Page 72 of Jeweler to the Blessed
I swallowed, realizing I had much to say now that I’d started. “When I was young, she was nearly comatose, unable to get out of bed. She’d only speak vague words or half-sentences … for years. Father spent all his time caring for her. Which left me to run the shop.”
I’d never told this to anyone. Others in the neighborhood knew, of course, but that was different.
“How old were you?” he asked.
I laughed, but it was hollow. “Eight when it happened. I was ten when Father stopped joining me at the shop.”
I chanced a glance at him. Something like horror flooded his features. It wasn’t pity, though, and that was the most important thing to me. I didn’t want Hart’s pity.
“Alaric helped me,” I rushed to continue. “He worked both in his position and helped me with mine. I owe him everything.”
Something contorted on Hart’s face. It was a mix of anger and maybe sadness. “It sounds like he did what he was able to. But you should never have been asked to do that so young.”
I shrugged. “We don’t always get to make those choices. My family needed the income. Mother and Father were no longer capable of providing it. Someone had to.”
“And no one had an issue placing jewelry orders with a child?”
“Father came in when necessary, usually to deal with customers. He wasn’t ignorant of the appearances, though it often seemed like it.”
Hart scoffed. He opened his mouth to say something else, likely a scathing assessment of my father’s character.
I stopped him. “I always thought it was a beautiful story ofa love I didn’t understand. My father and mother were always so happy. They had their own language in gazes and smiles and laughs.”
“It sounds nice,” he said.
I sighed. “Maybe. They were a unit. But then she was gone, her mind and body somewhere he couldn’t follow. They were so connected. Her pain was his. He couldn’t continue his life when hers was on hold.”
“It sounds like the lesson is not to let your partner go somewhere you can’t follow.”
My lip fought curling into a smile at Hart’s attempt to lighten the mood. Of course that would be his answer. “Once Alaric created the tonic and Mother’s condition stopped deteriorating, Father worked with me again.”
Hart nodded.
“I’ve learned not to take all the guilt myself. I was not responsible for the Blessed’s actions.” I hesitated, and then the secret part slipped out. The part I repeated often in my head but rarely gave life to in words. “Even if it should have been me.”
My gaze locked with Hart’s. Something passed between us, an understanding I didn’t expect. I saw my pain reflected in his features.
“I can’t say I understand your Father’s, or even Alaric’s, actions … but that … I understand.”
I believed him. We had a bone-deep understanding—he, too, knew what it was to wonder how things could have gone differently, what might have changed for your loved ones if they had.
Suddenly, I felt too raw. I wrapped my arms around myself. The open hallway was too exposed. So many emotions flooded me. I didn’t know what to do with them—where to put them. My sadness at our mother’s stories mixed with somethingclose to contentment at knowing someone saw my pain and understood.
I shook them off.
This hardly fixed my and Hart’s problems. He was still Blessed—still had some connection with the Feared. Under duress, he may have admitted Alaric had taken care of the tonic, but he hadn’t exactly let me out of my end of the blackmail.
We couldn’t be … whatever this was.
I was unsure how to break the strange intimacy. “We should go.”
He nodded and followed as I led him up the rest of the stairs.
At some point, as I entered the apartment, Hart stopped following me. He must have decided to stand sentry in the hallway, which was probably for the best. I was unsure what I would find inside.
Father was sitting by the fire, watching a pot of water near boiling, likely for Mother’s tea. He startled. “Emberline. What are you doing here?”
Although I had seen him only a few days before, the distance between us felt like it stretched years.
