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He’s compiling an intelligence report on the trio he keeps meeting. He’s got a good hold on Barda’s identity, thanks to Jinks. Lief’s clearly been brought up as a Del city boy, but must have important secrets to be traipsing around Deltora.
It’s Jasmine who perplexes him the most. He knows of no one else who dresses in rags that looks suspiciously like Grey Guard clothing. No one else who will just pluck berries from bushes without checking for poison. No one else who keeps a black bird and a… whatever kind of animal that Filli is. No one else with that particular brand of (lacking) manners, icy cold but with a firecracker temper, unbelievably stubborn pride rising to the fore when her elders and betters so much as try to speak to her.
What’s worse is that he feels like he should know. Who she is, and where she came from.
Lindal snorts audibly.
“What?” Doom snaps.
Grinning, she holds her hands up in mock surrender. “Nothing. I can’t say anything about all that animal-keeping, berry-picking nature girl stuff. But her personality? She sounds an awful lot like you.”
It’s a joke, of course, but it seems to Doom that the world stops, just for a moment. A moment still long enough for that terrible thought to occur to him.
No, Jasmine could not be his daughter. It was completely illogical. Neither of them had recognised the other upon their first meeting. She did not look much like him at all. Even if she was, the chances of them crossing paths must be close to zero. And surely, if at his darkest hour he could remember that he hailed from the country called Deltora, then he could remember a daughter. Frankly, the whole idea was ridiculous. What was he thinking?
Some part of him tries to rebel, reminding him he still does not even know his old name, but it strays too far into territory he had closed off long ago. Ruthlessly, he crushes the thought, tossing the pieces away into the furthest recesses of his mind.
He takes a breath, and the world resumes.
“Lindal,” he says, “if you imply that I am ever anything other than a ray of sunshine again, I will kill you myself.”
She smirks. “Understood, O cheerful one”.
“Good,” he replies, and his mind is already on the Resistance’s next move.