Those words shocked Xaydin to his core. Gisela was Meara’s bastard…
“You’re shitting me?”
Gisela swam back and would have gone farther from him had the king’s guards not stopped her retreat.
Rage the likes of which he’d never known—which given his childhood said it all—descended on him. In that moment, he wanted to rip out her heart and feed it to her. To beat her until she made the same screaming sounds of every child he’d seen tortured by her mother.
Her mother.
And I actually saved her in the tavern from the same nightmare that had been so viciously given to those around me.
No, the nightmare they’d given him without any mercy. Memories he’d hidden so deep that even now he couldn’t face them. He’d spent a lifetime in denial. A lifetime trying to forget.
Pain is power.Meara’s sick and twisted belief. Either the pain swallowed you whole or the pain reshaped you into a stronger version of yourself. One who learned that they could overcome and be invincible.
It was a lesson he hadn’t needed. A lesson he doubted anyone needed.
And this was her progeny…
A daughter Meara had sent out to die so that Meara could be free of a contract she voluntarily signed.
Xaydin paused as that thought broke through his senseless anger and returned his mind to a rational state. Meara had knowingly and intentionally sent her own child on a quest that would likely end with her death.
Typical bitchtress.
And it explained so much about Gisela’s mannerisms and fear. And yet…
Meara was a centaur. Gisela wasn’t.
Fuck me.
If there was anything Meara hated, it was any race not her own. Yet she’d bred with someone else.
Somethingelse.
Had it been voluntary?
Either way, Gisela wasn’t just her daughter. She was her deepest shame, and Meara would shit twice and die if she knew anyone had discovered this matter. No wonder Gisela had been so silent about her past.
So sympathetic about their experiences in her mother’s court. He could only imagine how much worse her childhood must have been than any of theirs.
Meara as a mother…
He shuddered. Xaydin couldn’t imagine any worse hell.
“I won’t hurt you, Gisela. No one can help the family they’re born into, and I won’t hold your mother against you.”
Gisela wanted to believe he meant those words, but it was impossible. And the worst part was that she couldn’t even blame him for hating her. Her mother was a wretched, awful creature who tortured everyone.
That was Meara’s idea of fun.
Yet he swam toward her slowly and raised his hand for her to take it. She held her watery space, even though she wanted to run. But running had never been in her nature. Or if it had been, her mother had beaten it out of her so young that she couldn’t remember a time when she’d done so.
Her breathing ragged, she met his gaze without flinching. All she saw was sincerity. But could she trust it?
Could she trust him?
While he hadn’t given her any reason not to, it still wasn’t in her to give such. Not to anyone.
