Nymiria shook her head, hot tears burning as they coursed down her cheeks. “Gods, no.” She pressed her hand to her heart as if it could stop the ache, as if it could mend the pain she knew would never go away. “I will never regret anything we have done together, Aziel. Every moment spent with you has been…perfect.” She confessed.
He could understand why she would feel that way. Though he never expressed to her the weight of his father’s reign, it was a weight he’d dragged with him for the majority of his life. Every time he looked at the Mystics, every time he looked at himself, or at anyone else that’d had the displeasure of crossing paths with his father, Aziel felt it. It was not always at the forefront of histhoughts, but it lingered, in his mind, much like Nymiria’s ghost lingered around her. Not always visible, not always present, butthere. Like a stain you could conceal well, but never erase.
He could understand it. And it was selfish of him to demand her to be any other way than how she was. It was selfish of him to believe that he could erase years of torture with soft touches and delicate words.
Aziel gave a curt nod, biting back words that would surely be the last thing she would want to hear at a time like this. “Does being near me always torment you this way?”
Nymiria shook her head. “No.”
“What makes it happen?” He asked.
Her eyes wandered to the sky, focusing on a cloud of birds passing overhead. He saw her shiver, saw the way she tucked her arms around herself as if to hide her discomfort. “I’m not entirely sure,” she muttered. “There are moments when I feel fine. And then Iremember.”
He’d never planned on telling her. He believed that the information he acquired about her mother was better left with the body that he’d burned back in Yaar. He believed that it was inconsequential, but perhaps if she knew the truth, it could change the way she viewed herself and the irrational fear she carried of him seeing Inasha in her. He didn’t. Ever.
“Nymiria, Oran had been suspecting that something was wrong with his mother foryears. And for years, he and I searched for evidence that corroborated his suspicions. Months before he approached me about his suspicions of Mimicry, I had already found enough evidence to assume that Camalia was your mother.” He felt as if the words ripped the air from his lungs, as if they had added weight to his soul and was now relieved of them. “I didn’t want you to be angry with me. If I confessed that I had known, for so long, that Camalia was your mother, you would have hated me.” Her face was a mosaic of emotions,shifting between sadness and confusion and anger over and over again. “Before I even pursued you, I knew. I just hadn’t confirmed it. When I chose to pursue you, when I fell in love with you, Iknew.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I felt like you should know that it never made me think of you any differently.” He said.
Nymiria started towards the path they’d taken into the forest, her footfall barely audible as she went. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just… I need a moment.”
Aziel did not follow her. As much as he wanted to make things right, he’d learned the hard way that he could not fix broken souls. Not even his own.
The scream that ripped from her chest echoed through the palace, her whole body trembling as the shadowy figure in front of her shifted into a wide-eyed and equally terrifiedTrio.
Nymiria didn’t give him a chance to recover before she was charging through the room and slamming her fist into his arm. “What the hell are you doing in here?” She exclaimed.
Trio rubbed at the sore spot on his arm, his fearful expression quickly shifting to one of amusement as she stomped through the room and snatched a bottle of absinthe from Aziel’s drink collection. “Iwaswaiting for your mate, but telling by your choice of drink, I will assume that he will not be returning here tonight.” He chuckled, but his laughter was quickly quelled by the venomous glare she shot in his direction. Sighing, he sauntered to the table and plopped himself down. “Alright. Tell me what he did.”
“Why do you assume that it washim?” She snapped, angrily popping the cork from the drink and tossing it away.
“He isverytalented in the art of saying and doing the wrong thing. He may mean well—sometimes—but he is horribly lacking in manners, and he rarely takes anyone’s feelings into account before he speaks.”
Nymiria snorted, sliding into the chair across from him and propping her feet up on the table. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but Aziel has beenperfect. It’smethat is the issue now.” She took a small swallow of the absinthe and then slid the bottle across the table to Trio. He took it to his lips immediately, groaning when the first drop hit his throat.
“Why would you think that you are the issue?” He asked.
She frowned, the bottle back in her possession already. “My mother ruined everything.”
Trio watched with squinted eyes as she took another sip. When she passed it back to him, he held it in the air for a moment and then sighed. “Your mother is only ruining what youallowher to ruin. To be fairly honest, I don’t think that Aziel associates your mother with you. I don’t even think he associated her with Oran when she disguised herself as Camalia. Why? Because it had nothing to do with either of you.” He shrugged. “But, what do I know?”
The twinkle in his eyes made her chuckle, the warmth from the absinthe already settling in her chest. “I asked you a question you never answered.” She stated. “When we got drunk on the lawn together, I’d asked you if you had ever been in love and you never answered.”
Trio smirked, shaking his head at her. “Well, now, I am notnearlydrunk enough to talk about that.”
“So you have been in love?”
“Everyone has been in love, Nymiria.” He rolled his eyes, fingers nervously twirling the lock of hair that dangled over his forehead. There was a sadness about him that Nymiria knew all too well. A sadness that told a story of love and sacrifice.“Alright,” he released a sharp breath and straightened himself. Nymiria eyed him, slowly passing the bottle in his direction. He sat there for a moment, simply looking at the bottle before he took it up and drank. Nymiria had half the mind to redact what she’d asked, but Trio was already talking.
“When I was a boy,” he began. “Roughly around the age of fifteen, I realized that I didn’t have the same interest in girls that everyone else did. It was something that I typically kept to myself. I didn’t even tell Aziel until we were a few years older, when I believed that I had feelings for him. Aziel… he is a very good friend. A better friend than I had ever been to him and he was so understanding that he decided totryto have a relationship with me. We quickly discovered that the love we had for one another was not the kind of love I was looking for. And he discovered that he did, in fact, preferwomen.” Both of them chuckled at this, but Nymiria wished that she could have reached across the table and held his hand. She regretted having asked, having requested this story to begin with. It was obvious, in the set of his brow and the flex of his hands, that it was one of pain.
“By this time, I had already left Yaar. I was travelling around the continent, checking in with Aziel and my sister as often as possible. But I ended up crossing paths with a group of sympathizers that took me in and allowed me to live with them for a time.” This was when his eyes became glossy, when the sadness in him manifested and turned to tears. “I fell in love with a man there—a man I believed I would spend the rest of my life with. In Yaar, people didn’t take too kindly to relationships like that. It was something that was done behind closed doors, fulfilling a hidden desire, but never publicized. Buthere, in The Beyond, it was different. All I’d ever known was Yaar, so when I came here and saw how much no one cared, it was a relief. I suppose that old habits die hard, or perhaps it’s been engrainedin my mind to be ashamed of who I was, but I made a mistake and let the way I was raised dictate the love I had.”
Nymiria abandoned her reservations, frowning as she moved around the table and wrapped her arms around him. Trio tugged Nymiria into his lap, resting his head against her shoulder. “I always had a fear that Dorid’s men would find me and kill me—that they would kill everything and every person that I loved, so I always kept him at a distance. I never gave too much of myself, buthegave everything. In the end, Nymiria, Doriddidfind us. Dorid’s men found us together. They held my face over the fire to distract me enough to not use my shadows while they captured the group. Aziel wouldn’t have let it happen, had he been the one in charge, but hewasable to locate which camp my lover was in.”
“What happened?” Nymiria whispered.
