child called Callum Hunt and put his own soul into the child’s body. But that wasn’t even the worst thing Call knew about it. The worst thing was what Master Joseph had told him about his mother.
“I know what she wrote in the snow,” Call said now. “She wrote ‘Kill the child.’ She meant me.”
His dad didn’t deny it.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
“Call, I’d never hurt you —”
“Seriously?” Call grabbed for one of the drawings of the gauntlet. “What’s this? What were you going to use it for? Gardening?”
Alastair’s expression turned grim. “Call, give that here.”
“Were you going to chain me up so I wouldn’t struggle when you pulled out Havoc’s heart?” Call pointed at the shackles. “Or so I wouldn’t struggle when you used it on me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Alastair took a step forward, and that’s when Havoc leaped at him, snarling. Call shouted, and Havoc tried to arrest himself midjump, twisting his body desperately. He hit Alastair side-on, knocking him backward. Alastair crashed into a small table that broke under him. Wolf and man slammed against the floor.
“Havoc!” Call called. The wolf rolled off Alastair and resumed his place at Call’s side, still snarling. Alastair pushed himself up onto his knees and gradually stood, his balance unsteady.
Call lurched automatically toward his father. Alastair looked at him and there was something on his face that Call had never expected to see:
Fear.
It made Call furious.
“I’m leaving,” he spat. “Havoc and I are leaving and we’re never coming back. You missed your chance to kill us.”
“Call,” Alastair said, holding out a warning hand. “I can’t let you do that.”
Call wondered whether there had been something off for Alastair every time he’d ever looked at Call, some creeping horrible sense of wrongness. He’d always thought of Alastair as his dad, even after what Master Joseph had told him, but it was possible that Alastair no longer thought of Call as his son.
Call looked down at the knife in his hand. He remembered the day of the Trial and wondered whether Alastair had thrown Miri to him or at him. Kill the child. He remembered Alastair writing to Master Rufus to ask him to bind Call’s magic. Suddenly, everything Alastair had done made a horrible kind of sense.
“Go on,” Call said to Havoc, tipping his head toward the door that led to the sprawling mess of the rest of the basement. “We’re getting out of here.”