With her father's memory failing and her mother gone, Soraya Thenayu enrolls in distant Darkwood Academy and immediately becomes enemies with the richest kid at school. Between hiding her father's gift of illegally harvested magic, befriending socia...
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How could Tishva, her own father, forget that she was his daughter? Soraya's eyes filled with tears as she racked through her brain to figure out what to do. Never before had her father forgotten who she was. Fear gripped her heart and made it beat faster than it ever had in her life.
"Can you... walk me back home?" the girl asked in a shaky voice. Soraya wasn't sure how long it would take for her father to snap out of this episode, but she hoped that taking him back to their house would help jog his memory faster.
"Well..." her father's voice trailed off in thought. "I suppose I can't let you walk back alone..." he looked Soraya up and down again, as if seeing her for the first time, before shrugging his broad shoulders. "Alright, I'll take you to your house. Lead the way."
"Th-thank you," Soraya stammered. She trudged through the thick snow back towards their cabin, looking over her shoulder every other minute to not lose sight of her father, who still looked confused and out of sorts.
As they made their way together through the thick snow, Tishva paused and looked up into the trees glistening in the pale sunlight.
"Little girl, do you hear that?"
Soraya stopped and cocked her head, but heard nothing at all. The stillness of the forest surrounded them both. Tishva's face softened, his grayish-blue eyes coming into focus as he closed his eyes.
"It's my wife's favorite tune, the song of the Rivengale," Tishva whispered, blinking rapidly before looking over at his daughter. "I should play it for her tonight."
"Papa..." Soraya could barely take it. Her father's random spells of not remembering current events was lasting much longer than normal, and now he was hearing things that weren't there.
"I'm not your father," Tishva said firmly. "Stop calling me that."
"Sorry," his daughter sighed. "Please, just walk me home."
Soraya thought about their family portrait sitting on the mantel above the fireplace. It clearly showed Tishva and Adonia sitting on a wooden bench together, with Soraya as a toddler between them. Surely that would bring her father back to his senses.
"Is this a trick?"
The air around Soraya suddenly turned thin, and she struggled to breathe. Her father had his right hand raised, along with his pointer and middle fingers. The girl realized he was using magic to suffocate her.
"Are you a spy sent to steal my research?" Tishva hissed. "The other one poisoned himself before I could get information out of him. I'm not making that same mistake again."
"N-no!" Soraya gasped. She had never heard or seen her father act so violently. Tishva was a kind, gentle soul, either always curled up with a book in his office or exploring and taking notes on his surroundings. This side of him frightened her.
