Page 88 of Revealing Fate

Kal shook him off, confused. “Karrick, what are you saying? We can’t leave without them.” His mother and father were still in their chambers.

“There isn’t time, Kal.” Karrick looked at the pretty maid. “Mela, take him.”

Kal jerked away. “No!”

But his uncle’s grip was an immovable shackle about his arm. “Godsdamnit, Kal!” Panic laced his tone like a vein of poison in the drinking water. “I swore I’d get you out! I vowed to see you safe. You will not make a liar of me.”

“But my parents,” Kal began.

His rebuttal died. Kal’s vision sharpened, and even in the dark, he saw the raw pain in his uncle’s expression. His heart became a lead ball, heavy and hard behind his ribs. He smelled the blood on his uncle’s clothes, a familiar tang. He heard the gravel in his uncle’s voice. Felt the despair war with disbelief at the words that would change his life forever.

“They are gone, Kalevar. You are all that remains of us. And now you must go.”

Kal pulled an unmarked amber bottle from the top shelf and poured a healthy serving into a squat glass.

Across from him, Kitty’s expression remained carefully neutral. She’d been so engrossed in his tale that her food sat untouched.

He tossed back the bourbon, fire carving a path through the age-old ache in his chest. He rubbed his sternum. Let her think it was the spirit’s burn.

“The maid snuck me out. Left me in an alley and warned me to stay as far from the castle as possible,” Kal said.

Kitty frowned, her mind chewing through the particulars. “But what about your uncle? Why didn’t he leave as well?”

Kal hadn’t told her who Karrick was. He couldn’t bring himself to reveal that his own flesh and blood was the Primordial Male. Couldn’t admit that his uncle was her fated mate. The thought sent anger coursing through him. Never mind saying it aloud; he could barely stand to think it.

He also omitted seeing her in that throne room, skipping over his memory of her golden dress, coiled hair, and cherubic face—the young Prima. The thought of her as a sweet child, innocent save for her traitorous blood, and his pre-pubescent reaction to her were too difficult to voice.

But the rest? The rest had spilled out of him like milk tipped from a carafe, pooling on the tile. Kitty soaked up every word, and he kept pouring it, trying and failing to fill her.

Kal lifted a shoulder in a lazy gesture. “He didn’t say.”

“Is he—I mean, have you heard⁠—”

“He’s gone,” Kal said, voice flat and cold. Not dead. Somehow, Kal knew Karrick lived. Bound by another vow, the weight of another title. Yet gone just the same.

“You were fourteen, Kal,” Kitty said. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“I know.” It didn’t matter. The understanding of his rational adult mind did nothing to assuage the boy’s guilt. That regret, the incessant what-ifs, had carved into him, hollowing him out like the cliff caves he’d explored as a child.

Kitty turned introspective. “How is it that you don’t hate me?”

“I might have, at one point,” he admitted. “But how could I hate a little girl for being born to shitty parents?” She winced, but he continued. “You didn’t plot their deaths. You didn’t spill their blood while they slept. You didn’t even know it happened.”

“I wouldn’t fault you,” she said, voice quiet. “If you did.”

He studied her. “If I hated you at any time, it was a grieving boy’s hate. I am a man. My emotions are not permitted such power over reason.” Her eyes connected with his. Kal tried a smile. “Besides, I don’t often cook for my enemies. Or confess to them my woes.”

Kitty’s lips tipped up at one corner. “Or teach them to fight? Or tend their wounds?”

“Not those things either. And I certainly don’t let them sleep in my bed.”

“Or kiss them.”

Kitty’s cheeks warmed, and Kal leaned forward, appreciating the flush of color. She dug into her plate, refusing to look at him. He wanted to kiss her now. Wanted to do more than that. Instead, he sat quietly and watched her eat.

If he were being honest, the only thing Kal hated where this woman was concerned was that she hadn’t felt she could confide in him. Kal didn’t say it, though. How could he when he still kept things from her? When he couldn’t even bring himself to say her name, for what it did to him. “It’s you who should hate me.”

Kitty froze, a bite halfway to her mouth. She lowered the utensil. “Because you want to kill my parents?”