Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
T ovi is still awake when I return from speaking with Eryn. I start answering her questions as I strip off my cloak to hang on the wall, and without thinking, I take off my nightdress. I Immediately regret it when Tovi sees my bruised ribs.
“Oh Mika. I’ll never be able to make up for the pain I caused you.” She’s not speaking to me but to my ribs, not taking her eyes off the bruises.
I sigh, wrap a blanket around myself, and sit on the couch next to her.
“I don’t forgive easily. I never have. In fact, I can’t remember the last person I forgave for hurting me in any kind of way.”
Tovi is nodding as I’m speaking, chewing the inside of her lip.
“But you must know by now that I've forgiven you. I’ve made sure of it. Both with my words and my actions, but also, you know what I feel, Tovi. I can’t lie about that, can I? ”
“No,” she says softly. “But I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
“Isn’t that for me to decide? Please, Tovi. It’s time to forgive yourself.”
She reaches out for my hand and gives it one squeeze before taking a deep breath. “Tell me everything about tonight.” And so, I do.
Tovi’s favorite part is how disgusted the young prince was by my outfit, especially when he called me old . She was, however, annoyed because I’d forgotten one of the main things I was supposed to talk to the prince about: his father’s violet eyes.
For the next two days, Tovi and I train to get her strength back up. She’s returning to herself more and more, cracking jokes and being a pain in the ass again. Though I still see the dark shadow behind her eyes whenever she catches a glimpse of my ribs.
Over one of our meals, I blurt out, “They’ll forgive you too!” I try to keep it light, but she’s not convinced.
It’s almost time for me to meet the prince again. Time for me to find out if he was able to locate the others. Sitting in the bath, I’m replaying my conversation with Tovi in my head, annoyed that I can’t seem to be tactful or reassure her.
My lamp flickers softly. Eyes wandering, I stare at the cabinet taking up most of one corner in our washroom. With no natural light in here and on the furthest wall from the door, it’s hideous . This thing is monstrous. Both in its gaudy design and size. It’s entirely too fanciful in a washroom, of all places.
I sit up, splashing water everywhere. What is that outline on the ceiling?
I slosh my way forward to the end of the bath, trying to get a better look at the ceiling in the corner, shrouded by the cabinet. Still unable to see clearly, I splash back to the other end for the lantern. Standing, I step out of the bath and walk directly to the corner holding the lamp up to light the corner.
“ Tovi… ” I call distractedly, then clear my throat and say it loud enough for her to hear.
Tovi stomps in. “What are you… Why are you naked, Mika?” she whines.
“Tovi.”
“There’s water everywhere!”
“Tovi!”
“What?” she vociferates, and I point to the ceiling.
“ Look. ”
Her mouth drops open, and she walks toward me, slips a little, glares, and then stares back up at the ceiling. “Is that a door? ”
“Looks like some kind of hatch. Person sized.”
Tovi and I share a look of triumph before she looks down and remembers I’m stark naked and shakes her head. “I’ll have a look while you’re gone, but you have to get dressed. They’ll be here to collect you soon.”
I look at her and growl with a pout. I want to be the one to explore, but she’s right. I deliberately stomp my feet so the water on the ground splashes her as I reach for my towel. I hear Tovi mumble “bitch” under her breath, and I smile to myself.
“Do you think they will have made contact?” she asks as I’m getting dressed into another doxy outfit, this time with black lace underwear and a champagne-colored sheer nightdress.
“I hope so. This sitting around and not knowing and not really doing anything is wearing thin—almost as thin as this stupid dress!”
Tovi chuckles as she helps with my cloak again. “You’re just jealous that I get to look in the hatch before you. Make sure you ask him about his father this time.”
Annoyed but admonished, I give her a nod before knocking on our doors so the guards can escort me to Prince Eryn’s rooms. I send a silent prayer to the Divine for no detours this time.
Fortunately, I'm taken directly to the prince’s rooms, and after the guards take my cloak, I find Eryn in his bedroom like last time.
“Hello, my sweet Prince,” I tease.
“Ugh. I think this outfit is worse than the last. Here,” Eryn says with exaggerated disgust, as he throws me a blanket, smirking. I smile and shake my head as I drape the blanket around me like a cloak.
With a heavy sigh, Eryn tells me that he hasn’t made contact with the team yet. “I wasn’t able to go to the garden at all yesterday because of the rain, and then today it was only for an hour because my father had me parading around in front of some important people playing the dutiful son of a loving father.”
“Well, that’s a shame, but hopefully soon. We couldn’t expect it to be that easy.”
“I’m not done with the bad news, unfortunately. I asked my father when you two would be moved in with the rest of the Royal doxies, and he said you wouldn’t be. That wing is for his doxies only, and if you were to move there, I couldn’t see you again.”
Reminded, I excitedly tell him about the strange hatch we found in the ceiling of the washroom. “We hadn’t noticed it because it’s a rather dark corner of the space, and there’s also a large ornate cabinet in the corner blocking it from view. Do you know if there is some kind of crawl space between other rooms?”
Frowning, Eryn gets up to look in his washroom. “Maybe. Could also just be storage.”
We analyze every nook and cranny of his washroom ceiling, and we find one.
“What does this mean?” Eryn asks distractedly as we both glare at the outline of a hatch, with me still wrapped in his blanket.
“It means that we may not need to be moved in with the rest of the Royal doxies.”
