“And why is that, Hawthorne?” I ask, my voice coming out harsher than I intend. But I need answers from him. Real answers. If we’re truly going to be allies, he needs to lay everything on the table. “Why do you fear your father? Why do you chafe at his rule, as you once said?” The male in front of me is an enigma. Everything about him confuses me, and this new version of him as a serious and caring ruler is the most confusing of all. It doesn’t match the rumors that describe a drunk and spoiled heir, doesn’t match the winking and unserious male he usually presents as. This is the male who sobbed while carrying a dead child to the forest to bury, who tenderly healed an injured family. I suspect this is the closest to the real Hawthorne I’ve ever gotten.

His jaw tightens, and I sense that he’s debating whether to share another deep truth with me. I stay quiet, knowing it has to be his decision. Finally, he lets out a sigh.

“You know that my mother died when I was twelve years old.” I only nod, allowing him room to continue in his own time. “Before she died, she discovered something about him. I don’t know what it was, I only know it was massive. It wasn’t until I was over a hundred years old that I found an old journal she kept, hidden inside one of my toy chests. My father packed away all the things he deemed childish after her death, along with anything that might remind me of her. Before she died, I barely interacted with my father, kept under her protection. Afterwards—let’s just say the transition to being under my father’s thumb was not an easy one. He was not a kind parent, to say the least. Because of that, I wasn’t bold enough to seek out my childhood relics until I was much older and my hatred of him was firmly settled in place.” His jaw tightens, and he puts his head in his hands. It cracks something open inside of me. The same thing that fissured when I saw him heal the family and carry the small child, but I was too wrapped up in my own hatred then to allow more than the tiniest fracture. Now, with my commitment to let him show me who he really is, it opens wide.