2
Sagan
At first it was gossip about this ball or event. I skimmed it as I finished eating. There was some good insight into how the elders pressured them and I was relieved I could get answers as to how they’d let them end up in so much debt.
I was disgusted when she wrote about feeling bad for someone on the castle staff who was being harassed by an elder and all she did was transfer the woman instead of handling the problem. She didn’t even tell Father because she didn’t want to cause trouble.
Pathetic. My mother was seriously embarrassing.
It was like the twentieth entry that made my heart race. The first line written differently even, clearly in anger.
“I hate her.”
I read it over and over again and somehow knew.
I knew without having to continue.
How horrible was that? How absolutely horrible was my life that I knew my mother meant me without even reading more?
That’s why the woman deleted the texts. Others knew she hated me.
“No, she wouldn’t have been so careless or others would have already leaked it and come for you,” Iris argued but didn’t sound so sure.
Eloise just seemed scared, like she sensed something—maybe how bad this was going to be for us?
I set down my food and wiped my hands, fully focused on finding out my mother’s true feelings about me. Ignoring my dragons trying to comfort me that maybe it wasn’t about me, I reread the first sentence and went on.
“I hate her. Gods help me, but I do. I hate my own daughter. I hate what she has cost me. Everything was perfect before she was born. No, it wasn’t her birth.
It was the moment she lost the black hair of babies and it was replaced with the dark pewter hair that had TWO colors of streaks to show she was a mistake.
A mistake I birthed, and my mate never forgave me for it. ”
I choked on a sob and looked up at the ceiling, hating the gods in that moment for doing this to me. Why make me so different and live this way?
I immediately apologized to Eloise because for a moment I blamed her, but it wasn’t her fault. Everyone blamed her because being a fire dragon was normal, but my parents said my orange streaks came in first but… By days? Who knew how it happened when I was born with both dragons?
I would have had a more normal life if I’d only had Eloise. It was having two dragons that cursed me to this fate.
“No, it was bad parents, not us,” Eloise defended, already crying.
She was right and I said as much, having the image of Iris comforting her. I apologized to them both and told them I loved them. I was just…
I didn’t think there were words for what I was right then.
What was the emotion for finding out that your mother hated you and thought you were a mistake?
“Finish it so we can heal,” Iris demanded, just as upset.
Can we heal from this? I didn’t think so, but I agreed with her that I couldn’t stop now.
“All I ever wanted was Rhys, and I want to make him happy, but even if I can’t stand to look at Sagan, she’s still my daughter. She’s still the baby I carried and gave life to. I can’t betray her. I can’t just replace her like he wants. And even worse, what if it happens again?
“He’ll leave me. He’ll divorce me or give in to the elders’ demands and take a consort or another mate to have a male heir.
I would leave if he did that anyways. It was the only time I told Rhys no for anything.
I won’t share him. I can’t. I gave up everything to be with him—I can’t live knowing he shares another woman’s bed. ”
The inconsistencies gave me pause. I raced through my mother’s words, detached from my own emotions as I tried to make sense of her emotions because clearly this was all coming from her upset.
It was a few pages in that I got the answer and what broke my soul.
“Some days I hate my dragon for not letting me get pregnant again. Rhys would love me like he used to and we could forget Sagan ever happened—let her live her life as a royal who abdicated or something—find any other reason she couldn’t be his heir other than the truth.
It’s all her fault. The gods and my dragon’s fault I suffer like this. ”
Apparently, I hated myself as much as my mother did, because I kept reading and found out my father never had any intention of ever letting me take the throne.
The exact opposite, and he was adamant that I never become queen.
Mother had asked him why he bothered training me as his heir and wasting time teaching me if it was never going to happen.
His response?
“She’s all you and the gods have given me, and it would be a bigger embarrassment if she was an idiot along with being a monster.”
I burst out laughing when I read that. Ugly laughing that I knew wasn’t sane sounding.
And then I lost my mind, tearing through my mother’s bookshelves to find all the journals. I opened every fucking book and checked for a language my father couldn’t read to hide her secrets, her lies that she was trying to get pregnant with my replacement knowing her dragon wouldn’t let her.
