Four #2
“I can’t believe a word out of your mouth,” I mutter before I can think better of it.
I feel his hurt, the air thick with it. “My word has always been my honor.”
“Your honor made me fall for you, while you planned to give me away to someone else.”
He growls, followed by another bang.
“You make me do things I shouldn’t, like keeping you, choosing you over my clan.”
“You didn’t keep me,” I whisper, a tear slipping free, dripping off my cheek.
“I did,” he growls. “I put my own selfishness before everyone, I put you before everyone and the only thing I would have done differently is taken you away to somewhere safe instead of keeping you close by.”
I say nothing to that.
I’m not safe anywhere.
“He’s going to put you in some of The Games,” he says, and I turn to him, finding him leaning back against the bars, facing away from me.
“He said he has use for you, but you will also be part of some Games. I don’t know what that means.
” His head turns, eyes locked with mine.
“But I vow it, Alara, I’ll get you out of here. ”
I sit up, my heart hammering in my chest. “What does he want with me?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “He’s always tried to get elves from the border, you know this, but I’ve never known what for. I’ve never thought to ask.” He looks away, almost seeming ashamed of it.
“Is that where you were? With the king?”
He nods, and I look at the blood still on him, something curling in my stomach.
“Did he—”
“I want you to do what he asks for now,” he cuts me off.
“Just while I figure out how to get you out of here. Just hold on until then, okay? And I won’t let anyone hurt you.
They won’t get to you, Alara.” He goes on, almost to himself.
“I’m sure you will be sleeping with the clan, no matter how much he wants an elf, he hates them, so he wouldn’t want them near him.
” He scoffs. “And yet he wants one for some reason.”
My hands tangle in my dress, fear slithering down my spine.
What does the king want me for? And specifically an elf for?
“And if you are in any Games, I’ll protect you, I’ll make sure you’re safe during them and I know… I know right now you hate me, but we have to work together.” He nods to himself. “We just have to last until I can get you out.”
Silence wraps around us, and I watch as Rohan stares at the wall, brows pinched together.
He has to know I’m never making it out of here, right? I’ve known that since he told me I would be going to The Games. I’m not a fighter… I’m just me.
The image of a knife flashes in my mind with the blood from the unknown man back in Rohan’s cabin, and I shake my head to banish the thought. Not wanting to think about how I killed someone.
Sleep takes me for a little while, fitful and full of fire, blood and unseeing eyes. I wake sweaty, gasping for breath, a scream lodged in the back of my throat.
“It’s okay, you’re okay, Alara. Shhh.”
I wipe at my face and sit up, hand flying to my chest as I try to control my breathing.
“Good, keep breathing like that,” Rohan commands. “Calm and slow.”
I do, looking at him and copying the motion of his chest as it rises and falls.
He’s helped me through this before, and the reminder is comforting and painful all at the same time.
When I’m finally feeling calmer, I glance up to see that his eyes are full of concern, and something in me cracks.
I don’t know if it’s the nightmare, seeing fire and death within it or that I’ve barely woken up, but I end up asking something I’m not sure I’m prepared to hear the answer to.
“Do I really mean nothing to you?”
Something in his expression shutters, like it’s too painful.
“You mean more to me than anyone ever has.”
It’s the words I’ve wanted to hear from him, to soothe the hurt he caused, but that’s exactly why I can’t trust it, because it’s what would get me to forgive him if I believed him.
And he sees it in my eyes, before he looks down and nods, turning his back to me and leaning against the bars.
“Can I tell you something?” he asks, eyes on the wall in front of him. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to say it again.”
I blink rapidly, unsure.
“What else could you possibly want to tell me?” I mutter, looking down at my scraped knuckles.
“About Halen being my…”
“Father?” I finish for him.
He nods.
“You didn’t tell me that either.”
“It isn’t something I wanted you to know.” He brings a knee up and rests a hand on it. “You know I hate him.”
Do I? I want to say, but something in his tone holds me off.
“I suppose I need to go back to when it all started.”
“When what started?”
“When my mother met Halen.”
I sit up at that, arms wrapping around my legs.
“My mother, was clan leader, could be harsh at times, but she loved the idea of being in love,” he begins. I don’t want to listen to him, but I can’t help it.
