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“You said it, not me.” He gri
The way his eyes shone with remnants of mirth had my thighs clenching together. “I do,” I said, not willing to add what he already knew—that I liked many other things too—and so I quickly said, “They’re both incredibly beautiful. Stu
His smile drooped, and I felt my heart thrash at what he’d just done, with all he’d shared with me, and therefore I had to gently say, “I am honored to see them, that you would show them to me.” I had a feeling he never shared those portraits with anyone.
He watched me for a crushing half minute, then nodded once. “All pictures of them were removed as soon as I came of age enough to give orders to my uncle and not the other way around.”
“You did not wish to see them?”
“Not as reminders, as weapons, no.” His gaze fell to an empty space on the table. “But just as my parents. Eat,” he said, and stood abruptly to return the book to its home by the bed.
He took his time, placing it exactly as it had been with a careful type of reverence. A reverence I might have been envious of if not for the fact that he’d also gifted me with the same attention.
Longing fluttered into something else, something wilder and untamable, and when he waded back, I forced my attention to the food I’d been carelessly shoveling into my mouth.
Almost done with di
“Are those your parents?”
He knew what I was referring to and refilled the wineglass when I set it down. “They are my warrior kin, my friends, you could say. Bond, Reline, and Nerin. I matured with them, and they died in battle. The last two this past year, and Bond in the first year.” His mouth twisted, the decanter hitting the table with a thud. “He was never one for such things.”
“Yet he fought anyway.”
“Despite my best attempts to force him home”—he scooped some remaining vegetables onto his fork—“yes, so they serve as reminders.”
I waited as he ate, then asked, “Reminders of what you’ve lost?”
“Of what I stand to lose more of.” Such dark iced words.
I nodded, understanding even if I hated that I was able to. He would do whatever it took to ensure he never lost anything else again—even if that meant taking over the entire continent.
“Your uncle,” I said, curious. “He’s alive?”
“He is, though I ca
I clasped my hands together in my lap to keep from reaching for the wine—for him. “You should free him.”
Dade’s eyes left his plate, ensnaring mine as he pushed it aside. “Free him?”
“He’s your uncle,” I said, trying to find the words even as the new growth of feathers at my back still itched in this form. “He was trying to protect you. To end this war of yours by making my mother submit.”
“He serves himself and himself only,” he said roughly, his jaw rotating and then clenching. “He always has. He hurt you, maimed you—”
“I am healed.”
“He betrayed me when he wounded you, and I care not for his reasons, only that he did.”
My mouth dried under the blanket of those cold, graveled words. I tried a different approach, knowing that sentencing his uncle to die was not what he wanted. Not really. He wanted to send a message to ensure no one else laid a hand on me, and he’d hurt himself in order to do so. “He raised you.”
Dade’s jaw shifted. He reached for the wine.
“He raised you,” I said again, softer now. “He took care of you, did he not?”
He drained the contents of the glass and placed it down hard enough to crack it. Uncaring, he rubbed his fingers over the bristles around his mouth, the movements fluid yet not of the form that sat across the table from me. “He did.”
“That’s it?” I said, aghast. “He is your blood, and I will not be offended if you choose to allow him another chance.”
“He placed a dagger in my hand on my fifth birthday and did not let me drop it until I’d killed one of three rabbits he’d released into my rooms.”
I froze. Dade reclined in the chair, the wood creaking as he laid his leg across his knee and gazed beyond me into the past. “I couldn’t catch one with the blasted blade, of course, and frustrated, I accidentally shifted and killed it that way.”
“You ca
“Right,” he clipped. “That didn’t matter, and it didn’t matter that I puked all over myself when I shifted back, in tears upon this very floor.” His eyes roamed to the end of the bed. “He made me do it twice a week until I eventually lobbed the heads off all three rabbits with a blade.”
My chest throbbed with the image of such a young male losing himself to bloodlust. “Shit…”
“And then it was badgers. A year later, the training yards, where he beat me until my bones groaned and I silently raged beneath every blow and the reminders he’d spew at me about my parents being dead.”
“He…” I blinked and released a choked breath. “He used their deaths as fuel.”
“Of course,” Dade said, as though it were normal, as though that were okay. “Understandably, as it worked, yet as the years bled by, his grief waned.”
“But your purpose never did.”
“He’d done too thorough a job. My generals, the older warriors, everyone spoke of my father as though he would return at any moment. The tales Merelda would tell me of her and my mother cooking together in the kitchens…”
“They were friends,” I guessed, then frowned when I remembered the head cook and our conversation. “But Dade, she wouldn’t have told you those stories to hurt you, to incite a need for revenge.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t matter.” His voice lowered, deepened, his eyes like ice as they met mine. “It didn’t matter when from every angle, at every available opportunity, I was reminded of them. Vern and Maya Volkahn are breathing ghosts in this palace. They still roam the halls in the hearts of many, and they’ll never forget.”
“Love makes things impossible to forget,” I whispered, not meaning to.
Dade hummed, then dragged his finger over his bottom lip. “I couldn’t love them. Not like they do. I never had that chance, and so they made sure I would never forget something I’ll never know.”
Silence crawled in, not unwelcome but cold all the same, as we both absorbed all he’d said.
As I’d grown to fear and suspect, my mate had been raised as a pawn. A weapon made from the many broken hearts of a fractured kingdom.
A tool used for retribution.
It was all he’d known. He’d known nothing else in order to know better or otherwise. This land, his people, and their memories were all he had.
Until now.
I stood, unaware of my intentions but knowing I had to give in to the tug on those chains. They pulled, and I followed until I was standing before him and his leg slid to the floor, eyes sharp as they stared up at me. “Do not pity me, swan,” he warned with a roughened edge.
“Never.” I tried to smile, felt it wobble as I wondered of all that could have been if things were different. If we’d met under the circumstances our parents had met their mates and their parents before them.
As two royal brats who’d spend their days mating and making plans for the day they’d take over the throne, thinking it exciting rather than a responsibility that could both save and destroy lives if not taken seriously enough or taken far too seriously.