“You lied to both of us and the whole world, you fucking bitch,” I seethed as I found another one. “Proud of me? Fuck you. You were the monster. Both of you. I was your child!”
There were dozens, and I would read every fucking word and kill any love, any family bond with them. All of them.
I have no family. Not anymore.
“It’s not anyone else’s fault,” Iris argued.
They’re all to blame for not seeing this! Seeing what was done to me and letting it happen!
My dragons argued, but I wouldn’t hear it. I was going to grab a bag of hers, but I didn’t want to touch anything else, just the books I needed. And even if I hated to have them in my suite, I couldn’t stay in their space any longer.
I carried the first stack out of there, ignoring the guard who watched me with confusion.
Then I brought a bag from my room—my room that had almost nothing because I was broke because of them and grabbed the rest. I left the tray outside the door and asked the guard to please call for it to be picked up, apologizing for that.
But honestly, I didn’t fucking care… About anything really.
The Khirriln wine was in my suite and I swore a bit that there were only three cases as I unloaded the stacks of journals. I would need a lot more than that to deal with all of this bullshit.
I opened a bottle and poured a glass before laying out all of the journals and looking inside the covers. I chuffed as I got annoyed over something that most would probably think stupid.
“You couldn’t like fucking date them or number them, you stupid bitch? Anything you could handle, Mother?” I snorted. “And I’m the disappointment? Fuck you. Seriously, just—fuck you both.”
I picked up a random one then and sat to read it while drinking and scanned it for more about me. I could go back and get the gossip or even more about her family later.
In that moment, I wanted to know how badly my parents hated me. It couldn’t get any worse, right?
Oh no, it could.
On top of everything else, my parents were grossed out by how “childlike” my mystic dragon could be, humiliated when Father’s siblings made comments that she seemed to be developing slowly.
“Not my fault!” Eloise sobbed in my head. “Never let out! They hid me. Never—only cared about Iris. People only like Iris!”
All three of us broke down crying and I knew it had been all lies. I knew it couldn’t have just been my parents.
I picked up my phone, not caring how many drinks I’d had, not caring about anything else but Eloise. For once, all that mattered was her.
“What’s wrong?” Benson—the head of the Queen’s Guard—answered. I didn’t call him to chat. I messaged him if I needed something. Calls were for emergencies, so I couldn’t even blame him.
“Remove every De la Rosa from the castle,” I ordered. “None are welcome here anymore. I have no more family.”
“What?” he breathed. He muttered to someone to excuse him and there was a pause, but then he let out a shaky breath. “What happened? Talk to me.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I won’t let anyone else hurt her.”
“Her who? Sagan, please, talk to me,” he begged. “What is—”
“Get them out of my castle or you can get out and don’t fucking come back,” I snapped and hung up. I tossed my phone onto the couch and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the windows.
Standing with my wine glass, I went over there and then to the ugly mirror hanging in the living area from some guest room. I unclipped my hair and took off the magic that made my hair look like a fire dragon’s only.
My long, thick, dark pewter hair changed from shimmers of orange to shimmers of orange and violet… Or more the violet appeared. It was easier to cover them up than to try to change them to orange. Plus, I was different in this too because I had double the streaks of everyone else.
I had double the dragons, so it made sense.
I wasn’t sure how long I stared at myself in my true form, trying to remember the last time I’d seen myself like this even. There was noise in the main hall and then one of the guards tried to announce someone, but I didn’t even pay attention.
“Stand aside,” Benson ordered. “It’s an emergency.”
I snorted. I wasn’t sure he was wrong… But he wasn’t right either and was just being pushy because he could.
So I just tossed back the rest of my wine and went for the bottle, frowning when it was empty. I was reaching for another one when I heard a gasp and then suddenly he was next to me.
“I have so many questions, but I can’t think of anything but your hair,” he murmured. I flinched but saw he was staring at it when I reached for the bottle opener. “I forgot how amazing it was.”
“What?” I whispered and looked at him.