That wasn’t the first time her eyes had turned black, and it wasn’t the first time that she had drawn out the life of a living thing. I’m not sure how the hell I’m supposed to broach that subject with her.
A knock sounds at my door. Crossing the distance from the bedroom to the sitting room, I crack it open enough for me to glimpse who is there. My shoulders relax when I see it’s my father.
His voice is low and filled with concern as he walks in and asks, “How is she?”
The powerful outburst of both of our magic had drawn the attention of those in the palace, including my parents who had rushed into my room a few moments after Rhea collapsed. The entire evening was chaotic between my parents coming up with a reason for the expulsion of magic to give to the council and my insistence that only Galen and Sarai be allowed to tend to Rhea.
“She is the same,” I croak out, my hand running through my hair and holding the strands there. My father stands next to me—not quite shoulder to shoulder—and folds his arms over his chest.
“What did Galen say?”
“That she is healthy. That she expelled too much magic and needs to continue resting.” My gut sinks at the idea that she could be like this for a while, that she could wake up somehow different. Or maybe my fear is that she will wake up the same—falling apart into pieces because of me.
“Son, I can see the worry on your face. What doyouthink?”
“It’s my fault,” I rasp, allowing emotion to seep out for the first time since I confessed everything to Rhea. “My secrets did this to her—brought her anger to the surface and caused her magic to explode from her too quickly.” I didn’t have a chance yet to tell my father all about who Rhea is to me—who we are to each other. How I’d walk away from everything if she asked me to. I’d burn entire worlds down—starting with the Mortal Realm and its bastard king—with only a whisper of command from her lips. She wouldn’t ask me to do those things. It wasn’t in her nature to, but gods, did I fucking want to. There is something primitive inside of me that sings in approval at the thought—my magic hooking onto the idea that I could end any person who eventhinksabout harming her.
“I can feel your magic surging,” my father says, his hand coming to grip my shoulder. “Breathe, Nox.” Together, we inhale deeply and hold it there for a few seconds before slowly blowing the breath back out. “You haven’t lost control like that in a long while.” He surveys me, his fatherly intuition seeing more than eyes ever could.
He moves to sit on one couch, and I take the other, able to see Rhea in my bed from where I’m seated. The need to be closer to her is ever-present—never once dulling in the three months we’ve gotten to know each other. I thought I loved my kingdom and my family to my fullest potential, but then I felt what it was to loveher, to be lovedbyher, and it changed me. A well deeper than any I had felt before was open within me, and all I wanted to do was fill it with everything made of her.
My father crosses an ankle over his knee as he leans back on the couch. “Did I ever tell you about the time your mother stabbed me?”
I jerk my head back in surprise, making him chuckle. “What? Never.”
His smile is wide as he settles in a little more, like he’s preparing for a great retelling. “Of course, you know that my marriage to your mother was arranged—”
“Yes, and you were enraptured from the start,” I interrupt, folding my arms over my chest. My parents’ love story is one that’s been told over and over since my childhood.
“We were lucky to have found a lot of commonality at first with each other, especially for a pair of hormonal teenagers. But that doesn’t mean that our relationship wasn’t without faults or that we didn’t have to suffer through trial by fire to figure things out.”
“Did you ever lie to her about who you were though?”
He barks out a laugh, making me raise a brow in question. “No. I did not do that, but Ididlie to her in an attempt to push her away.”
Entirely confused, I stare at him, gesturing with my hand for him to continue.
“Your mother has grown into her role as queen of the Mage Kingdom, and she has done so beautifully. You cannot tell me that there is anyone else out there more fit to stand beside me, to help me lead and make decisions. But this was not always the case. When we were younger, she was a soft, free spirit. She hated the politics of court and of posturing to gain the approval of old men that only cared whether or not she could give the kingdom a strong heir.”
He tilts his head up towards the ceiling, smiling as he reminisces.
“We had been officially courting for two years, following all the guidelines and rules put in place for an heir apparent and their betrothed. Everything was planned and laid out ahead of time—where we ate, what we wore, even our conversation topics. We may have been attracted to each other, but it wasn’t a natural falling together. It wasn’t built on the right experiences. It was a façade of sorts. Which meant that, when things started to get difficult, there wasn’t a strong enough foundation to hold us to each other.”
I contemplate his words as I look over at Rhea. Her face is a mask of calm, her coloring more like its normal glow today.Sunshine.She truly is the embodiment of the sun—warm, radiating, and life-giving.
“I was serious about my duties as the crown prince, and Alexandria was a distraction from those things. A beautiful and easy-to-fall-for distraction,” he recalls.
“So what happened?” My gaze lingers on her for a moment longer before I finally pull it away and look at my father.
“There was a formal dinner and ball to be held in our honor, and your mother, gods, was counting down the days with absolute dread. She didn’t want the eyes of everyone on her. She didn’t like the way her father basically confined her to only their home and schooling, lest she accidentally embarrass him with her ‘wildness.’”
I didn’t know my grandfather on my mother’s side, as he passed shortly after I was born, but I hate the idea that anyone would try to confine her in that way.
“I could see how stressed she was. How every time we were forced to parade around the kingdom together, she became less and less present. I couldn’t watch her deteriorate like that. My attraction to her had morphed into something else—something deeper—but for her, she was so lost in the burden of what it meant to be married to the crown prince that I thought shedidn’t feel anything for me besides what was necessary for appearances. I knew it wasn’t fair to her, what she was being turned into. What she was giving up. So I concocted a plan. I would make her hate me, and I would pretend to hate her, so that our impending marriage would look too tumultuous, too unstable to continue in the eyes of the council, and she would be free.”
“That’s an embarrassingly stupid plan.”
His laugh is light, coaxing a small chuckle of my own. “Love makes you do stupid things sometimes. And lack of experience. I had both of those going for me and thought I knew the answers. So I spent the months leading up to the dinner being a complete asshole to her.”
