Page 91 of Rebellious Royals

"No!" I groaned, realizing I was bad at this. "I'm trying to say I get it. Like, when my mom killed my dad? I knew she had to. I also knew it meant I'd lost everything. Well, back then it was justthis childish fear. I didn't really get any of it, but as I grew up, that's kinda how I thought about it."

"Not the same," he grumbled.

"Kinda is," I countered. "See, my mom and your dad both did something that sucked because they felt they had to. We're the ones paying for it. Now, I'm sure your shit is a lot worse than mine, but I still get it. I can imagine what it would be like to be pulled two ways, convinced you're going to pick the wrong thing and make it all worse."

Somewhere in there, he'd looked down to pick at his thumbnail. I was convinced that was a brushoff until he began to nod slowly. "If people realize I'm also the Winter Prince, they'll try to kill Aspen, thinking it's an easy way to remove all Winter magic."

Ok, Keir had skipped over that. "You mean because you told everyone you're the prince?"

He nodded again. "They're so happy about it."

"Tor..." I shifted a bit, leaning to see his eyes. "No one here has met the Mad Queen but you."

"Us," he corrected. "Wilder's been close enough to count. Hawke's seen her."

"But they don't know her," I said. "To them, she's a single bad thing. To you, she's a nightmare you can't escape."

And those bright green eyes of his jumped up, guiltily confirming it.

"I still have nightmares about my dad," I told him. "They're vague now, but he's always beating something I care about until it's just gone." And I shrugged. "It was Aspen last time. Thankfully, I know he's gone, so he can't do anything to us, and waking up makes my nightmares end."

"The Mad Queen isn't gone," Torian said dryly.

"But what if she was?"

He huffed out a single chuckle. "Would be nice."

"And you'd be a king," I reminded him. "You, the one Summer fae with the right power, would be in a position to convince everyone else that Aspen's a good thing."

"And Titania is amazingly healthy," he pointed out. "She's on the other side of a gate, surrounded by sycophants who are encouraging her - probably because they're terrified of what will happen if they don't - and powerful enough that no one left could threaten her."

I just pointed at him. "You're left." Then I turned that finger to me. "I'm a Morrigan. I think that makes me a threat."

"And the gates are closed," he said.

I shrugged. "That's a good thing, though. Means we have time to level up, right? You know, perfect our warrior skills, get some mage points - "

"What?" he asked, sounding baffled.

"Like in a video game," I explained.

"Never played one."

Ok, that killed my analogy. "Like studying for a test," I tried next. "All I'm saying is we have time to prepare. We can build up some Winter power here, even if it's just support from the faelings and their parents, right?"

His eyes slid to the side and lost focus. "Huh."

So I kept going. "Have you seen the meme about holding someone's beer?"

"No?"

Fuck, that made this harder. "Ok, so it's like, you say I can't do something, and I've been drinking enough to be stupid and take it as a dare. 'Hold my beer,' so I can show you that you're wrong. That sort of thing."

"And?" he asked.

"And that's what you should be doing," I told him. "See, your mom made you a weapon, right? She put you between a rock and a hard place, thinking she'd backed you into a corner." Howmany more phrases could I pull out of my ass for this? "But she made your options all suck, so why don't you show her how wrong she was?"

He shook his head. "Rain, she's not wrong."