Page 15 of Microburst

“I don’t even understand that because she would call me to brag,” Darren rasped.

“Guilt?” I offered as I sat on the arm of one of the chairs. “A chance to talk to someone not here in the crazy of the castle?”

“Someone who saw her child as not a monster and clearly her mate feeling that way drove her just as fucking insane?” Maple mocked. “Seriously, a stack of journals in a language Rhys didn’t know? I just… It’s allso insane.”

“I heard her say something once that she wasn’t his punishment and he had to stop saying that,” Benson mumbled. “I didn’t know it was Sagan, but the context fits.” He reached up and wiped his eyes. “I gave her such a hard time, and—how could they ever think she was evil? All she wanted was their love. That was it.” He looked at Belinda. “Then she changed after you.”

“No, after they saw her use her magic,” she corrected. “It just happened to be while she stayed with me.” She filled us in and I was horrified how Rhys and Amelia behaved. Belinda had a few stories like that even.

“What do we do now?” I asked when the silence in the room was honestly deafening.

Maple snorted. “I think Sagan’s idea of getting drunk is spot-on. Our brother was a fucking monster and so was Darren’s sister, our sister-in-law. And they just broke the most wonderful, selfless, cutest little kid ever from the grave no less. So yeah, getting drunk sounds magnificent.”

It really did, but… Then what?

We opened the wine and drank, but randomly would ask a question of each other none of us could really answer. How did we not notice? When do we think the weird theory started? When did Amelia learn the language of the trolls? Why that language? Why send Sagan to foreign countries where her having two dragons could be discovered easier if they didn’t want her to be Rhys’s heir?

And on and on andon.

I must have passed out at some point because I blinked awake when I heard Sagan ask something in a hollow voice.

“Do you think they care what I’m going through?” She snorted. “No, right? Just that I’m handling it wrong. I always handled everything wrong. It was never good enough—I was never good enough or up to his standards.”

I shook Maple awake since she was next to me and then reached over for Darren when I saw he was on the other chair. They both stirred and I held my finger up to my lips.

Sagan was sitting out on the balcony with Benson and he was trying to comfort her, but she was leaning away from him.

“Yesterday I would have said of course they care, but today I don’t know anything,” Benson whispered, sounding haunted.

“He didn’t care Kole was cheating on me. He didn’t even tell me, just talked to Vex. He knew it was going on for years. Do you think he knew and let it happen as a way to punish me because I’m a monster or whatever?”

“You’re not a monster, Sagan,” Benson rasped.

“I broke half the bones in your body like nothing as a child,” she chuckled darkly. “I’ve always known I was a monster, just never thought my parents thought I was actually evil.”

“It was anaccident. Accidents happen and—”

“Yeah, of course they do,” she whispered. “Do you think they’d be happy if Lori had raped me?”

“Sagan, please, you have to stop—you can’t think like that,” Benson begged her.

She looked at him. “Do you think there’s any punishment I could suffer that would make them forgive me for being born?”

A part of me died inside and I saw Darren looked the same.

“They are the ones who were wrong, not you,” Benson choked out. “The gods made you different—special.”

“And hated by her parents. You have to be a special kind of fucked up to achieve that.” She focused back out on the night. “All I did to hide their mess and… I hate them.”

“No one would blame you.”

“Monsters hate their own parents.”

“No.No, monsters hate their ownbaby, Sagan. You were a baby when your hair changed like that. You didn’t do anything. You didn’t—none of this is your fault.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, clearly not believing it. “I understand Joris a lot better now.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he admitted.