Page 103 of Reign of Light
His voice trails off, and I wait, unsure of what is so important that after years of barely speaking to me, he wants to spend his last moments with me, and not the friend he has not seen in over twenty years.
“I’m sorry, Lennox. The last thing I ever wanted was for your life to end up this way. I know—” he winces, and presses his hand more firmly to his belly before starting again. “I know Edmond gave you your mother’s letters. He has been pressuring me for many years to finally let you read them, but it was too hard for me to think about them, let alone look at them again. I wasn’t ready for the inevitable questions you had about your mother, but you need to know that her words were true.Aretrue. You are the most important thing to her. To us.”
A lump forms in my already constricted throat, and I try to swallow it down, but the pain and the swelling make it near impossible.
“But whenever I looked at you, all I could see was her. Her beauty, her warmth, her smile, her ferocity. Every single thing I loved about her is in you, and it made me hurt so much I couldn’t bear it. It was the worst thing I could do as a father, I know that, but I’m a weak man. You were a constant reminder of the pain I felt the day we lost her, and when I looked at you, I relived that loss over and over again. Losing the person you thought you would spend your life with, and grow old together, is an unimaginable pain.” His head tilts up, and he looks at Weston. His gaze lingers there for a moment as his face softens. “I believe you may finally understand what that feels like.”
My already shallow breath hitches as my father smiles softly at his friend, then directs the same look at me. Was Weston right? Did my father see the way he looks at me and recognize the same feelings in himself? Did he watch Weston hold me, begging me to open my eyes and know that it was for more than just an oath to his kingdom?
Weston’s weight shifts again, the movement a clear response to the assumption.
Father continues, and his face falls again, the softness from a moment ago gone. “No one knows the reason for my strict decisions. What I uttered was law. No one dared question the king except you. You were the only one who tried and pushed back, and each time I saw the disappointment in your face when I squashed your suggestions or ideas, it felt like a knife to the gut.”
His eyes flick up to Weston quickly before falling back to me once again, and his voice is somber. “I didn’t even have enough strength to tell the person besides your mother who I cared for the most. I’m running out of time. I need to tell you now. I need you to know, not so it will change anything, but so you don’t spend your life wondering why all of this happened.” He winces and shifts his body against the base of the throne, but gives up with a heavy sigh. “Do you know what happened that night? The night you were born?”
“I told her everything,” Weston mutters, and Father lets out a sigh with a slight shake of his head.
“You didn’t know everything. I got to her before you did. I knew from Lyla’s cries that something was terribly wrong. When I ran to her, Dane’s voice carried. He was shouting, and even over my own thoughts about getting to her, I could hear what he said. He didn’t know I heard every word.”
Tears fill my father’s eyes as he looks directly into mine, and I can’t stop the way mine fill at the sight. Not just of him crying, but of him finally looking at me, seeing me, and giving me the truth I’ve longed for.
“He was trying to take her away, to convince her to leave with him. He found someone who was willing to keep you, someone who wanted a child and would gladly welcome a newborn babe.” He coughs again, and my chest clenches as I wait with bated breath for him to continue, silently begging him to hold on long enough to tell me everything.
“He wanted to punish me, to take you both away and destroy my family, the only true thing that brought me happiness, all because he thought I destroyed his. Your mother adamantly refused. I could hear her crying ‘no’, and trying to get him to listen to her. Everything she explained, her happiness, her love, he tried to tell her she was tricked. No amount of her yelling that he was wrong and that if he cared for her, he would see, changed anything.
“He tried to take her then by force, and when she fought him off, she fell. I watched as my wife, the mother of my unborn child, pushed her attacker away, clutching her swollen belly and attempting in every way she could to keep you safe. I watched as he grabbed her, and wrenched her down the steps, but she lost her balance as she fought. My scream mixed with hers frightened him, and he stared down after her, panicked and taking in what he had done. The woman he wanted to love, who didn’t love him back lay crumpled at the foot of the steps, and it was all his fault. He saw me running toward her, and ran away himself. Once I saw the blood, I no longer cared about him, only about her and you.