“She was young when she had me, only eighteen. We both got our dragons at eighteen I guess,” he mutters, then he shuffles, groaning.
Unable to help myself, I move toward the bars at that noise, seeing the bruising on the side of his face more prominent up close.
“She was a great mother, taught me a lot. I loved her deeply. She was my only parent.” I tense at those words. “She got injured protecting the clan from an attack, she took an arrow to her stomach, but it wasn’t healing. It was like her insides had just…given up.”
He clears his throat, hangs his head and I sit up straighter, too fast, mindful of the way I feel dizzy for a moment as the feeling of intense grief hits me.
“Later, after she passed, we realized there were glass shards in her stomach, and the reason why everything stopped healing was because that arrow was carrying Nighturn.” He pauses.
“It was meant for her dragon, Herja, not her, but she stepped in the way to save her. Her dragon would have survived being knocked out for a little while with that arrow, but my mother would rather it be her because she hated seeing her dragon unmoving, like she was dead but still breathing. She said it was one of the most painful things she ever witnessed. That’s what she told me on her death bed. ”
He sighs, leaning his head back against the bars and I sense the pain coming off of him in waves, unable to block it out like I have been doing. My own defenses are down.
“But that wasn’t the only thing she said.
” His voice is darker now, like he hates what he’s about to say next, and I frown.
“I also wanted to know my father. I would see other kids with theirs and think, why don’t I have one?
Mom used to say it was a guy that traveled.
Always changing the conversation, always making something new up. I should’ve known something was wrong.”
He hits the back of his head against the bars, twice, as dread fills me.
“He raped her,” he says, the words clawing from his throat and I still, heart beating painfully as my lips part on a silent gasp.
“She and Halen had been meeting in secret from time to time and fell into a routine of sorts, especially after her visiting The Glade. She told him all sorts about the clan, the dragons, our customs and way of life. She was fifteen when they first met. She fell in love with him, and she thought he fell in love with her.”
I hear his rough swallow.
“She was coming back from The Glade after getting her dragon at eighteen, and she waited in the spot where she usually met him, excited to tell him about her dragon. As they rested, they were attacked. Nighturn knocked Herja out and he…” He takes a deep breath, body tensing.
“He raped her that night, repeatedly.” His fist hits the ground until his knuckles bleed and I flinch at every one, unable to comprehend what I’m hearing.
“As she screamed and clawed and watched her unmoving dragon, I was being made in violence, blood and terror.”
The breath catches in my throat.
He was conceived by rape.
The king raped his mother.
His father raped his mother.
I feel sick.
“What was supposed to be a celebration from the Blessing was her horror. Eighteen years old, cornered and raped by Halen, who she thought loved her. He wasn’t king then, just a prince, but how could she go against that?
It would not only put herself in danger, but the clan too.
The dragons. So she kept it quiet, carried that pain by herself all those years, and I had to fucking stand there at The Games, knowing his disgusting blood runs through my veins. ”
He slams a fist into the ground again.
“I told you once that he deserves to die for more than just what he is doing with the clans and dragons, the fucking Games. He will die by my bare hands for what he did to my mother. I promised her, Alara, I fucking promised her I would kill him and you know what my mother did?”
He turns, looking me dead in the eyes, and I see the pain in them, the grief and sadness. The anguish so potent that the breath stalls in my lungs.
“She said that she didn’t tell me that so I would kill him, but to make sure I stay far away from him.
To not get revenge in her name, and to protect the clan instead, like I could just walk away from hearing that?
” He snarls, eyes flashing purple. “Instead, she held her hand out, cupped my cheek and told me I would make a great Dragonbond, a leader. That she knows I would make her proud as I took over the clan.” His jaw tics before looking away.
“I felt like I did make her proud with how the clan was doing, I’ve been protecting them since I had Drogonah at eighteen, but then I made a deal in desperation that in the end, caused you to be down here with me.
To have the whole fucking clan here at The Games.
” He shakes his head. “She would be so disappointed in me.”
My fingers twitch, and the need to go and comfort him wars with how he hurt me has me confused on what to do, until he says the next words.
“I may as well be just like him.”
And that’s when I can’t stop the words from tumbling out, causing him to freeze.
“You are nothing like him.”