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Fin marched across the turret to stand before me. “Why did you marry him?” he asked again, his stare burning into me.
My stomach knotted, my heart suddenly hammering. Unable to look at Fin while I confessed my secret, I turned away, hugging my middle and peering out into the foggy night. “Because, of all my suitors, he looked the most like you,” I admitted quietly. “Which meant he would most closely resemble the baby.”
Fin was quiet for so long that I had to glance at him to ensure he was still there. But I couldn’t stand looking at him for long.
“Thebaby?” he finally said.
I lowered my eyelids, setting free a fresh string of tears. “Liam isn’t Alastor’s son,” I whispered. “He’syours.”
11
Fin
“Why did you marry him?” I pressed. The Del I knew wouldn’t have condemned herself to a life of abusive misery if it wasn’t for a grave reason. I feared the answer but needed to understand all the same.
She turned her back to me. “Because,” she whispered, “of all my suitors, he looked the most like you.”
The admission was so unexpected. I frowned, confused.
“Which meant,” she continued, “he would most closely resemble the baby.”
I wasn’t sure how many heartbeats it took me to process her words, but their meaning seemed to settle into place impossibly slow, their immensity pounding with each racing thud of my pulse in my ears until a single word boomed so deafening, it was all I could focus on. “Thebaby?”
“Liam isn’t Alastor’s son. He’s yours.” Del finally faced me, and her umber eyes met mine, shimmering with fresh tears.
I swallowed the growing lump in my throat, my skin tingling with sweat all over again. I’d been with Del just once, yet everything I’d felt that night haunted me every time I closed my eyes since.
My surprise when she’d come into my bedroom, clicking the door shut behind her.
The gentle plea in her touch and yearning in her eyes.
The feel of her soft skin and the unspoken goodbye I knew would follow.
But it was the smell of her hair, lingering on my pillow for days after, that haunted me the most. It reminded me she was a princess, and I was only Fin, an orphan and outcast.
And yet there we stood, the truth she’d been keeping from me for over a decade hanging between us. “All of this time, you’ve said nothing.”
“I couldn’t find you!” Del said, wiping a tear from her cheek.
My heart plummeted as realization dawned on me. “That’s why your mother attacked us,” I gritted out. “It all makes so much sense now.” I tugged my fingers through my hair and began to pace, all the pieces falling together. “She already hated me—we’d freed Jake and uncovered so many of her secrets. Then a baby...” I shook my head again. “Of course, she would attack us if—”
“Attackyou? Mother couldn’t have—” Del paused, shaking her head. “She never lifted a finger against you or your people. I would have known,” she said adamantly. Her defensiveness, when she knew more than anyone how horrible her mother was, shredded the last of my patience.
“Then why did she attack my village, Del, if not for her empty truce?”
“I—” Del blinked, her mouth open as if the words danced on the tip of her tongue.
Her surprise was comforting, at least, and I stepped closer. “If your mother didn’t order the attack, then who did? And if not for the truth of this child, then why? We had no armies. We had nothing worth anything but my family’s legacy.”
I could see the shock in Del’s eyes and maybe a shimmer of sympathy—or perhaps it was doubt—but her expression hardened as she took a step back. “It must have been Maylar, Mother’s advisor, and—” Again, Del shook her surprise away, only this time, her brow furrowed in its place. “I’m sorry, Fin. I really am. But we can’t do this right now. We have to go before Alastor’s body is found.”
That I unwittingly killed King Eduart’s son, consort to the Corvo heir, only fueled my utter disbelief that this could get any more complicated. And turning on my feet, I marched over to the soiled rug and jacket. “I’m assuming you’ve thought of a place to hide these in all your plans?” I said, rolling the blood-stained evidence and loading it onto my shoulder again.
Del nodded, furtively glancing around to ensure nothing was overtly out of place as I headed back toward the winding staircase. We descended with only our footsteps echoing in our silence. My mind was too full, my body coiled with too much tension.
When we were in the hidden passageway again, I followed Del to a dingy alcove in an offshoot of the walls where a forgotten chandelier rested, broken and covered in years’ worth of cobwebs.
“No one comes here,” Del explained. “I can burn them later.” She glanced down the corridor. “Liam is likely sleeping,” she said quietly, nodding for me to follow her. “But I’ll take you to see him. Then—” She glanced back at me. “You should go until all of this gets sorted.”
