Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Weston lifts me carefully and cradles my body to his chest. Despite the healer’s reassurance that I did not sustain any lasting damage, he still moves with caution so as not to harm me himself.
His hands grip me with the strength and comfort I have become used to when he carries me to safety, and I turn my face into his chest, trying to prepare myself for what is about to come, and avoiding the remnants of the violence around me.
Even after everything Dane did to me—the ways he hurt me mentally, physically, emotionally—I still don’t want to see him lying in a pool of his own blood.
I cared about him, and though those feelings have disappeared and morphed into hatred, I don’t want to remember him this way.
And I don’t want to see my father’s blood smeared across the stones and mixing with that of his murderer.
Whenever I entered this room, I was surrounded by order and structure, and tradition.
I can’t look around now and see the chaos that mars its perfection.
I have to focus on the feeling of security Weston is giving me, because I don’t know what I will feel the moment I look into my father’s dying eyes.
Careful not to jostle me as he climbs the steps, Weston crosses the dais and kneels before the throne, setting me down gently and turning me so I am face to face with my father.
I want to grab hold of him, to stay sheltered in his arms, so I’m not alone, but before I can even try, he rises again, standing just far enough from me to be considered appropriate, but close enough that I can still feel his presence.
A pit forms in my stomach as I take in the man before me.
Sitting slumped against the throne, his face already ashen and sagging as his chest rises and falls in short, shuddering breaths.
He clutches tightly to a clump of soiled fabric, pressing it firmly into his abdomen.
His once fine clothes are bloodstained and torn, and my mind is brought back to a similar stain I found on Weston’s clothing, back from when Dane committed the same act, leaving them both for dead.
I barely recognize the man before me, but the moment his eyes meet mine, I startle.
I can recall exactly how many times my father has looked me in the eye, and his unwavering gaze is another time to add to the already very short list. The man I know is still in there somewhere, but in these last moments, he’s finally able to look at me one last time.
“You’re back,” he says, his voice just above a whisper.
I barely manage a nod, and hear Weston behind me shift the weight on his feet when I wince from the pain.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Father’s brows rise, his eyes growing hopeful as his gaze swivels between Weston and me.
“Yes,” Weston says tightly, and my father’s eyes widen slightly. Weston clears his throat, and his voice lowers. “But we were unsuccessful in obtaining it.”
Father’s face and shoulders fall as the same acceptance we’ve had months and years to come to terms with washes over him. A heavy silence fills the space between us, but no one moves, not until my father nods slowly, as if to himself, before his eyes lift to mine.
“They say I have little time.” His shoulders shake as a fit of coughs overcomes his body. He takes a short, choked breath, and pain morphs his features. “I needed to speak to you before the end. My words may not mean much, but they still needed to be said.”
His voice trails off, and I wait, unsure of what is so important that after years of barely speaking to me, he wants to spend his last moments with me, and not the friend he has not seen in over twenty years.
“I’m sorry, Lennox. The last thing I ever wanted was for your life to end up this way.
I know—” he winces, and presses his hand more firmly to his belly before starting again.
“I know Edmond gave you your mother’s letters.
He has been pressuring me for many years to finally let you read them, but it was too hard for me to think about them, let alone look at them again.
I wasn’t ready for the inevitable questions you had about your mother, but you need to know that her words were true.
Are true. You are the most important thing to her. To us.”
A lump forms in my already constricted throat, and I try to swallow it down, but the pain and the swelling make it near impossible.
“But whenever I looked at you, all I could see was her. Her beauty, her warmth, her smile, her ferocity. Every single thing I loved about her is in you, and it made me hurt so much I couldn’t bear it.
It was the worst thing I could do as a father, I know that, but I’m a weak man.
You were a constant reminder of the pain I felt the day we lost her, and when I looked at you, I relived that loss over and over again.
Losing the person you thought you would spend your life with, and grow old together, is an unimaginable pain.
” His head tilts up, and he looks at Weston.
His gaze lingers there for a moment as his face softens.
“I believe you may finally understand what that feels like.”
My already shallow breath hitches as my father smiles softly at his friend, then directs the same look at me.
Was Weston right? Did my father see the way he looks at me and recognize the same feelings in himself?
Did he watch Weston hold me, begging me to open my eyes and know that it was for more than just an oath to his kingdom?
Weston’s weight shifts again, the movement a clear response to the assumption.
Father continues, and his face falls again, the softness from a moment ago gone.
“No one knows the reason for my strict decisions. What I uttered was law. No one dared question the king except you. You were the only one who tried and pushed back, and each time I saw the disappointment in your face when I squashed your suggestions or ideas, it felt like a knife to the gut.”
His eyes flick up to Weston quickly before falling back to me once again, and his voice is somber.
“I didn’t even have enough strength to tell the person besides your mother who I cared for the most. I’m running out of time.
I need to tell you now. I need you to know, not so it will change anything, but so you don’t spend your life wondering why all of this happened.
” He winces and shifts his body against the base of the throne, but gives up with a heavy sigh.
“Do you know what happened that night? The night you were born?”
“I told her everything,” Weston mutters, and Father lets out a sigh with a slight shake of his head.
“You didn’t know everything. I got to her before you did. I knew from Lyla’s cries that something was terribly wrong. When I ran to her, Dane’s voice carried. He was shouting, and even over my own thoughts about getting to her, I could hear what he said. He didn’t know I heard every word.”
Tears fill my father’s eyes as he looks directly into mine, and I can’t stop the way mine fill at the sight. Not just of him crying, but of him finally looking at me, seeing me, and giving me the truth I’ve longed for.
“He was trying to take her away, to convince her to leave with him. He found someone who was willing to keep you, someone who wanted a child and would gladly welcome a newborn babe.” He coughs again, and my chest clenches as I wait with bated breath for him to continue, silently begging him to hold on long enough to tell me everything.
“He wanted to punish me, to take you both away and destroy my family, the only true thing that brought me happiness, all because he thought I destroyed his.
Your mother adamantly refused. I could hear her crying ‘no’, and trying to get him to listen to her.
Everything she explained, her happiness, her love, he tried to tell her she was tricked.
No amount of her yelling that he was wrong and that if he cared for her, he would see, changed anything.
“He tried to take her then by force, and when she fought him off, she fell. I watched as my wife, the mother of my unborn child, pushed her attacker away, clutching her swollen belly and attempting in every way she could to keep you safe. I watched as he grabbed her, and wrenched her down the steps, but she lost her balance as she fought. My scream mixed with hers frightened him, and he stared down after her, panicked and taking in what he had done. The woman he wanted to love, who didn’t love him back lay crumpled at the foot of the steps, and it was all his fault.
He saw me running toward her, and ran away himself.
Once I saw the blood, I no longer cared about him, only about her and you.
“That night, when her body could no longer keep you safe, and I held you in my arms, I vowed I would protect you. He threatened to take you, and had already gotten into the castle once, undetected. I couldn’t risk it happening again.
I couldn’t let him know you had survived.
The only ones who knew were the staff, and the guards, and they were sworn to protect.
He proved he would stop at nothing to pay me back for everything he thought I did to him.
It is why I never let you leave. But even after that night, the years of stifling your spark, the guilt I felt, the internal turmoil knowing how disappointed in me Lyla would be for not letting you live, I couldn’t change my mind.
I couldn’t let him take you away from me too, not after he already took her. ”
Tears stream down his cheeks, and his voice drops so I can barely hear it.
“Years of pain, an entire lifetime missed with my only daughter, and it was all for nothing. He took you anyway. I destroyed the life full of memories we could have had, simply by trying to protect you, and he took you anyway.”