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Though, I was supposed to be making him fall in love with me.
So maybe the casual conversation wasn’t as bad as I was thinking. If I wanted him to fall for me, I needed to start somewhere, right?
I admitted, “I was born with only a few drops of solar magic in my veins. The healers called me an anomaly—my parents weren’t weak fae. The magic in my blood was enough to keep me alive, but just barely. I had to eat all kinds of plants that were supposed to boost my power. It kept me alive, but I was in pain most of the time. When I wasn’t in pain, I was usually vomiting.” I wanted him to pity me—if he pitied me, he might forget that I’d attempted to kill him, and start opening up to me.
“What did you do, other than reading?” If my plan to earn his pity had worked, he didn’t show it.
“Knitted a bit, but I was always terrible at that. My parents always made sure that there was a cousin, or sibling, or friend in my room to talk to me. I knew all of the gossip in our kingdom—they told me everything. When they left for the night, I’d look outside my window and imagine what it might be like to live a real life out in the beautiful city below me.” As I spoke, my words grew more and more wistful.
I was… sad.
But happy, too.
I hadn’t spoken about my childhood or my family in a long, long time. I’d always been quiet about it with Vena and Akari, not wanting them to know how sick I had been before the night fae had taken me. And they were the only people I’d really spoken to in the past two decades.
When Espen didn’t say anything, just continuing with building that damned bookshelf, I prodded the conversation forward. “What was your childhood like?”
He grunted. “My mother was cruel. My father was a bastard. They agreed on nothing, but somehow managed to love each other anyway.”
That was a very vague answer, so I waited, assuming he would eventually add more.
The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, and I found myself watching his hands, following the motions as he twisted things, setting them up and slowly putting the furniture together.
With his back still facing me and his hands still moving, he eventually added, “My mother was abusive in most ways. I saw the way my father respected her, and tried to mirror his treatment of her to avoid incurring his wrath and in hopes of winning her love. It never worked. Namir would get between her and I, attempting to defend me, and refused to understand that I didn’t want or need his protection. I thought suffering her cruelty was my challenge to bear. Looking back, I regret most of my decisions when it came to our parents. But I am still somewhat proud that what I tried to do was establish peace rather than embracing the havoc and making everything worse.”
His words only surprised me further.
We were both quiet as I processed what he had said to me.
He’d been abused, yet chosen to remain kind. He’d been mistreated, but hadn’t mistreated anyone in response.
He was much stronger than I would’ve given him credit for before meeting him.
“If you wanted peace, why did you send your men after me and my family?” I countered.
He put down the tool he was using, and turned so we were looking at each other face-to-face. “I sent no one after you. When my father died and his magic was transferred into my brothers and I, I was the one who told them we needed to agree on who should become king. Namir and Laith refused to agree, and I refused to hurt either of them. We decided that the strongest of us would survive the magic long enough to inherit everything. Some of my father’s advisors showed up with the three of you a few days later, as the illness was nearly taking us. They told us that you were orphans—and that you’d die without our magic. To save you and ourselves, we gave you our power.”
I stared at him, and he stared back.
If what he was saying was true, Espen had no idea that my family had been murdered. Not before he gave me his magic, and not after, either.
He turned back to the bookshelf after a few long moments, and I saw his shoulders visibly relax as he picked up his tools.
“Did the sun set?” I asked him.
“It did.”
I was in a difficult situation, if he truly hadn’t known about my family.
Because I’d planned on killing him—I’d almost succeeded at it, too.
Yet if he wasn’t behind my family’s murders, I couldn’t end his life.
And if I didn’t end his life, mine wouldn’t end either.
And that was…
Well, it was a whole different issue altogether.