“That night, when her body could no longer keep you safe, and I held you in my arms, I vowed I would protect you. He threatened to take you, and had already gotten into the castle once, undetected. I couldn’t risk it happening again. I couldn’t let him know you had survived. The only ones who knew were the staff, and the guards, and they were sworn to protect. He proved he would stop at nothing to pay me back for everything he thought I did to him. It is why I never let you leave. But even after that night, the years of stifling your spark, the guilt I felt, the internal turmoil knowing how disappointed in me Lyla would be for not letting you live, I couldn’t change my mind. I couldn’t let him take you away from me too, not after he already took her.”
Tears stream down his cheeks, and his voice drops so I can barely hear it.
“Years of pain, an entire lifetime missed with my only daughter, and it was all for nothing. He took you anyway. I destroyed the life fullof memories we could have had, simply by trying to protect you, and he took you anyway.”
I reach out hesitantly for his hand, unable to stop myself from giving him the same comfort I would have wanted. His eyes fall to my hand as my fingers wrap gently around his, and his features morph before my eyes.
Longing, pain, regret, but also something different. Something new.
My father finally looks happy, even if it is only just a little.
“I made a lot of selfish decisions,” he continues, “and I regret them immensely. But my regret does not change how they affected you, how they shaped you and made you doubt the love I held for you in my heart.” He squeezes my hand and his brows draw in. “I don’t expect your forgiveness, and I am not asking for it. I just cannot leave this world without you knowing that I do truly love you, Lennox, despite being a terrible father, and incapable of showing it. I never wanted to leave you to be a young queen ruling a kingdom, yet here we are. I did exactly that.”
I lean forward slightly, wincing as I try to push past the pain and say what I need him to hear.
“You said I wasn’t ready,” I rasp, and his face falls.
“You heard me.” The sadness in his voice is unmistakable, and I wait silently for him to explain, hoping he understands.
“I was not referring to you becoming queen, and knowing that was your first thought just shows how much I failed, not only as your father, but as your king. No, Lennox, I was talking about what I told you tonight, the truth of what happened. It was less that you weren’t ready to hear it, and more that I was not ready to tell you. I was not ready to relive that night, and cause you more pain than I already had. But today I had no choice. I couldn’t leave this world, leave you, without you knowing.”
My body shudders with quiet cries at his words. I was wrong, like I had been before, but this time, it was not my fault. How could I assumeanything different after years of him halting my attempts to advance in my position, to act the way the heir to the throne would? He admitted as much tonight, but knowing I was wrong, that it was out of his fear of being honest with me, not his doubt of my abilities, makes the deep hole of inadequacy in my chest a little shallower.
“You will be the best queen Blackwood has ever seen, Lennox. You will be even more loved than your mother was, I am sure of it. Your intelligence, your wit, your stubbornness, but most of all, your compassion. Your heart. Every bit of it is from her, and this kingdom needs it. We were locked away for far too long, and your people need you. I’m sorry I will not be here to see it.”
But isn’t that always the way it has to be? The parent will never see the regent their son or daughter will be come, they just have to know that they did what they could to shape them into a leader. My father had the chance to see me grow into the princess, the heir to the throne and all that I could be, but his selfish actions took that chance from him. Now, he will never have the opportunity to see who I will become, because while his heart still beats, there is no queen.
“West,” he says, finally turning away from me, and beckoning Weston closer from where he still hovers behind me. Dropping to a knee at my side, he’s as close as he can be without touching me, and I long to lean into him, to have him hold me as my father’s words alter the axis of my world.
“I tried, Rem.” Weston’s throat bobs as his chin dips in grief, but my father shakes his head as coughs wrack his chest again, followed by a shrill, deep breath.
