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"Dad?" Kira's voice filtered through the mindless haze of Edgin's cursing as he weeded the garden.
"Yeah, hon?" he replied distractedly. The mint was starting to take over, and while its leaves made a nice tea, there was only so much they could harvest at a time. He tried to calculate how much he could rip out without going overboard.
"I want to be a rogue."
Edgin's hands stilled on a clump of roots. He stared at the dirt underneath his fingernails. "Okay," he finally said, hearing himself from a distance.
"What?"
"Okay," he repeated. Thoughts surfaced one after another in his mind. He didn't put words to any of them. You're too young. We don't have to steal to get by anymore. I'm a horrible influence. Your mom would hate me.
"I thought..." She trailed off. "You're not mad?"
Edgin finally looked up. She stood just outside the garden, hovering behind the gate as if to keep a barrier between them. Her hands twisted in the fabric of her dress. It was getting short on her—she'd grown recently.
"Do you want me to be?" he asked mildly. "I don't know what you want me to say, honey." He couldn't say what he actually thought. He'd promised honesty, but...
"It's just... Uncle Forge..." Even now, she still called him that, and Edgin winced every time. A habit of two years was going to be hard to break.
Or, as his mind liked to remind him late at night when he should be sleeping, maybe she didn't want to break it. Maybe she wished he were her dad instead. What good was Edgin, failure of a man, compared to a life in Neverwinter Castle? A life she could never go back to, once he'd come along and stirred up a bunch of shit.
"What about him?" Edgin asked, turning back to the vegetables. As he pulled up carrots he imagined it was Forge's guts he was pulling out.
"I'm not doing it to be like him," she said in a rush. "I don't want to be like him."
Ha, Edgin thought savagely. Shaped in your image my ASS. "Well, good, because he's rotting in prison."
"That's not what I mean!" she said, but she was hiding a smile. "I just meant, I'm not following anyone. It's what I want to do."
"Well, you don't need my permission." As much as he hated it, he'd missed two years of her life; she was nearly grown, now. Another year or so and she'd be old enough to take on an apprenticeship, even though it seemed like yesterday he could fit her tiny swaddled body in the crook of one arm.
"You don't like it." She'd caught him out, and he froze.
Then he brushed the dirt from his hands and stood, his knees cracking loudly in protest. Gods, he was so old. To prove to himself he still could, he hopped over the fence to join her outside the garden.
"You're right, I don't like it. I don't like that you grew up while I wasn't there to see. I don't like that we never had the option of an honest living. I don't like that your mom would hate me for doing this to you." He reached out and pulled her into a hug. "But I like you, no matter what. If you think that becoming a rogue is what's right for you, then do it. Don't ever change yourself just because you think someone will love you better for it."
"That's so sappy," she said, but her face was buried in his shirt and he knew she was hiding tears.
"I'm a bard. It comes with the job description."
"Good thing I'm not becoming a bard then." He broke the hug and pushed her away in mock disgust as she laughed.
"I take it all back, you're a disgrace of a daughter. I'm sending you to bardic college until you learn some respect."
She laughed again, a beautiful sound. He vowed, not for the first time, to do everything in his power to make sure she never stopped.