Prodigal (Starship Gilead Book 2) by John Graves

Author:John Graves [Graves, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

9

Windham stared at his daughter in disbelief. She had changed so much these past months—had grown from a self-indulgent girl into a strong young woman who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. A part of him wished she could have remained mousy and quiet—his daughter, his girl. But he knew that wasn’t an option—she would need to be able to stand up for herself when she took the captain’s throne. This was a good thing, but it hurt the old man’s heart to see his only remaining child pulling away from him.

“Say that again.”

“I’m going,” Adrienne said. “The Agincourt leaves in an hour, and I intend to be on board when she does.”

Windham sighed. “It’s too dangerous, Adrienne. The Agincourt is headed for Affiliation space—all of those sectors are under threat from Babylon. We can’t even bruise Jericho, much less—”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “I must go.”

“Why?”

“Because Galen is going, and I truly believe that he is our best hope—our only hope—for defeating our enemies and restoring Gilead to her rightful place in this barony.”

Windham cursed the day he ever allowed Jon Galen to set foot on his ship. It had seemed like a good idea when he was half-drunk in that pub back in Avalon, but after all these months, the bard had proven to be nothing but a curse to Windham and his ship. Wasn’t that also a part of his legend—the Wandering Jew who brings nothing but sorrow to everyone he meets?

“He’s a charlatan. You know he didn’t really—”

“No,” she said, her voice as cold as the night outside. “He’s not. I was with him when he died, Papa. I saw the light go out of his eyes.”

“You must have been mistaken.”

“I was not. He died. Even Doc Sully said as much, and you’ve always trusted him. He put him in the fracking morgue!”

Windham found it hard to believe Sully would make such a mistake, it wasn’t like him, but he was absolutely certain that it was a mistake and not a miraculous resurrection. “I can’t explain what happened,” he said, “but I refuse to believe that what we witnessed was supernatural.”

“You refuse to believe the truth even when it’s staring you in the face.”

The old man took a deep breath, trying to control his anger. He had lost his cool with Adrienne and Vallin the other day, and the unresolved tension of that situation was still festering like a puncture wound. The wound would be reopened soon enough, he was certain, and when it did, things were going to get ugly. He could apologize, he realized—set everything right and wipe away the hurt feelings and the tears—but that would mean Vallin was still in the picture. He was so far beneath Adrienne’s class that surely even he must have known that he didn’t deserve her. But did that really matter? It had broken Windham’s heart to think that Adrienne was going to be the second wife of Anton Gaines, so why was it so hard to allow her

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