Page 33 of When Storms Ruin

“Don’t act so shocked.” He laughed as he moved back to the kitchen. He pulled out two glass goblets and filled them with a rich, dark wine. “My mom taught me a thing or two.”

“Tell me about her,” I blurted out, before I could think better of it.

I shouldn’t want to knowanythingabout him, but he was still a mystery to me. He took a deep gulp of wine and found a wooden cutting board, bringing it over to the peninsula. I sat on one of the stools as he started to chop up various vegetables, sipping on my wine as I studied him.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, slicing with expert precision, not glancing up to meet my gaze.

“Where is she?” I asked. He had said his home life had been complicated…but I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant.

“Dead.”

He glanced up, watching my expression from under his eyelashes.

“I’m sorry.” My voice was soft, the only other sound filling the silence the flames sparking in the fireplace.

I shook my head, my eyes falling back to my wine. I shouldn’t have asked. Nobody should have to deal with the loss of a parent…that was a loss I knew all too deeply. I had lost both of my birth parents, but I had never met them. They hadn’t raised me. The loss of Nik’s mother was entirely different.

“It was a long time ago,” he replied, his voice thick with emotion. “We were close, once. I was the only child, so I always had my parents' doting affections. She and my father…” he trailed off, choosing his next words carefully. “They didn’t see eye to eye on how to raise me. My father wanted to move to Akra, to put me in the queen’s army. It would gain status for our family, and it would gain me visibility before Donika.My mother never wanted that for me.” He took a deep gulp of wine as he shook his head back and forth.

“What happened to her?” I asked softly, fearing the answer.

The look in Nik’s eyes told me his family troubles were far more complicated than I had ever imagined.

“He will never admit it, but I think my father…dealtwith her.”

He spoke with such disdain, it was clear his relationship with his father was not a good one.

“My father has never been there for me, not once. He was a constant let down as a parent. Always pushing me to harden myself, never show my emotions, to train to be the best soldier. When I needed him the most…he was gone.”

“Nik…” my voice trailed off, my grip on the stem of my wine goblet tight enough that I thought I might crack the glass.

The urge to go to him was so strong I almost pushed back my chair and came around the counter. The only thing stopping me was the image of Donika flashing before my eyes. I couldn’t forget how we had gotten here, the part he had played in all of this.

“It was my father who pushed me to court Donika in the first place. I just wanted to make him proud. I wanted his acceptance, justonce.”

He met my gaze and shook his head at the sympathy he saw there.

“Like I said, all this shit with my father…it was a long time ago.” He took another sip of wine before he delicately took up the knife and resumed cutting.

“That doesn’t make it any less difficult to deal with,” I told him.

I didn’t want to feel a lick of sympathy for him, but I couldn’t help it. All I wanted to feel was anger…but in this moment that had melted away, leaving something fragile and raw in its place.

“Maybe…but being upset for evenone instantgoes against everything he tried to ingrain in me. He left me to those wolves and never looked back. I don’t even know where he is, and if he’s alive or dead. But I’ve found I don’t even care anymore.”

He lifted his face to the ceiling, biting back the emotions that threatened to escape. I had never seen him this unfiltered, this exposed.

“It’s ok to feel vulnerable. To feel emotion. You aren’t just a mindless soldier,” I told him.

Every voice in my head was telling me to reach across the peninsula and grab his hand, but my own hand remained curled around the wine goblet. My emotions were swirling inside of me, a tornado of battling wills. Sadness. Anger. Desperation. Vengeance. I couldn’t separate them from one another, and they were so opposite I felt as if I was being ripped apart from the inside out.

“I know you won’t like to hear this…” he started, meeting my gaze.

“Then don’t say it,” I bit out, afraid of what he might confess.

I was afraid of how it might change the way I felt about him. That it would soften me towards him. I couldn’t let thathappen…not again. I wouldn’t punish him in this vulnerable moment, but I wouldn’t open myself up to him, either.

“You brought that side out of me. I never felt more vulnerable…or emotional than when I met you. I wanted to protect you, and when I couldn’t…the utter heartbreak and helplessness threatened to consume me. I’ve never felt like that before.”

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