Page 175 of Fearless

I was the daughter—an Ordinary the king disposed of. Embarrassed and angry, he hid the truth of his wife’s death, claiming to the kingdom that she passed during the birth of his heir. Queens were isolated for safety, so it was a believable lie….

I drag a finger across the marriage license. “This says nothing of a child. Only that Edric Azer and Myla Rowe were wed.”

Kai runs a hand through his tousled hair. “There is no record of my birth.”

“We must be missing something,” I offer distantly. “Maybe there is another scroll—”

“Maybe,” Kai cuts in. I blink, and he is pushing away from the desk to stride across the room. “Or maybe we should go right to the source.”

The dowager queen stares blankly at the scrolls.

“I want answers, Mother,” Kai urges.

Myla’s long black hair is streaked with silver. Her once beautiful gray eyes are sunken and red. The cot she lies on is stiff, the room around us stuffy. She looks frail in the west wing’s sickly hue, as though the rickety tower itself seeps life from her veins.

I fidget in my seat. The queen hardly knows me and now I’ve come to sit beside her deathbed, disrupting the little peace she had.

“I know the truth about Iris’s death,” Kai says slowly, pointing to one of the scrolls. “How the king married you to help cover it up. But what I don’t understand is where I fit into it.” His gaze is piercing. “If Iris truly died two years after Kitt’s birth, then how was I born only a year younger than him?”

The queen’s gaze shifts to her son, nearly as hollow as the words she finally coughs out. “The king didn’t tell me the whole story until he decided he loved me. At the beginning, it was my duty to marry Edric—at least, that is what my father told me. As an adviser to the king, he handed me over, a solution to a problem I didn’t know.”

She lifts a hand to her son’s cheek. “Despite my father’s persuasion, I didn’t think the king would want to marry me so suddenly. Because I… I already had a son with another.” Her voice grows hushed. “But I was wrong. It was you he wanted.”

I watch the words hit Kai hard enough to nearly crack his stony facade.

“He had a Silencer sense your power,” she whispers. The queen grips Kai’s hand, a cough rattling her chest before continuing. “The king wanted a strong spare, and my baby boy was extraordinary. Edric wanted him as his own.”

Nothing. Kai says nothing.

I drop my gaze to the fidgeting fingers in my lap. After believing an Ordinary child was his, it is no wonder the king wanted only the strongest of Elites for himself. I was an embarrassment. A mistake. And Kai—the most powerful Elite—would replace me.

“Edric told the kingdom he had mourned his late wife for three months and married me in the next.” The queen chokes on her words. “He was very convincing, your father—told the people that he didn’t have the heart to announce Iris’s death until he knew his new queen and son were safe.”

“So he wanted a solution to his problem,” Kai says evenly. His voice is dangerously calm. “The king was embarrassed by an Ordinary that wasn’t even his, so he claimed the strongest Elite he could find as his own.”

“Forgive me, Kai,” his mother whimpers. “The castle was sworn tosecrecy, and I was never to tell a soul the truth. So you were raised believing what everyone else in the kingdom did.”

Kai scoffs. “But I was never his. My power was not Edric’s doing.” His eyes lift to the woman who resembles him so closely. “So whose doing is it?”

Her throat bobs. “A man I loved dearly. Many years ago.”

Kai looks away, letting her words hang in the air. I can see the hurt he so desperately tries to hide beneath that mask of anger. “The king rewrote history,” he seethes, “and made me his puppet.”

Myla lets out a ragged cough that might have been the start of an apology. When she catches her breath, face splotchy and red, she rasps, “He was always too harsh on you. And I am so… so sorry for that.”

“I was his in name, and still, he hated that I wasn’t his in blood,” Kai mutters. “That is why he never loved me, isn’t it? Why he pushed me until I broke? All because my power was never truly his.”

Rage simmers deep in my gut for the boy who was forced into this fate by chance alone. Everything he has suffered, every mask forced upon his face and weapon pushed into his hand, was never intended for him. Kai Azer is not an Azer at all. He was a powerful solution.

“I’m sorry you were thrown into this mess,” the queen attempts. “At first, we were only meant to cover up how an Ordinary killed the late queen.”

Her gray eyes slide to mine.

Kai scoffs before biting out, “All this time, you knew?”

“I had my suspicions.” The queen coughs. “Edric was not himself after seeing her for the first time.”

My cheeks heat. “I was not the king’s Ordinary.” At her skeptical look, I let the truth tumble out. “I was his Mind Reader’s daughter.”

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