His gaze lingers another moment before he looks away. “My father became more intense after that. I hear he wasn’t always this way.”
“What way is he?” I ask gently.
“Obsessed, narrow-minded, relentless. He raised me with very strict training. And he wasn’t often kind. A lot of the scattered scars on my body will tell you of that tale.”
I gasp.
“It wasn’t all bad,” he says. I don’t know if he’s assuring me, or himself. “He still loves me, in his own way. He just became so obsessed with us rising to power again that he lost sight of what’s in front of him.”
“What about Raef’s father?” I ask.
“Dead. Along with his mother.”
I raise my hand to my mouth.
“He was raised with me. Raef is actually my cousin.”
He looks at me then, checking for my reaction. I don’t know why but it makes me smile, if only for a moment. But then it fades. “So your father raised him the same?”
Daegan’s head tilts from side to side. “Sort of. His mother was my father’s sister, who I think he had a soft spot for. I think he was probably a lot harder on me. But Raef shouldn’t have received any of that treatment.”
“Neither of you should have.”
He shrugs.
He sets my foot down in his lap, gently picks up the other one, then glances over at me. “How was growing up here?”
“Um…” I feel bad. I wasn’t raised nearly as terrible as that. “About what you’d expect.”
“Which is?”
“Well, my father mostly left me alone. I did my schooling, and I spent a lot of time in the library, as you may have already guessed. I didn’t get out of these castle walls much.”
He nods, mulling it over. “And when you got older? Parties? Friends?”
“Mostly just Meela, but I didn’t go to many parties.”
“There are a lot of people living in this castle, huh?”
I nod.
“Employees of your father’s?”
“Yes. The castle staff and their families. Some people of nobility. Things like that. It’s like a village of its own.”
He nods again. “Makes sense. It’s large enough to house an entire village worth of people.”
“It’s home. But some of my fondest memories, besides spending my time buried in books, are going on trips with my father and some of his court. Outside of Ellyar”
“You mentioned you traveled before…”
“Yes. He used to bring me more when I was young.” I pause, taking a sip of wine. “I’m not sure if he began to distance himself, or if I did. Or both.”
“I’ve been to Moonstone before, too,” he says softly, looking off in the distance. “It’s… haunting.”
I nod in agreement. That’s exactly how it felt. Empty and hollow. Tragic. Haunting.
An entire race of werewolves are dead because of the curse.
