Things that included him.
The more he had told her over the years about his childhood, the more her rage had grown, and along with it, fear.
His father was a powerful god, one no one was willing to resist or rebel against. Morgen had grown up hidden andshamed. Few had known of his existence until the day he fled. But he had never told her what had become of his abusive father, the one whose rage was endless, who was heartless enough to bring his own son to the brink of death again and again, just to see if he would survive. Even as a child, Morgen had never succumbed, and he’d never told Nya the reason for that either.
But she was not stupid, and they both knew it. Sitting a few paces away, she thought he might be taunting her with the silence. He did not speak aloud nor down the pathway, but she could hear the word pulsing between them, nevertheless.
Ask.
Except, she did not want to know the truth about who he truly was, the one she had suspected for a long while now. She always refuted it because itcouldn’tbe.
According to the short passage in a history book at home, Kronos had no children, or, at least, none who lived long enough to be born. Their mortal mothers always died before they could carry to term, their bodies succumbing to the power of the embers their child carried. And though the god-king had tried, none of the principals or their godling children had been willing to give him an heir. Nya’s own mother had died and been reborn twice over rather than face that fate.
Morgen had told her once, in the hazy quiet of a very early morning, that his mother had died mere seconds after he was born, begging for her own death. His father had loved to remind him how she hadn’t wanted Morgen, how every day she carried him in her womb, she wished to die ‘like all the others’. His father had kept her locked up but tended to by midwives like some sick experiment to see how long she would last. Morgen had never specified who the others he spoke of were.
“I should head back soon,” she said, unable to stand the silence anymore.
“It’s still raining. You should at least wait out the storm.”
She shrugged, biting her lip. “You know how it rains here this time of year. It could be a while.”
Before she could stop herself, she stood and snatched her small, woven satchel off the stone floor. As she faced the entrance, readying to duck around the water, Morgen asked, “Will you be coming back?”
She halted but did not face him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She heard him stand, and her pulse quickened as he closed the space between them. When he spoke, his breath caressed the loos hair at her temple, and her back arched on instinct when he murmured, “You tell me, Nya.”
She swallowed, giving a tiny shake of her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He laughed, the sound low and rough, vibrating across vocal chords that had never quite healed right after his father had slit his throat. His father who was?—
No.It couldn’t be.Hecouldn’t be.
But then, Morgen turned her around, snatching her chin in his fingers and tilting her head back so she was forced to look at his eyes, glowing with silver ether and sparkling with embers of deep amber-gold.
“And now?” he challenged. “Now, will you finally admit to yourself what you’ve known for a while?”
Her jaw trembled. “I didn’t?—”
He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips, shushing her. “Nya,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not particularly good at concealing your emotions. Do you think I didn’t see it, the second you started to suspect who my father really was? It’s not as if I was doing much to hide it. I knew you would figure it out soon enough, given who your parents are.”
“I never told you who they are,” she whispered.
He looked away. “I always suspected. Like you, I ignored my suspicions, because I thought…” He exhaled an empty-soundinglaugh. “I thought that Fate couldn’t possibly be so cruel. To me, yes, but to you…” He trailed off again, meeting her eyes.
Her brow creased. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re right.” He lowered his hand and stepped back. “You should probably go.”
His eyes were still sparking with gold embers, a stark reminder of the truth of just which god’s blood ran through his veins. Surely, cruelty as potent Kronos’ would pass on through a bloodline, except…
Morgen was nothing like that.
He had more a right than Kronos ever had to be heartless, but even with his terror-filled, loveless childhood, he had never been anything but kind to Nya. A little broody sometimes, and hard to crack, but he never took advantage of her or hurt her on purpose. In fact, more than once, she suspected he had healed her. Bruises from clumsily tripping over a fallen branch or scrapes from the stones at the bottom of the creek sometimes mysteriously disappeared after he brushed his hand against hers.
If she left now, she was afraid she would never come back. Perhaps it was that very desperation that drove her next actions, or perhaps it was the simmering ache she had been dutifully ignoring for years, finally coming to a point she could no longer disregard.
She supposed it didn’t matter. By the time she was kissing him, nothing else felt like it mattered more.
