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. ...