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“Well, let's get on with it,” Whitehorn barked impatiently.
We rode through the trees until nightfall.
My head throbbed, my stomach gnawed at itself, and my mind churned endlessly over what Draven had said.
CHAPTER 17
Sometimes when I laidawake at night, I counted how many people had died because I existed.
It was not as soothing as counting sheep may have been.
Especially since recently the list had swelled.
I would have been a monster indeed to not have thought countless times of the seven heads that had lain in the box Arthur had forced me to open.
Yaryna and six others.
Baudwin and the two men in the alley by the market.
Florian Emrys. Deserved or not, he was dead by my hand.
My mother.
And of course, my own father.
After the period of rare kindness that had followed my mother’s death, he had turned back to his former ways. Without my mother to use as a scapegoat for his fists, I was an all-too-easy target.
Then came Ettarde. For a year or so, I had a reprieve.
I'd never once asked Arthur about that time. He hated to speak of his mother. Any mention of her was a reminder of his initial illegitimacy that he still resented to this day.
After Ettarde was executed, my father began to include Arthur in his cruel punishments.
Only when Enid became queen did the blows pause for two years.
I’ve never known if that was because for once in his life, my father was actually content or because Enid convinced him to stop. Or because she became his new victim.
