“I’msorry,” her laughter had returned in full force, tears springing into her eyes almost immediately. “I couldn’t help myself!”
Hilla was still lingering by the door, her face red and hands wound together. “Dieve did want me to inform you that the tincture for herCaddatcould cause spells of delirium.”
Aziel gave her a look. “This is not delirium, I assure you. It seems as if the tincture did its job—she’s entirely back to normal now.” Hilla nodded, glancing between the two of them before she awkwardly left the room. Once her footfall was out of hearing range he turned to the woman curled up in his bed. “You’ve quite the foul mouth, don’t you?”
Nymiria was already nestled into the pillows, the blankets pulled nearly up to her chin. She gazed at him sleepily, swollen lips still pulled back into a smile. There was not much left for her to say, no amount of further damage she could unleash upon her good reputation. She supposed she’d tarnished that with him the moment she punched him in the throat all those months ago. When she recalled it, bordering on the line between reality and the realm of dreams, just how magnificent he’d looked standing over her in that garden. She remembered believing that he was some sort of spirit, having come to whisk her away to a place where pain no longer existed.
Pain still existed in this place, no matter how bright and brilliant it seemed to be. But she’d noticed, as the world around her darkened and her mind drifted, that it hadn’t been nearly as hard to navigate as it was before.
There were people who loved her here—people who cared enough about her that made those dark days not seem so dark at all. Nymiria no longer believed that she and those she loved would be better off with her dead.
“If you believe that I would be angry with you for something like that, I would say that you don’t know me well at all, little flower.” Thorn laughed, setting his tea back onto the table.
According to Hilla, who had come to observe her in Aziel’s absence, she’d been asleep for nearly two days. Even so, her body still ached. Her thighs were sore and the muscles in her back felt as if they were squeezing around her spine any time she turned too far to the left.
Her cycle had left her feeling cold and depleted, but it was nothing she hadn’t dealt with before. She would take any ounce of mild soreness over what she’d felt before.
It was nearly noon when she managed to find her father. And after apologising to him for leaving her celebration early, he’d merely laughed it off. She was not foolish enough to think that he didn’t know what’d happened in her absence—from the night they had at the Twisted Willow, to the flaring of her cycle, she was sure that Thorn knew everything. He had eyes and ears around the kingdom, as well as his keen fae senses.
“Aziel informed me that you’ve made progress with your Grace.” He continued. Nymiria flashed him a cheeky grin, merely snapping her fingers to produce a rose. She held it out in his direction.
“It still feels strange,” she expressed. Thorn took the rose from her fingers and placed it in the empty vase at the center of the table. “After not having any ounce of control over it for so long, it feels odd. Like not having an arm for an entire decade and then waking up with one having sprouted from your body. Aziel said that it is just like learning how to hold a quill or a lead.” She flicked her fingers again, but instead of a flower springing from the tips of her fingers, there was nothing but a small silver spark. “But I still struggle to grasp it unless I channel with intent.”
“Do you remember how I taught you?” He hummed, brushing a blackberry spread over his toast.
Nymiria chuckled. “Yes, I do. Alas, I do not believe my imagination still allows me to pretend that I am on a battlefield and the only way to save myself is by shooting roses at the enemy.” She shot him a look and took a bite of her pastry.
“It worked, though. Got you to produce them immediately.”
“Because you werethrowingthings at me.”
Thorn raised one shoulder, smug. “Unimportant details to a beautiful story.”
Having been raised a warrior back in his home kingdom between Alvaros and Eadyn, Thorn’s ways of teaching and playing were generally incredibly violent. He wouldn’t have allowed her totrulyget hurt, but he surely made her fear it. He was not all battle scars and brooding, though. Thorn had been a gentle parental figure when the time called for it, and stern when he needed to be. Nymiria genuinely believed there was no better father in the world. And as a child, before she knew that he’d sired her, she would watch her friends with their own fathers and daydream about Thorn being hers.
Perhaps a part of her had always known.
“What did you see in my mother?” The question escaped before she had a chance to rein it in, her gaze distant. She could see her father shifting in her periphery, wetting his lips. For amoment, she believed that he would change the subject, as the tension that radiated from him was strong enough that she could feel it settling in her own shoulders.
“I came from Alvaros,” he said quietly. “Nan raised us there, my brother and I. We were forced to enlist in the military when we became of age. Theron and I were some of the best soldiers that Alvaros had—high ranking officers, both of us beautifully decorated. We worked hard for our titles and took pride in them, but our loyalty was with our men and not our king.” He took a slow sip of his drink before looking at her again. “Theron started a rebellion with his men. Got himself in a mess of trouble and eventually went into hiding because of it. The king, Everand’s father, personally asked me to resign and I did. A deal was made that I would come to Nym and negotiate for peace between the two kingdoms and because I wanted your Nan to have a safe place to live outside of the circumstances Theron created for her, I brought her here with me.”
“I had never met anyone like your mother. From the very beginning, she captivated me. She was a force of a woman unlike any that I’d ever met. But above all else, she waskind. Timid.” He shook his head. “I know it was real. She was good, Nymiria. Before she allowed her parents to get to her, before that darkness took hold of her core, she wasgood. I only started to see a vast difference in her personality when she urged me to conceive a child with her. Her parents demanded she have an heir, so we did.”
Nymiria felt that familiar ache in her chest, her brow crumpling just slightly before Thorn cleared his throat and reached for her hand.
“I wanted you, Nymiria. Never, for one moment, would I want you to think that you were not conceived out of love.” Even though his words soothed her, there was still a deephurtinside of her, one she believed could never fully heal. Thorn held ontoher hand, his thumb brushing over her knuckles as he continued to speak.
“Though Inasha changed, there was still a part of me that believed I could get the old version of her back. I tried everything, but the more I grappled with those pieces of her, the more she pulled away. She would disappear for weeks at a time and then come home and demand things from me. She stopped telling me she loved me. She became cruel and quiet and… she didn’t even tell me she was withchild before she left. She didn’t tell me anything about her plans. All I knew was that both of you were gone and then, months later, I woke up to a baby crying and a note written to me in your mother’s handwriting stating that he was our son. She didn’t name him. She said she wanted nothing to do with him or me and for me to stop looking for her.”
Nymiria could see the pain in his eyes, the sorrow of having lost the woman he loved, not just once, but multiple times. As if sensing her pity, Thorn offered her a half-hearted smile. “The mating bond was the only thing that tied me to her. The love I had for her only existed for the woman she killed—the version of herself that she butchered and threw away. But I will never regret having been with her. I’d do it all over again if it meant that I would have you and your brother.”
“You said that Alvaros wanted to negotiate a deal… what did she agree to?”
Thorn sighed, pulling his hand away from hers to drag over the length of his beard. “It was the betrothal, in the end. They wanted a marriage contract. If your mother and I were to have a child of the opposite sex as one of their children, they would marry. Those plans existed between the kingdom of Nym and Alvaros,notEadyn. It was your mother that signed that contract, not me. And if I have anything to say about it, my love, you will never be forced to marry anyone that you do notlove.” Nymiriasmiled at that, a sense of ease slowly working its way through her once again. “Speaking of love and mates—”
“Papa, let’s not discuss that.” She said quickly, cheeks pooling with blood almost immediately.
“Aziel is a good man.” He offered, concealing his smile with his tea cup.
