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It wasn’t that I wanted to encourage his delusion, but I just had to know. “If you were not in the fog, how did you kill three vorec?”
Leaning toward me, Cyderial explained, “Humans pay a great sum to chase vorec in enclosed hunting grounds. It's considered a sport. The beasts' claws have been clipped, and they are fully muzzled. They are usually somewhat sedated as well.”
I recoiled.
That was so cruel!
“I see.” The man was as spineless as he was deluded. Perhaps I could be a little hateful as well. “As your sister-in-law, I would be happy to take you into the fog sometime, if you’d like to try your hand at facing down vorec in real life.”
My mother interposed before Johan might respond to my baiting, “Lorieyn, it’s been nice seeing you, but I’m afraid tea is out of the question. I think you should leave now.”
I recoiled as if she slapped me.
Hurt, I swung my head her way, only to find firm resolve had stolen her smile, a protective hand clasping Johan’s shoulder.
“You are ordering me from your home, when this… hateful fraud is welcome to sit at your table?”
Even though she said it gently, she may as well have ripped out my hearts and held them up for me to see. “I'll walk you out.”
Tears already gathered in my eyes, and they were going to fall. They were going to fall, because the pain of her rejection might just kill me. Had Cyderial not been there, I’m not certain I would have found my footing. I would have just sat there, staring at her, confused.
But he drew me from my chair and guided my shuffling form from the room so we might follow her to the door.
I didn’t understand. This woman claimed that she loved me in every last letter she sent.
Passing through the portal, we emerged into the sun, but I didn’t pay any mind to the warmth or the smells of her wonderfully overcrowded garden. I didn’t notice details of the laundry drying on the line or the buzzing of afternoon insects.
I was blind to it all.
At the threshold of her pretty gate, my birthmother whispered a hasty apology, as if being overheard by any nearby humans might cause real harm. “He could keep me from my grandchild; you must understand that. I don’t agree with his rhetoric, but my daughter will need me.”
My daughter.
As if I hadn’t clung to the same title these last ten years. As if it didn’t belong to me at all.
Because I was no more than the half-lizard child she sold when it turned five.
“I have loved you my whole life,” I muttered. “I used to cry myself to sleep when I was lonely for you at the academy.” Gesturing to her fine home, I sniffed. “I suffered, so you could have all of this. Do you even think of me as your daughter?”
She tried to assure me, wielding a sad smile and flapping hands. “You were a wonderful child, and look at how far you’ve come. The wife of a general! You don’t need me anymore. Dana does.”
I had needed her every day since she handed me over to the academy on my fifth birthday. “I’m not his wife. I’m his mate. And unlike you, he can’t ever throw me away.”
“Lorieyn, please. My children have to come first.”
What did that make me? “Goodbye, Jae. Don’t send me any more cakes.”
5
My mother didn’t want me.
Following in devastated silence, I allowed Cyderial to draw me away from my mother’s house. Offering no resistance as he guided me back into the bustle of the market, where he no longer tried to tempt me with shiny things.
The male was on a mission to get me to his vehicle.
Acting much the same as when we arrived, the crowd around us gawked, moved out of our path, and whispered amongst themselves as I stumbled by.
Not that I cared in the slightest.
