He gives me a cold smile. “Because you can’t love something when you don’t know it exists.”
“Are you certain Malak never knew about you?” I ask. “Surely, your mother?—”
“No.” His rebuke is soft, but the growl in his voice tells me I’m in dangerous territory. “If he knew my mother had given birth to me, he would have killed her.”
My forehead is deeply furrowed. “But… why? Malak used everything for his own purposes. If he was worried you could challenge him, he would have done to you what he did to us and stolen your power. I can’t see him killing?—”
“Because my mother was human.”
I blink at him, frozen to the spot. “That isn’t possible.”
His lips twist. “Which is almost certainly why he didn’t think twice about the chance of a pregnancy.”
My eyes are wide. “Both parents must be Blacksmiths.” I try to fight through the whirlwind of confusion within my mind. “Well… Who was she? Your mother?”
His jaw clenches. “I saw her when I was there,” he says softly. “When I went to your Cursed City.” The tension in his featureseases, and he gives an exhalation like relief. “She was alive and healthy.”
“Her name, Thaden,” I say, a demand for an answer.
“Alive and healthy,” he repeats, the tension washing across his face again. “Because nobody knows who she is or the fact that she brought Malak’s son into the world. And for that same reason, I didn’t speak a word to her.”
“You’re protecting her,” I say, my eyes widening.
“Of course I’m protecting her!” He shakes his head at me, an intensely angry movement. “Even Milena only spoke my mother’s name once. And even then, it was in a whisper. When she was certain the dragons couldn’t hear.
“I want to believe there was a small shred of goodness in Milena that compelled her to keep me and my mother safe. But I know she only did it because she wanted to use us as leverage against Malak. Her knowledge was her power over him.”
Thaden’s presence is now overpowering. His eyes glitter down at me. “So you see, Tamra Silverspun, I didn’t lie. I am human.”
“And what of the rest of your story?” I ask. “Did Milena really change you into a dragon against your will?”
He is silent.
For a terrible moment, I actually want him to lie to me. To tell me a story that I can willfully believe.
All because of that look in his eyes when he told me he’s human. A painful hope, as if he wants more than anything tobehuman.
For myself, I don’t know what happened to the dragon. I only know that it makes no sense for Milena to have killed one when she’s clearly allied with the dragons. There’s no reason for her to anger them like that. I don’t even know what dragon was killed.
Of course, dragons could have enemies amongst themselves…
I’m certain Thaden could concoct a believable story.
Instead, he says. “Milena didn’t kill the dragon.”
I wait for him to continue, barely daring to breathe, praying now for the truth.
“It was…” He shakes his head. “A tragedy that…”
He closes his eyes for a long moment.
I want the words he isn’t speaking. I need him to fill the silences with explanations, but he doesn’t.
“I had no choice,” he says, his forehead creasing and his eyes squeezing harder closed. “I had to make myself as strong as possible for the battle I knew was coming for me.”
He opens his eyes, and now they’re hard, gleaming bronze and filled with fire.
“I have no choice but to become what Milena and the dragons feared,” he snarls. “To protect what I love, I will embrace the dark.”