Finally understanding the enormity of the discovery, Eryn almost skips back to his bedroom. “He grilled me about our first meeting, by the way,” Eryn says, changing the subject. “I told him, and his lie detector , that I wanted to see you more but that I wasn’t ready to sleep with you, which is definitely not a lie,” he exaggerates with a lopsided grin.
I try to laugh at his cheekiness but I’m sobered by the mention of his father. I know I need to ask him, but I don't want to sour the mood.
“Your father…” I ask tentatively. “What do you see when you look at him?”
I watch Eryn from the corner of my eye, and he tilts his head as if he doesn’t understand what I’m asking. I’m about to elaborate when he surprises me in a small voice. “Not again.”
My heart is doing backflips. “Eryn. Does he have violet eyes like a Patron of the Divine?”
“Yes.”
I’m not sure when I stood, but I’m up and pacing the room. Blanket forgotten, I’m holding my head with my fingers in my hair, trying to maintain steady breathing.
“You can’t say anything. To anyone. Ever. Mika, promise me! ”
“What do you mean? I’m trying to figure out what the fuck is going on!”
Eryn has fear written all over his face, so I sit back on the bed and take his hands. My mind wanders for a moment at how easily I can touch Eryn when I barely know him.
Working as a nanny in the children’s compound involves a lot of touching. Kids are very physical, and I would never deny comfort and affection to a child who wants it. But once they leave, once they’re out of the children’s compound, the season they turn thirteen, something shifts in me. I’m completely averse to ever touching or being touched by them again.
Eryn sniffs, and I snap back to the here and now. “How long have you been able to see violet eyes?” I ask.
“As long as I can remember. At first, I didn’t know anything was wrong. Until I started asking my mother why his eyes were different from everyone else’s. I hadn’t really seen any Patrons of the Divine at that age, so I didn’t know what it meant, only that they weren’t the same color as ours.
“She brushed me off for a couple of revolutions, but then I think she must have realized it wasn’t just a child’s wild imagination, and she told me to keep it a secret.”
He trembles, staring at our hands as he speaks, and I give them a small squeeze of encouragement.
Eryn takes a deep breath. “When I was six, I remember her asking me specific questions about whether I had seen other people with violet eyes sometimes, but other times they were normal. I didn’t know what she meant at the time, so I couldn’t answer.
“One night, as she was putting me to bed, she told me to pack a bag, and she’ll be back in an hour because we’re going on a secret trip.”
His breath is shuddering, and he’s having trouble speaking, so I tell him we can take a break. He nods and focuses on my hands in great detail, like he’s trying to memorize every line and crease.
After a few minutes of silence, when his breathing has returned to normal, he speaks again. “I waited for her to come back all night. I sat there with my bag packed and hidden under the blanket with me until morning, but she never returned.
“The next morning, my father came to tell me my mother was dead. People had seen her kill her brother, and then run away on a horse. They found her by the side of the main road toward Osraed with a broken neck. Fell from the horse.”
He looks me dead in the eye. “I knew it then at the age of six, and I know it now a decade later. There is no way she would have killed my uncle, she loved him. And she wouldn’t have left me behind.”
I’m reeling. This is so much more awful than I was anticipating. This is no longer the case of someone hiding in plain sight—he is murdering people to keep the secret.
“So, you see, you can’t say anything. I can’t let him hurt you too.”
Choosing my words carefully, I gently check in with him. “You know it’s not your fault, right? Eryn, you can’t blame yourself for what happened. You didn’t ‘let’ him do anything.”
“I know that, I do. But afterward, I vowed to never speak about his eyes again. Speaking about them was a death sentence for the only person who ever loved me.”
“Well, I see them too, and I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure he never hurts anyone ever again.”
He gives me a weak smile. My heart aches for him and how lonely he must have felt. That’s too much for such a little person to go through. It’s no wonder he unraveled the other night when he thought he put me in his father’s path.
“I don’t understand. Why can only you and I see them?” he asks.
“Honestly, at first, I thought maybe I had discovered my Gift. That I could see through tricks of the mind, but that doesn’t make sense anymore. Not that it ever really did, to be honest.”
“Do you think there are other people who see them but don’t say anything?”
“Perhaps. But I don’t think so, or rumors would eventually surface and run wild. What I wonder is: how long he has pretended to be the king…”
Eryn’s eyes widen, his gloomy demeanor finally starting to lift again. “You think he’s someone else, like a shifter?”
“Yes, exactly. He could have changed himself to look like your mother so that everyone would see her kill your uncle too.”
“But there hasn’t been a shifter like that in… centuries. ”
“That we know of. The chance to be someone other than a Patron, to live a normal life…I might hide that Gift, too,” I say with a grimace. “Not everyone would immediately think of murdering to become a royal.”
Eryn finally releases my hands and scrubs at his face aggressively. “This is so confusing!”
“I know. I’m not sure if it makes it better, or worse, but he might not actually be your father.”
“ What ?”
“Patrons of the Divine have a procedure in the season they turn thirteen that prevents them from ever being able to have a child. It is said that the Divine curses children born of their Patrons with afflictions of the body and mind—and you do not appear to be cursed as such.”
“Worse.” He grimaces .
“Fuck. Sorry Eryn. I just thought you might’ve felt relief at not being related to that monster, but having your biological father murdered, as well as your mother and uncle, is much worse.”
He barks out a laugh. “No, I hadn’t thought of it like that, though I am now, thanks,” he deadpans. “It’s just, I was starting to think of a reason why you and I are the only ones who can see him.”
“Oh, and what’s that?”
“He’s your father too.”