Chapter Thirteen Xander
Steam surrounds me as I step out of the shower, reaching for the soft blue towel that hangs from a hook on the wall and wrapping it around my waist. A headache pounds between my temples, thoughts of the shifter and also what is to come today for the first Trusted trial robbing me of sleep the night before.
Making my way to the sink, I brace my hands on the counter’s edge and hang my head low.
Despite coming to a tentative agreement with the female who refuses to give me her true name, I know that getting information on Princess Rhea is not going to be easy.
My gaze catches on the bottom drawer beneath the counter, and without thinking, I pull it open, lifting a stack of towels out and setting them on the floor, revealing a small black leather-bound journal.
It belonged to Alexi, and after his death, I had gone to clean out his room in the barracks and found it hidden in a drawer of his dresser.
I can’t say why I’ve held on to it. It’s not like I knew Alexi personally.
But something prompted me to take it. To keep it away from prying eyes, especially if something in this journal might pertain to the princess.
Carefully setting it on top of the towels, I reach for the only item remaining.
Righting myself, I hold the small portrait of my mother up to the stream of sunlight coming in from a small window. Gods, I miss her. Her smile and the way she hugged. Her voice and her nickname for me. Watching her die had been a culmination of events that felt, at the time, impossible to stop.
When King Dolian found us, it was after a night spent at the lake stargazing.
My mother had been in her sewing room for nearly a week straight, only stepping out to see me off to school and to greet me when I returned.
It was the height of the market season, and in order to keep us afloat, every spare minute went into her work.
She sewed the most beautiful designs, embroidered patterns that made her garments feel unique and expensive, despite the lower quality of the fabric given to her by her clients.
It was what caught the bastard’s eye when she was working in Vitour and what drew him to her shop time and time again, asking for more pieces until he ordered her to stop taking orders that weren’t his.
She was told it was an honor to be the king’s personal tailor.
That the guaranteed income from the crown was worth more than whatever she might have made from her peers.
To that end, they weren’t wrong. But what they failed to see, what my mother herself didn’t recognize until it was too late, was that the king wasn’t just providing her work because he valued her talent.
He was isolating her. Making her dependent on him.
And what could a lowly seamstress do under the attentions of the king of the realm but abide by his every desire?
She never told me the circumstances of how I came into existence.
Beyond the physical act of having sex, which I do not want or need the details of, I can’t imagine a scenario in which she would have willingly bed the king.
Not after the fear I saw in her eyes any time he was mentioned.
Or the sadness that lingered any time I asked to know more about him.
Looking back now, I can appreciate just how much my mother attempted to shield me from the horrors that my father must have inflicted upon her.
I know that it broke her heart the night we returned from the lake, the names of constellations still bouncing between us until her steps froze and her hand squeezed mine fiercely.
Her voice had faltered as she begged the king not to take me.
With tears in her eyes, she explained that she told no one of my true parentage.
Surrounded by his guards, King Dolian let her talk, let hope embrace us until he snuffed it out with a single word.
“No.”
After that, the night had moved in a blur. I was torn from my mother’s arms, her pleas for me still heard as she was escorted back into the house and I was thrown into a carriage to wait for the king.
You will tell no one of our relation. As far as you are concerned, your father is dead, just as you will be if you utter the truth to anyone.
His expression hadn’t so much as flickered as he spoke, as if he rehearsed the lines a hundred times prior.
You will work as an apprentice in the King’s Guard until you are old enough to officially test in.
You may keep your first name, but you will change your last name to something else.
I don’t care what, so long as it is not Maxwell.
He’s never bothered to ask what name I chose, or if I even chose one at all. I’ve only ever gone by Xander to him and everyone else in my life.
The carriage ride was full of awkward silence as he avoided looking at me and only when we reached the castle what felt like hours later did he finally flick his hazel eyes to meet mine.
Before you enter my home, you are required to make a promise.
One that will take your life if you break it.
One of his guards produced a golden dagger and latched on to my wrist, the blade slicing across my palm.
You will vow here and now in blood to never be the hand that strikes down King Dolian Maxwell of the Mortal Kingdom.
Despite the king’s threats, he’s never forced me to make more than that single blood oath.
Then he found out I had visited my mother without his permission.
I was lured out onto the castle lawn, thinking it looked serene under the silver light of the moon before realizing my mother was there.
That the king was. Grayson was part of the retinue commanded to bring her to the castle, and he was there when other guards apprehended me.
When they cut my tunic open and held me in place as King Dolian ordered my back to be flayed open.
All while my mother was forced to watch.
Blood had pooled around me as she wailed, and only when my own voice grew hoarse did he finally order the guard to stop.
But there would be no other mercy that night.
I knew what was happening before the king said anything else, and though my mother’s last words were a plea for me to look away, I didn’t.
Not as one of the King’s Guardsmen yanked her head back by her hair, and not as he dragged his blade over her throat.
This is your fault, the king had said, his voice low as he crouched to hover over me.
Had you not shown me such a great weakness, she would still be alive.
Had you not been so desperate to get to her, so eager to break my fucking rules, she would have been able to return to that hovel of a home, but no.
No, you could not allow your mother peace.
His eyes shone wild with rage then—and jealousy.
He was jealous of the love I harbored for my mother.
A love he never sought out or dared to nurture but still wanted as his own.
Before that night, I wondered if the magic of a blood oath was even real.
But, as my chest heaved and blood soaked into my pants at my knees, I’d dared to lunge at the king.
Had every intention of killing him, because what else did I have to live for?
But the magic held me in place, the feeling of a thousand needles digging into my skin making my vision grow black.
And then I passed out, later awoken by Grayson whose pitying look confirmed that everything I had just experienced wasn’t a terrible nightmare. That night changed everything.
I bring her portrait to my lips, kissing it gently before laying it back in the drawer and covering it with Alexi’s journal and then the towels.
Her death was a catalyst towards the life I live now, but it would be the king’s that made it all worth it.
Only when I see his head roll from his body will I know that my mother’s retribution has arrived, and when our people know a kind of peace she only dreamed about while on the run from the man who sired me, I will finally allow myself to rest.