“After Alair,” I finished, my chest aching.
Iravena’s brows arched up. But a moment later, they softened along with her gaze. “He told you.” She was relieved.
“Yes.”
She walked back to the window. The square panes of crowned glass were difficult to see through. They mostly let in light. She reached for the latch, opening it with familiar hands. She’d spent many years visiting this room.
I looked around it again. Garrick had told me that this was his bedroom when he was at Balar Shan before, but I’d never really looked. I’d been too angry. I did not want to let myself see.
Now it was impossible to miss.
The books shoved onto the shelves on the far side of the hearth spoke of the years of schooling he’d had. Had he shared those lessons with Alize and Edmund?
The paint on the wall was chipped; the molding missing thick chunks in the corner where he shucked his weapons every night before bed. He’d been using that corner for that purpose for decades.
I looked back to where Iravena had sat on the floor with her knees drawn up to her chest. Had she sat there with Garrick when he was young? Read him books? Provided comfort when Balar Shan hurt him?
My eyes burned again. Maybe they hadn’t really stopped.
Iravena stared out the window. She wore a knit shawl over her shoulders. It couldn’t do much against the frigid wind, but she did not shiver.
“I am sorry that he betrayed you for my sake. I know…” Her voice wavered. “I know what it is to be betrayed by someone who you think loves you.”
Garrick’s father. She was speaking of the fae king.
Oh gods. Dark God’s hell. Dark God, help me. Any god, help me.
She’d loved him.
It wasn’t worse than the rape I’d imagined. But it wasn’t better, either.
And it wasn’t Garrick.
Never, ever. The comparison made me sick.
“Garrick is not his father,” I said. I tried to hide it, but she heard the anger in my words.
She whipped around. “Never. I would never imply such a thing.”
“Good.”
She pressed her lips together in an expression of annoyance that was almost an exact mirror of her son's. She stepped away from the window, closer to me.
“But he is fae, Koryn,” she said. “It is why I stayed, even when the bargain was fulfilled. This place is his birthright, illegitimate or not. It will always be a part of him. I will not ask my son to divide his heart in two.”
I did not know if she meant her bargain or his. I was not sure that it mattered. What mattered was what happened next.
“Then come with us.”
She flinched. “I have been in Balar Shan for most of my life.”
After she returned with Garrick… and before she’d been the lover of a king.
I recognized the glint in her eyes, the moisture that burned at the corners and clouded her judgment. I’d lived with it for hundreds of years. It was fear.
A new thought entered my mind. It was reckless, maybe. But it was also the only option I could consider. I should have thought of it sooner. I should have told Garrick and let him begin convincing her a month ago, when we’d first been dragged to this wretched castle.
This time, I was the one who closed the distance between us. I reached for her hand and caged it between both of mine.
