Behind her, she heard Elora’s diaphanous gown rustle as she folded her arms.
Kestrel shifted to block their view of each other. “I don’t know how much time we have, but I needed to see you.”
Thom’s attention shifted back to her. “You need to leave. These people are not your friends. You can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone.”
And for the first time in all of Kestrel’s nineteen years, she thought she was finally seeing him for who he really was. Not the fearless hero of her childhood, the one who had vanquished the cinders and carried her in his arms all the way back to the safety of their tower. Here was a frightened, paranoid man with a lifetime of distress and suffering that she would likely never know, let alone come to understand.
She tried lacing her fingers around his where they gripped the bars. “I’m not leaving until they let you out of here.”
Thom’s head hung, forehead pressing against the iron. “They won’t release me. I am a traitor in their eyes. They’re claiming I—I—” When he couldn’t bring himself to say it, Kestrel did.
“I know. They’re saying you caused the curse—or that you made my mother use her magic to cause it.” His gaze met hers briefly, assessing, uncertain about the ground they were walking on. For years, these topics had been secret. Kestrel hoped he wouldn’t retreat from them now, not when they had such little time. She wouldn’t let him. “That’s why I’m going to cure it.”
“Cure it? There is no cure. Only Aenwyn—” he swallowed her name like it was a brick, one of the many he had carefully stacked to construct the wall of lies that surrounded their lives. Thom tried speaking again, the new word sounding foreign and unfamiliar on his tongue. “Only yourmothercan undo her magic.”
“That’s not what I’ve seen.”
Concern crumpled Thom’s brow. He leaned in ever so slowly. “What do you mean,what you’ve seen?”
Kestrel hadn’t anticipated sharing this much with him, afraid of how he might react, that he might try to stop her. But they were on a streak of truth, and she wanted it to continue.
“I had a vision. Like the ones my mother used to have.” Watching the tidal wave of emotions that overcame him only confirmed what she already knew: he had expected this. He had known all along who’s blood ran through her veins. “Why didn’t you tell me about her? About my magic?”
This time, he didn’t fight the truth. “I swore to your mother I would keep you protected. Keep you safe. I didn’t want them finding you and blaming you for her mistakes. So I…I kept you hidden away. Your magic, too, in case there was some way they could trace it back to you. But I only ever did any of that to keep you safe, to honor the promise I made to her.”
Kestrel’s chest felt like molten rock, cracking and shifting with surges of heat that threatened to consume her. How could she hold any of it against him, when he had only been obeying her mother’s wishes?
With tears brimming in her eyes, she asked the question she’d been terrified to hear the answer to for days now. “And you’re not my father then?”
His mouth opened, then shut again. “Not by blood, no.”
“Then what about him, my father? Why would my mother take me away from King Everard? Wouldn’t he have protected me—if she hadn’t cursed him?”
Thom slammed his fists against the iron bars. Kestrel jumped, her back colliding against Elora.
“That man is not your father.”
The initial shock and fear wore off quickly.
“He’s not?” Kestrel asked, curiosity pulling her forward again. “Then who is?”
But Thom was merely shaking his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how to answer that.”
Kestrel looked behind her to Elora, wondering if she had heard anything about any of this. But the princess just shrugged, then said, “We should probably be going soon.”
Kestrel nodded, twisting around again to face—her father? The man who raised her? She didn’t know what he was to her anymore. Not a father by blood, but he had been her only guardian. He’d taken care of her. Taught her how to read and climb and laugh. He was the only parent she’d ever known. And the other one…
“So, it’s true then? Queen Aenwyn, my mother, is the reason for the curse?”
“Yes—but you have to understand, she isn’t who the stories say she is. Your mother was fierce and loyalto her people, toallthe people of Grimtol. The entire reason she left Caelora was to slay the dragon and protect the people.”
“Then what happened?” Kestrel asked, as memories of the king-beast thrashed in her skull. She watched him die again. Saw the princes collapse in grief around his lifeless body. Then she thought of all the other monarchs who’d been ruined by her mother’s dark magic. “How did she go from trying to save the people to condemning them all?”
Thom dragged a hand through his greasy hair. “They betrayed her…”
“So she turned innocent people into monsters? Left them to wreak havoc on their kingdoms? On their own families?”
“I’m not saying she was in the right. I’m just saying she had her reasons, and in that moment, in her eyes, the ones she cursed weren’t innocents. They were the culprits and puppeteers who orchestrated years of her suffering.” Suffering? Kestrel hadn’t heard about that part of the story yet. She wanted to ask him more about it, but he was already spiraling deeper into painful memories of their past. “You weren’t there to witness her heartache when she realized how everyone had betrayed her—her father, her sister, her own husband. To see how much they took from her. How much of her pain and misery was carefully designed.
