Thorne

A knock came from the door of my hut as I was packing a small bag for Marigold. “Come in,” I shouted, and it opened with a click.

“Thorne, dear?” Mother’s voice called.

I finished buckling the strap on the bag.

“You’re early, Mother.” She had agreed to take Marigold for the night since I was expecting Clarissa.

I’d told my mother I’d be out late in meetings with the Zelorias—I figured she wouldn’t be too approving of the truth.

But we were on the last days of this tour, and the thought of never having another moment with Clarissa…

I needed to say goodbye.

“I know. But you said you wanted to be updated on any progress,” Mother replied, her voice a bit breathless. I peeked my head out into the hallway to see her standing with a small piece of parchment in her hand.

“Progress?”

“On your father.”

My muscles immediately tensed. I strode across the floor to meet her, keeping my voice low to not disrupt Marigold playing with her dolls by the window. “Has someone found him?”

I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to hear. Did I want to find him? Did I want him to be alive, or for the last remnants of him to be buried somewhere deep in Mysthelm soil?

She shook her head, and relief mixed with uneasiness stirred in my gut. “No, but it’s more than I had last time. There are records from a cargo ship ledger stating a man by the name of Armand R. was aboard four years ago, but no mention of when he disembarked.”

Armand Reaux . My father boarded a cargo ship but never got off?

“Where was the ship heading?” I asked.

Her eyes shifted from the parchment and back again to my face. “Unclear.” She handed it to me.

The passenger in question, a man by the name of Armand R.

, paid thirteen gold coins to gain passage on the cargo ship transporting goods from the Island Territory to four other regions, one of which is unnamed.

The ledger doesn’t clarify which region he stopped at, and anything past this point is untraceable.

My brow furrowed. “Four other regions? There are only three other territories it could have gone to. Unless?—”

“It went to Veridia,” Mother finished the thought for me.

“You think Father is in the Veridian Empire?”

Her shoulders fell, frustration lining her face. “I don’t know what to think, Thorne. It shouldn’t be possible. You would think we would know if people were going to and from the kingdom back then, but there’s no other record of him. He can’t have simply disappeared into thin air.”

I thought about Nox, and how that Scarven governor could so easily send his own people to Mysthelm. What if we’d been shipping people and cargo over there as well, with nobody knowing about it?

“That would be just like him,” Mother said with a sneer. “To leave us with his problems and run for the hills, starting a new life with their kind. As if he could get any lower. ”

Over the last three weeks, I’d developed defensive instincts toward the empire.

So many people here spoke about Veridians with such contempt, and it made my hackles rise.

“It’s not their fault if he messed up his life so completely that he had to get away from Mysthelm,” I countered.

“Not everything about their empire is bad, Mother.”

“Evidently your father would agree with you. Perhaps they will brainwash you next, if they haven’t already,” she snapped, ripping the parchment from my grip.

“Come along, Marigold; it’s getting late!

” Mother moved away from me to help Marigold gather her toys, leaving me rearing from the sudden turn in conversation.

A gentle tap at the window behind them made my neck snap up. A flash of blonde hair appeared for a split second before vanishing just as quickly.

Mother looked back with a raised eyebrow.

“Grandma’s right, it’s time for bed,” I said, drawing her attention away from the window.

Mother held my stare for a second longer, then looked down at Marigold to take her hand. A genuine beam—one only reserved for that little girl—split across Mother’s stern features. “We’re going to have so much fun tonight, sweetheart.”

Marigold jumped up and down in excitement. “Can I have some of that chocolate candy we tried yesterday?” she begged.

“Maybe. But we can’t tell your daddy, alright?”

Marigold put her finger over her lips and nodded, and the strange tension from before began to melt away as I watched them together.

“You two have a good time,” I said softly. They waved back at me, my mother’s gaze lingering on the window before they walked out the front door.

I let out a sigh and rubbed my temples. These moments with my mother lately left me confused and disoriented, never knowing quite how to read her anymore.

Those thoughts faded when another tap sounded behind me .

I smiled as I unlatched the window, ushering Clarissa in through the small opening.

