Our hands remained clasped as I continued.
“I know them. They might not run with the best crowd, but deep down they are good people with good intentions. They wouldn’t deceive me like that after everything I’ve done for them. If they were involved in anything, it wasn’t of their own doing.”
“Done for them?”
“After their motherwalked, they… relied on me. I was a shoulder for them to cry on, a partner to dance with, a lover to?—”
“How did they help you in return? How didtheyserve you?”
“Relationships aren’t transactional—they’re more complex than that. I loved my grandmother, but I resented her too.” I fought the quiver in my voice. “She loved me, even though she couldn’t show it the way I needed her to. To love someone is to trust them, to believe their intentions are good. And even if I’m wrong about my family, my friends… the pain—the regret—means it was all real. For me, at least.”
“Regret?”
“I was afraid to face my grandmother again, and now I wish I had one more chance to apologize. And maybe we were too different in the end to make amends, but love isn’t all or nothing. It’s not black or white.” I gestured grandly with my free hand. “It’s a myriad of colors, a blend of moments and feelings irreparably tethering you to another, for better or worse. It’s messy. Like me. But that’s being human, Chosen or not.”
Raithe looked at me as though I were a riddle he couldn’t figure out.
I angled my head inquisitively. “What about Hector? Did you love him?”
Pulling his hand back, Raithe put several feet between us. I was reminded of the cool breeze surrounding us. I let the soft musical notes caress my skin, even as Raithe said, “No.”
“Who was he?” I pressed. I sensed it might be a mistake to do so, but I couldn’t help it. I had a strange desire to understand more about this enigmatic man. “To you, not the queendom.”
“No one,” Raithe said, his tone warning enough. He turned his back to me, intending to resume his post in the hall.
“It’s a disservice to his memory to pretend he didn’t exist,” I called after him. “Would you have preferred that to be the case? For him to never have been born?”
“Of course not.”
“Then stop being afraid.”
He halted in his tracks.
“When my grandfather began to deteriorate, my grandmother refused to acknowledge it. Instead of facing her pain, she chose silence—and it kept us from healing together. There were many things we weren’t allowed to speak of, including my parents. I live with the regret of pretending the best person I knew wasn’t slipping away.” The truth of our family’s messed-up dynamic poured out of me. “Trust me, Raithe. That kind of regret will tear you apart inside unless you set it free.”
Raithe flexed his hands at his sides. Then he cast a glare over his shoulder, but it wasn’t intended for me. “You want to know who Hector was?”
I couldn’t speak, too hopeful for his answer.
“He was the father I should have had.”
I tracked his silhouette through blurred eyes, wishing him to stay and talk with me about this—the weighty matters of the heart that we couldn’t seem to face alone.
“Oh, Raithe,” I murmured. Despite the single tear sliding down my cheek, my chest felt lighter for the first time in days.
Chapter 37
Raithe
What had I done?
The question blistered my mind tirelessly. The answer was simple; I’d revealed too much. More than that, the feel of Rahzlyn’s hand had seeped beneath my glove and into my bones, lingering for days.
I tightened my hand repeatedly, the act becoming a nervous tic since agreeing to trust her.
Despite years of better judgement, one look in her honey eyes and I couldn’t help but believe her. I was too enraptured by how freely she shared pieces of herself to the world, to me.
It made me want to give her a piece of myself in return.
