Page 125 of No One’s Daughter

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

Ailsa

VALERIUS PUT HIS hands in his pockets as though this was just a normal evening. “Tell you what, since you’ve been so well behaved this evening… I’ll let her live if you can pick her out.”

My stomach dropped.

It was an impossible task and he knew it.

They all looked like Claire.

For all I knew, she wasn’t even up there but my heart told me she was and that it was all my fault.

“You pick one, and that one gets to live. How about that?”

I buried a scream.

Bile threatened to rise.

A tear shed, falling heavily down my cheek as I looked up at the lifeless silhouettes wrapped in silk above me. Feeling so fucking helpless, so fucking weak, so fucking useless. ‘A curse’, that’s what our mother had always muttered about me and the words had always stung, but I'd never felt them to be true until this moment. I was a curse. A curse on anyone who knew me.

How was I supposed to make this impossible choice?

“Pick!” he roared, his facade gone. “Or they all die.”

My eyes flew from body to body but it was no use, there were zero identifiable features to be seen, heard or even scented. I was blind.

So I did the only thing I could do and guessed. I pointed a shaky finger toward the figure closest to me. Hoping and praying to a God I’d never believed in to be right.

The air around us was still and deadly silent. No one dared to speak or move as I waited for what felt like an eternity.

Until finally, Valerius smirked.

​“Wrong,” he said with a dark humour that made me sick to my stomach.

I shook my head side to side, unable to speak, unable to move.

Then the reality hit me, I’d chosen wrong.

Wrong.

A sob escaped me and my trembling hand flew over my mouth.

​“Can’t say I'm surprised though. You don’t seem very good at recognising siblings,” he laughed.

“Not only am I your real flesh and blood—your brother. We once shared a womb, you and I.” He let the words sink in, take root before continuing. “I’m a little hurt you didn’t notice our bond,” he said, feigning heartbreak with a hand over his heart.

​My breaths came in short sharp inhales through my nose as I fought the rising bile in my throat. My entire body trembled and I swallowed hard.

​He couldn’t be.

​No. No, no, no.

Claire was the only family I had. She was all that mattered.

​“I know, I know,” he began. “It doesn’t seem possible, but you see, our dear treacherous mother hid that there was more than one babe, she got you out with the aid of witches and their forbidden dark magic. She sent you here, to this magicless realm so you would be hidden. You see, I figured it all out because there was always a piece of me missing. I knew someone had stolen power from me. My suspicions were confirmed from the horse's mouth itself, right before I killed her for it. You took what was meant for me and I want it back.”

​My knees threatened to give way beneath me as I battled the fear taking over me. I couldn’t compute the story he was telling. It was too much, and all of my focus was still on Claire. I didn’t give a shit about where I came from.