“Was the front door not good enough for you?” I asked with a chuckle as she straightened and brushed leaves off her leggings and tight black shirt, her cheeks flushed and hair windswept.

“I figured I should be discreet.” She shrugged, then eyed the door. “Plus, your mother kind of scares me.”

“I know the feeling,” I muttered.

Her forehead pinched. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes, it’s just…she gets in these moods.” I shook my head, needing to talk to someone about it. Galen was the person I always confided in, but he was currently refusing to speak to me.

I motioned for her to follow me to the couch.

Its weight shifted as we both sat, and she tucked her feet under her, leaning her elbow on the back of it.

She tilted her head to the side, those big dark eyes alert and attentive.

I resisted the urge to draw her closer, resisted the thoughts of how right this felt.

The two of us settling in after a long day, so mundane and casual.

In another life, perhaps.

“I haven’t told you much about my father,” I began. “He left us four years ago with no explanation, and we haven’t heard from him since.” Her eyes widened, but I brushed away her concern. “Trust me, it was ultimately for the best—he was a bad husband, and an even worse father.”

I looked down at my hands. I’d never spoken these next words aloud, even to Galen.

“For a long time, I never wanted to have children. Not when the only example of a father I had was the man who raised me. I refused to be anything like him, but was afraid I’d turn into him, anyway.

” I fingered the chain hanging around my neck.

“I was more of an heir to him than a son. The child he was responsible for carving into some predetermined image he had in his mind of the future Lord Thorne Reaux, Regent of the North Territory. Someone like him . Cold, principled, strong.”

I chuckled darkly and tightened my grip on the locket swinging at the end of the chain.

“Well, his version of strong. To him, being a leader meant forming no attachments. Nothing that could get in the way of accomplishing your goals. I wasn’t allowed to make friends, not unless they were approved by him—which is why Galen and the Zelorias were the only ones in my life up until a certain point. Even something as simple as a pet…”

I trailed off and snuck a glance at her, watching her lips curve down with every sentence. I thought back to that formative memory of my childhood, the one that finally snapped the tether on whatever affection I might have still had for the man.

“I found a rabbit once,” I said. “Tucked away in our front gardens. It was so small, I could fit it in both of my hands, even as a ten-year-old. I made it a bed of hay in the corner of my room and fed him vegetable scraps from the kitchen. It was the first thing that had ever felt like mine . I named him Nutter, because the first time I saw him, he was chewing on nuts from the tree.” Clarissa laughed softly at that.

“I would watch him scuffle around my room or the kitchens, excited to see him exploring.

In my head, I was giving him a good life. That made me proud, in a way.

“My father found out about him. He took me into his study and punished me, telling me how I needed to value only that which could make me stronger. Make me greater . Anything else was worthless. And then he stormed up to my room and took Nutter from his bed of hay.”

Clarissa leaned in closer as I spoke, and her hand came out to rest on my knee, fingers digging in as if bracing for the rest of the story.

“I ran after him, crying and pleading to let the rabbit go, just let him be free , but that only solidified his point. He said I was weak for becoming so attached to something so inconsequential. I tried to argue that Nutter didn’t make me weak; he made me happy—how could that be bad?

” I swallowed thickly. “So, Father took him to his study, where he kept a large tank with his pet snake. Fates, I hated that thing.” A shudder left me.

“He opened the lid, put Nutter inside, and said if he was strong, then I had nothing to worry about.” My voice lowered. “He made me watch as his snake attacked and ate the rabbit.”

Clarissa’s fingers gripped my knee harder. “Thorne, that’s?—”

“It’s the first time I knew what hatred felt like,” I said, needing to get these thoughts out.

“I hated him. But I also feared him. I feared becoming him. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized he needed me as his heir, so he couldn’t truly touch me.

That sparked those rebellious years with Galen at my side, doing any and everything we could to drive our parents crazy.

But still…” I paused and scrubbed my hand over my face, the roughness of my beard scratching my palm.

“I don’t know, I guess I’ve always held on to that fear. Even when he left us.”