Page 40 of Brighter Than Gold

“Both,” I sighed. I pulled my knees up under my elbows and rested my head against them while Callan worked. “Everyone in the north has black hair like mine.”

I wasn’t even sure why I’d said it. I felt so broken open that any secret I’d ever kept seemed irrelevant now.

Callan stopped brushing a moment. “How far north are you from, Reyah?”

“Far,” I admitted quietly.

“Farther than Laros?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Farther than White Bridge?”

“Yes.”

“Reyah…” Callan hesitated. “Were you born inside the Realm?”

I paused a moment, waiting for my mind to tell me to shut the fuck up, to talk some sense into me. To havesomesense of preservation.

But…nothing.

I shook my head, and the black strands danced along the towel. “No. I wasn’t born here.”

I sighed, knowing what was coming next. Knowing I’d just shared a secret that I intended to keep for the rest of my life, especially after having married Kaspian. But now that I’d lost his baby, it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter if they knew.

Callan took a steadying breath before he asked me outright. “Reyah, are you from the North?”

There it was, the question I knew someone would eventually ask, the words that were burned into my very soul, tainting it and making me feel dirty and ashamed.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Silence hung heavy between us with my confession. I thought I would feel different once someone knew the truth. I thought I might feel afraid or even liberated not having this shadow looming over me anymore. But I felt nothing, all of my emotions chewed up and spit out by the pain of losing this baby, a baby I carried for such a short time but had wrapped itself so completely around my heart.

So now Callan knew. And I didn’t care what he did with that information. Didn’t care if he left me here to rot and raced back to the palace to tell Kaspian himself that he didn’t know the first thing about the woman he’d married.

He was completely speechless, undoubtedly torn between being duty-bound to the Realm and duty-bound to his King. His friend.

“Did your family seek asylum?” he asked me.

It would be easy and forgivable if I said yes, some Northerners had fled during the war. But I wanted it to hurt. Both of us.

“Reyah…” Callan said, urging me to give the only acceptable answer.

“No. They sought no asylum here.”

“Your family was Kala Muata…” He didn’t so much ask the question as discover it for himself, and I could see all the pieces falling into place in his head.

“What the fuck, Reyah. What have you done?” His voice was low as he worked over what this meant.

I felt little more than a shell now, my life or death seemed arbitrary, and yet this silent explosion was happening all around me. I’d let my husband marry his enemy.

“I thought I could live my life with the lie, but now I simply don’t care,” I said. “I didn’t want to marry Kas, but the baby…” I inhaled sharply at the thought of my loss. “The baby changedeverythingfor me, I needed him or her to be all right, to be safe.”

“And you knew that wasn’t going to be with you. Not when someone found out about you.”

I choked down an exhausted sob and nodded.

“How close to the top was your family?” Callan sounded simply incensed now as the ramifications became clearer.

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