Chapter 65

Angela's face was priceless when I explained who was with me and then she began to swoon when I told her their relation to me. She sat attentively the whole time I explained, Alex, her husband, holding her arm to keep her and the unborn child safe.

"So..." she frowned as she paused and then hesitantly spoke, "we aren't truly related?"

I felt a slight pang that the first thing she bought up was that. I had found that to be the thing I very much ignored. But regardless, I concluded that it shouldn't matter.

"It doesn't matter to me. You're still my little sister regardless" I smiled with confidence which seemed to reassure her.

"Well if it doesn't change anything for you then it doesn't certainly change anything for me" she gave a long exhausted sigh as she once again looked to Kendrick who had begun to bicker with Will alongside the growing vegetation. "To think your father was the hero of all men. It makes sense why mother spoke so little of him now, but that doesn't explain why the late Duke treated you like that".

Her words made me wince as I recalled the treatment I received from the late Duke. I was very much over it all. The manor was no longer a place that instilled fear in me, but she was right. Why was he so angry at him? It didn't make any sense at all.

I decided to make a point to ask him. Not now because I was happy and didn't want to spoil my fun. Seeing Angela made me feel like it was okay for me to be who I truly was as well.

"Mother is probably happy too" She looked up at the flowing petals as a gust of wind swept her hair to the side.

I felt a content smile on my lips.

"Yeah".

As I replied I realized that Kendrick was alone by the growing vegetation and Will was nowhere in sight.

"Where's Will?" I asked to no one in particular, but a worker on the farm replied.

"He's gone to the flower gardens".

I thanked the man and made my way to the flowers, wondering why he had decided to seclude himself. The flower garden was much less extravagant than Cain's, but they put a lot of work into it. The flowers blooming while hanging from vines alongside the small fence of the garden. The main exhibit of the garden wasn't the flowers though, but shrubs made into animal figurines, and in the center, instead of a statue was a huge shrub shaped like a knight.

"Beautiful" I let out as I stared mesmerized at the roses that wrapped their thorns and traveled down the sword of the knight.

"Isn't it?" I jumped as Wills's voice came from beside me.

Had he been there this entire time?

"I can see why you ran off to this place" I turned back to the knight, eyes trailing the other details.

"At my age, you run off for a single moment like this. They pass quickly, but I never seem to forget them" He sat down on the bench with a long exhausted sigh, "Well, out with it. Why have you followed me?"

I smiled at his sharpness. He never missed a thing.

"I don't know if I can go out farther than this" I sighed.

"Don't give up before you start".

"I won't, but won't it be weird if the hero suddenly proclaimed me his daughter?"

"He hasn't hidden that he had a child from anyone. Everyone knew you existed. They just didn't know you. It'll be fine. You need not fret anything, but there's something I want to bring up"

"What is it?"

"What happened to you in that house?"

The moment I heard his words I could feel dread filling my core. The fear of having to explain what happened to me had been something I had been holding on to. The fact that there was an answer for it did not change that it happened and somehow I knew that if Will and Kendrick found out...

Will's face contorted in pain and he turned his head away so I could not see it well, but I could make out the distress he was going through.

"You know I can see others' emotions, so even if you don't tell me I can see everything, and right now I just want to understand why" The softness of his voice calmed my fears enough for me to answer, maybe not the most detailed answer but an answer none the less.

"He hated Kendrick" I sucked in a breath to hold my emotions back, "I didn't understand why but he seemed to think that the duchess had something to do with Kendrick. Something personal? At the time I thought of an affair, but it seemed deeper. Whatever it was it made him dislike me. I think I reminded him too much of Kendrick" I let out a shaky breath, trying to shake off the memory of the whips.

"What did he do to you?" I could feel that familiar coldness surrounding him, very similar to when he first found out I was his niece. The bloodlust and what I now recognized as ice crystals surrounded the air around him.

I couldn't answer the question. If he had asked what hadn't the duke done then maybe I would've had an answer for him. It was too much to ask me to recall the memories. Even too much to speak of them. Because nobody knew of them. Not after my mother had passed.

"Why did the duke hate him?" I asked, "He didn't have an affair did he?"

"Of course not!" Will answered while shaking his head as if the notion was ridiculous. The ice crystals around him thinned, "He loved Lydia too much to see anyone at all, but no he did not have an affair. After your mother's death, Kendrick didn't rest. He almost denied it happened even though he witnessed it all. He made a deal with the duchess and it cost them both something precious" His hand touched my head as if to gesture what it was. He didn't seem like he could say it.

"What did it cost the duchess?" I asked in dread.

"Half a lifetime".

I could feel the world become unsteady.

"Y-You mean she- she died because of"- He cut me off quickly.

"No, she didn't. She died because of an illness. She was meant to live until her mid fourties after the exchange, but It seems she never really had a lifetime to begin with, much less half" He let out a breath as if he wanted to say more, but held back.

"So how did the duke come to dislike my father?" I asked, trying to take my mind off the duchess's death.

"That was the answer" He gave me a blank look.

I frowned, trying to understand how he answered the question.

"Are you saying the duke disliked Father because he cost the duchess half her life?" I asked skeptically, watching Will nod equally confused at my reaction. "There's no way. The duke did not care for the duchess".

"He did at the time," Will said, and had it been anyone else I would've objected. "He wasn't open about it, but It was obvious he loved her. When he found out about the exchanges that happened he had the whole knight barracks on to us. He wasn't going to rest until our heads were returned to him in little shoeboxes".

I found myself scoffing in disbelief.

"I don't believe it".

But then I recalled The duchess' sick days. When he had drunk himself to sleep. I had watched him sob his eyes out. I remembered the time he saw my face and stood up in a fit of rage. He had grabbed my collar and screamed it was my fault over and over again. Many times he had swung his empty liquor bottles at me. I had dismissed it, thinking it was just drunken behavior, fuelled by emotions, but I never thought I would look over it and suddenly recognize an underlining emotion.

Love.

"It seems you understand" Will's voice bought me back to the present moment.

"He was incredibly rude to her. He bought prostitutes home many times and paid no mind to her" I couldn't help but feel annoyed at the notion that he loved her. How could he treat someone he loved like that? Is that even love?

"When he found out about the exchange he wasn't just angry at your father. He saw his wife's behavior as a betrayal. I assumed they made up after that, but from what I remember seeing his trust in her was minimal even while he loved her. I doubt it recovered from the exchange".

"You keep saying 'exchange'! What happened?" I asked in frustration.

It was then that Will explained what really happened. I could barely think clearly when he was done.

"So that egg…" I began watching him nod solemnly and then I realized that a rather questionable matter had been overlooked. "Why did the commander try to kill Cain? It can't have been so simple, could it?"