Not what I wanted to hear. I had held onto the hope that maybe, just maybe my parents had been a love match that was held back by my father’s marriage to Isauros, and the social differences between my mother and him.
That clearly wasn’t the case.
The headmistress laughed. “Your mother was naïve like you. She believed in love and affection, that good will overcome the bad in the world. It’s sad, really, that you haven’t seen the ugliness of the world.” She tapped her finger to her chin, regarding me. “Or have you, Miss Komita?”
“I’m not what I appear to be,” I finally said, carefully choosing my words.
“Perhaps not,” she answered with a haughty sigh. “But you will never be what you want to be.”
I didn’t know how she could already make that determination when I didn’t even know what I wanted to be.
“Your mother thought she could trust me,” she said. “She thought that I was her friend and maybe once upon a time before she started fucking my husband, I was. The day she came to me with tears in her eyes, I knew she was pregnant. I took her to the hospital and during the ride, forced her to tell me that it was my husband who put the child in her belly.”
I couldn’t imagine how frightened my mother must have been, having to say that to this woman. She would be confessing that not only had my father strayed from his marriage, but also that he had committed the ultimate sin against his marital vows.
No wonder Isauros didn’t like me.
“Your whore of a mother dared to tell me that my husband forced himself on her in the room where my son’s crib was,” the headmistress continued, a disgusted look on her face. “Because I could no longer give him what he wanted, what he needed.”
I felt like I was going to be sick. My father, the man whose image I had built up in my head, the man that I had so desperately wanted to get to know, was a rapist.
“He made it clear what he saw in me—in your mother. Nothing but a womb on a pair of legs,” she continued on, like she hadn’t dropped the biggest bomb on me to date. “I didn’t want his money or title, I wanted him. But he saw fit to make certain I never graced his bed again.”
I watched a malicious smile crossed her lips, her eyes darkening. “So, I took away from him what he wanted most.”
“What did you do?” I whispered, unable to find my voice. “Did you kill my mother?”
She grinned. “I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to! She ruined my life, ruined my marriage! I had every right to take your mother’s life.”
“You had no right.”
Isauros waved a hand at me. “Ever the American. Do you know the people you currently gather with, Anna? Do you know what they have done, what their families have done? We are all evil in our own ways.”
I didn’t want to believe her, but deep down, I knew she was right. Hadn’t I seen glimpses of that evil from the kings, from Johanna?
“What did you do?” I forced out.
Isauros’ eyes narrowed. “I tried to give your mother a way out. I gave her a razor, urging her to kill herself if she wanted a shred of dignity left. She nearly succeeded, but Alexei stopped her before she could. You see, her life didn’t matter to him. Yours did. He had her chained to a bed at our country estate, the months ticking by you were born. He visited her each night—the same way he used to visit me when I was pregnant. I couldn’t stand it any longer. So, I forged documents for her and smuggled her out of his house in the dead of night.”
Surprised, I let her words wash over me. It was because of Isauros that I was still alive… Yet she was also trying to kill me at the same time.
“When Alexei found out, his rage was immeasurable. Oh he made me pay.” Katarina’s eyes closed and she shuddered. “You have no idea how cruel he could be.
“But I comforted myself in the knowledge that he would never have what he wanted, I made it my life’s purpose to forget about both your mother and you after that,” she said, sneering. “Even though my dear Alexei divorced me and never remarried, I imagine he had other bastard children such as you. You were nothing but a speck of dirt under my nail and I hoped that you would never show up again. Yet here you are, attempting to be a royal.”
“I never asked for this,” I said softly, my heart breaking for what my mother must have gone through. “I didn’t even want to come here.”
Isauros stood, smoothing down her skirt. “Yet here you are. I should have slit your mother’s wrists for her.”
Horrified, I stared at the cold woman. What sort of person talked like that? Why did she feel the need to rub her words deep into the wounds I already had about my parents?
Isauros reached into the pocket of her jacket, producing a small silver object that she laid on the bedside table. “I told you: you knew nothing of the kind of man your father was, nor of the things he was capable of. I will offer you the same choice I gave your whore of a mother.”
With that, she walked out, shutting the door behind her. I waited until I could no longer hear her heels clicking down the hall before I let out a shuddering breath. That had to be the strangest conversation to
