He waves me away."Blighted we suffered. Bloodied they’ll fall."
"You’re so hell-bent on revenge that you can no longer think clearly. We don't have to kill the humans to feed—"
He slams his fists against the armrests of his throne. "And you just expect them to give us their blood willingly?” Spit flies from his mouth when he screams.
With ashrug of my shoulder, I open my mouth to elaborate. Whether he believes me or not, I’ve actually thought this through quite a bit. There are humans who are willing to provide blood to us in exchange for resources. Humans who are exhausted by having to look over their back their entire lives and ready for a change, for peace. Rebuilding trust will take time, but we can do it if we’re willing to try.
Not that I have a chance to tell him any part of my vision for the future. For whatever reason, the words we’ve briefly exchanged have already pushed him over the edge.
"You think we didn’t try that?” A vein bulges from his temple as his yelling intensifies. “You think we were so hasty to kill in the beginning? After everything we’d been through? We were just grateful to have our lives back! We wanted nothing more but to live! And those self-righteous simpletons were too hateful to ever give us a chance!”
I’m stunned into silence.
This is more than he’s ever shared about what that time in history was like.
I knew that humans had feared us, so much so that their Magistrate declared all noctis dangerous and orchestrated a manhunt for all those who didn’t willingly turn themselves over to the Capital.
But could what my father’s saying be true? Did the noctis really first try to live in peace?
I fumble to find something to say, and like a bumbling idiot I settle on, “I-I’m sorry. I never knew—”
“Of course you never knew,” my father sneers, making me regret my empathy. “Like the humans you were raised by, you’ve ever only seen us—seenme—as the monster they painted us as.”
“That’s not true,” I protest. “I didn’t fully understand what our kind were capable of until the day you unleashed Harland upon my family.”
“Yourfamily.” He spits the word out like poison. “If they were family, why did they hide who you were? Why did they let you feed from the butcher’s floor instead of honoring your true nature as a hunter?”
My fists become so clenched that I fear I might tear through my palms. “My mother was protecting me fromyou.”
“She was protecting you from the very humans who would’ve seen you executed!”
I stagger backward, his words striking deeper than I anticipate.
I’m used to his tongue-lashings. After years of disappointing him, I’ve developed a tough skin to the many ways in which he’ll verbally assault me: I’m not good enough, not trying hard enough, not taking things seriously enough—I’ve heard it all a hundred times before.
But this time it’s different.
This time, I hear the truth for what it is.
My mother did many things to conceal me from my father, of that I am sure, but perhaps her motives weren’t exclusively about him. How many times did she sneak me away from our neighbors so I could feed somewhere no one would accidentally stumble upon us? How many times did she whisper into my ear reminding me to pretend to eat human food whenever company was around? How many times did she warn me not to let them see me salivate at the sight of blood?
I always assumed it was all part of keeping my existence a secret from a father who had abandoned her well before he even knew she was with child. I assumed it was meant to keep us both safe.
But now…
Perhaps he’s right. Maybe she was hiding me out of fear of what our friends would do to me if they discovered I was a noctis.
Could it be true that both of my parents were so ashamed of me?
“The only human who ever cared for our kind was your aunt.”
Despite my fugue, he still manages to catch my attention. “You mean Aunt Fox?”
Scorn contorts his regal features, his eyes heating as they narrow in on mine. “Not that wench. She’s no family to you.”
“She married your cousin.”
“On my father’s side,” he snaps. And then, as if he’s just swallowed a bug, he adds, “On thehumanside.”
