Page 210 of The Gods Order

My gaze swings to Derivius. He still has no clue about everything we spoke about in his temple that drunken night. He knows now that he hinted at that fact for me.

“The fuck he is. No. Absolutely not,” Riven says, shaking his head and crossing his arms.

I wish that were true.

My eyes soften on him as much as I can force them to. He sees the truth in the strain across every inch of me.

“Explain. Now,” Amick commands.

“There’s not much to explain,” Meridamus says. “It’s true. Mellcom is their biological son.”

A bitter laugh breaks out of me.

“Not much to explain,” I repeat, shaking my head. “How did you end up with him?”

“Thayla—”

“No.”

The word cracks through the room as I spare my father a glance. My hand lifts again, pointing straight at Meridamus like it can pin him in place.

“You don’t get to preach about consequences and not confess to your actions that led to some of them.”

He exhales through his nose, and something sharp passes over his expression.

“You want the truth?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question. “You want to know how it happened?”

His hands lift slightly, not in defense, but in surrender to it.

A second passes as I hold his stare, and he gives me one nod.

“We—your father and I—broke into Sabe’s house the night he was born. We took him right from his crib.”

The words hit me square in the chest, and my gaze bounces across the two of them. I don’t say a fucking word, though. Meridamus’s eyes grow distant as though he’s stepped into the memory.

“We took him straight to Oddian, to the house I raised him in. Val watched over him, while I returned to Sabe and crawled into bed beside her. I was there when she woke and realized her child was gone.”

His jaw tightens.

“What came after…” he mutters. “You don’t want the list of names. You don’t want the accounts. The death. The destruction. You don’t want the cost broken down into something you can understand.”

His eyes lift to mine, and the pure…I don’t know what that is. It’s not only regret, guilt, or acceptance, but maybe a little of each.

“I have lived with every single consequence of that night. I’d live them all over again if I had to. The five of them could not be raised together.”

My men shift, but the scowls on their faces don’t.

“That’s why that sick bitch was always obsessed with being someone’s mother,” Riven says, sneering.

“Don’t call her—”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what I can and can’t call her. She didn’t chain you to a platform and whip you. Nor did she use your power to make people rape each other. She did that to me,” Riven shouts, taking a dangerous step toward Meridamus. “I have no doubt what you did loosened a fucking screw in her mind, but that didn’t turn her into the person she is. She was a monster way before then.”

My attention flicks to Derivius once again. His lips lie flat like he really wants to put his two cents in but doesn’t.

Meridamus exhales hard as he runs his hand down his face.

“When her conception didn’t take the same time Rella’s and Creation’s did, Derivius and I did everything we could to prevent Sabe from trying again. We got away with it for two years. Once she was pregnant, there was nothing we could’ve done differently.”