Page 100 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

My emotions were clearly displayed on my face because he pinched my chin between his finger and thumb and gave it a little shake. “Nothing you tell me could ever change that.” He dipped his head to look right into my eyes. “You’re mine, Babble. And I’m yours.”

The back of nose started burning again, but I offered a weak smile. That was all I could offer him. The thing I actually wanted to tell him was refusing to rise any higher than my chest. But Kai didn’t utter a word. He didn’t rush me or appear impatient or concerned about what I was hesitating to tell him. He just repeatedly combed his fingers over the side of my hair, tucking the strands framing my face behind my ear. Comforting me. Promising me.

“I am not the late Queen of Jahandar’s daughter.”

I flinched when Kai’s fingers halted behind my ear and blinked rapidly down at the bunched fabric of his hoodie as I braced myself for his reaction.

Nothing. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, I wondered if he was even breathing.

I risked a glance up at him and the shock rounding his eyes was almost palpable.

But it wasn’t judgemental. It wasn’t angry. Neither was it edgy. He was just surprised by the huge curveball I’d thrown at him. Understandably so.

He blinked a few times before dropping his hand to frame my ribcage. “What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. “I’m not my mother’s real daughter. I’m Father’s illegitimate child. Born to a member of the housekeeping staff who…took advantage of his mental state when Mother was ill.”

Kai squeezed my side in his hand, but it was unclear if it was reflexive or meant to be comforting. “How do you… How long have you known?”

“Since I was ten…” I forced myself to meet his unblinking regard. “I lied the other day when I said Kareem just turned his back on me one day. It wasn’t random.”

Discomfort at recalling the story I had never voiced twined around my limbs, but I tried to ignore the feeling. “Father wrote me a letter before he passed away to tell me about my real mother. One he had planned to give me once I turned eighteen. But Kareem found it first…”

I’d memorised every word of the letter. That was how many times I had read over it. Again and again and again until the truth of my illegitimacy was carved into all of my bones. A fake. A fraud. A lie I knew even at aged twelve that no one could ever know about. So I burnt the letter. But I’d recited it to myself every few nights, so I never forgot the truth that had been written on it.

“And without Father there to explain himself, Kareem took his anger out on Mother. And me.”

“You were a child,” Kai said.

“I was. But I was old enough to understand Father made a mistake, and that I was never meant to have been born.”

“That’s not true.” Kai moved a heavy hand up my spine, pressing me closer into his warmth, but as if there was a pole down my back, I didn’t budge. “You know that’s not true.”

I knew it wasn’t so much the truth now that I was older. But I knew there had been far more days when that thought had been the only possible truth. Especially when Mother was no longer alive.

“I read the letter,” I continued, “but it wasn’t until Mother was in hospital after the Dale expedition that she finally told me her side of the story. That she had a miscarriage about a year or so before I was born. How she fell sick after, so Father took her and Kareem to Glossham Palace to get away from the politics in the capital. How Father went back-and-forth to keep the government in session.

“At some point, they hired new palace staff. Mama Katiya was in that group with a four-year-old Shehryar…and so was my birth mother—Linda.”

“Linda saw an opportunity,” I said devoid of any emotion, repeating the words that had been told to me. “Mother was ill. Father was stressed and worried, and Linda offered him comfort. He rejected her at first, but apparently, she was persistent and he…gave in.

“Mother said Father came to her the next morning and wept at her feet as he told her what he’d done. She was furious, of course—what woman wouldn’t be? But they couldn’t fire Linda in case she accused Father of assault, so they sent her to another palace. And two months later she came back.”

“She was pregnant,” I croaked after a beat. “And she wanted compensation.”

“Money,” Kai rasped, bitterness wisping through.

I nodded numbly. “Money in exchange for not going to the media. One million Raal and she said she’d be happy to—to get rid of me and disappear quietly.”

Where my insides once were, there were now a million eels wriggling over each other, creating rolling waves of sickening sensation. Taking deep breaths didn’t help. It just made the feeling worse.

It was miserable knowing I had been conceived from a betrayal, even if Linda had taken advantage of Father being in a bad place. I wasn’t naïve to think Father hadn’t known he was cheating on his sick wife. Maybe his judgement had been skewed from being in a bad mental state, but what kind of a man found comfort with another woman while his sick wife was suffering? Even if he had come clean immediately.

But worse than that was knowing that my biological mother had been selfish and unfeeling enough to put a price on my life without any hesitation. Ironically, it was the woman who was cheated on that I owed my life to. Literally.

“Mother refused. She didn’t want Linda to get rid of me. She wanted Linda to give birth to me so that her and Father could claim me as their own.”

Kai’s palm spread over the back of my neck, and it was only then I realised I was sitting so stiffly my shoulders and neck were aching. He squeezed and soothed the tautness from me. For a moment, I closed my eyes and let him, easing into his touch until my shoulders slipped lower.

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