"I'm sorry. I'm sure we'll find something soon, but in the meantime did you want to see him?”
"Of course, absolutely." She rushed toward the door. "Let me tell Captain Amir, and he will arrange for a full unit to accompany me. We can bring him back here, and even if we need to put him in the dungeon for a little while, I can stay with him until it's all over."
I waved my hands in front of me. "Wait. You can't tell the captain. I promised that I would only tell you where Dad is. If I go back on that, I'm worried that they may let him go again."
"That sounds absurd. Why wouldn't I be able to take my guard with me?”
"The temples are a sacred place. Plus, if Dad gets overly excited we might lose him again. At least on the mountain, he is safe, and there won't be anyone trying at the castle to catch a glimpse while we deal with this nightmare."
She shook her head, her hands on her hips, but slowly it seemed the logic started to make sense. Edwin’s words coming out of my mouth tasted strange, especially since he’d used them to calm me and now I’d turned around and used them on my mother for the same reason.
"Fine. I'll do whatever I need to get your father home. But he needs to be here with his family, in his home."
Family? Is that really what we were?
She opened the door and the dim light from down the hall filtered into the room.
"Can I talk to you about something first, before you go?”
She paused with her hand on the doorknob, a deep ‘v’ forming between her eyes as her eyes narrowed. "Of course, you can always ask me anything."
"As I've been researching the curse and my duties as king I've come across some information that doesn't seem to make any sense."
She closed the door and leaned against the wall, the seriousness of my voice likely setting her off. I sat on the edge of the desk and rubbed my sweaty palms together, staring at them as they generated heat between my hands.
"I've heard that it's possible, I might be adopted."
She crossed her arms and let out a huge breath deflating into the wall as her head tipped toward the ceiling. “Oh, Fallon. Your father and I honestly hoped you'd never find out, or at least that we’d to be the ones to tell you. I’m so sorry.“
"So it's true?" I jumped up from the desk and she rushed over placing her hands on the sides of my face.
"Please don't be angry. We never wanted to hurt you so we decided to keep it a secret until you were old enough to understand. Then as the years went by we realized that you were always ours and we never wanted you to doubt that."
I took her hands and pulled them away, as my own began to shake and heat rippled through my blood. If they never wanted to hurt me, keeping secrets was not the way to do it. "Then tell me now. Where did I come from?”
“I don’t know.” She clutched her arm over her stomach and rested the other hand on her forehead as she paced between the bookshelves. "It was the night your father proposed. It was late at night and there was a knock at the door. Griswold answered, but there was no one else there, just you lying in a basket wrapped in a thin blanket. The guards never saw anyone. Whoever it was managed to slip past the gate and disappeared into the night. We searched for whoever left you with us, but no one turned up. Not one clue as to where you came from. Your father and I so wanted to have children, but he always worried that his curse might one day affect his own children so we decided to raise you as our own. Only you. We’d never even dreamed of having another child.“
"You adopted me because I was convenient?"
She paused, her brain spinning in her eyes. Maybe trying to find the right words. Or maybe hiding more of the truth. “Of course not. We both loved you from the second we saw your little face. During the time spent looking for your parents, we grew into a family, even before we knew it was even a possibility. There was no question that you belonged with us."
"How many people know?" I knocked my fist against the desk and a cup of pencils fell to the floor with a crash.
She winced and watched them roll along the floor, but didn’t dare lose her connection with me to gather them up.
"A few of our trusted people in the castle, most of them have already long passed on.
From what I know, the only ones left to know the truth are Griswold, your father and I, and the Council."
"The Council knows? No wonder they hate me." I grabbed fistfuls of hair and tugged, spinning in a slow circle on the floor, the thoughts in my head spinning even faster.
“They don’t hate you, Fallon, they just need to do what is best for the crown without being emotional. None of them were even around when the adoption happened, but we needed to tell them and provide the documents that you had been appropriately claimed and legitimized as heir to the Aldric line to avoid any possible issues.”
The room fell silent, her pacing on the left and me reeling on the right, neither of us knowing what to say next. Eventually, her strides came closer and she pulled me into a hug, squeezing as tight as her petite arms could. I hugged her back, still the only mother I'd ever known and even if we weren't blood she'd always treated me as though I was. Like she'd lay down and die for me if the choice ever came. And in that moment, her tight embrace mixed with
