Page 130 of Cursed Heirs

So passionately.

So vulnerably.

Just so fucking openly like that.

How was he doing that?

Maybe it had been a long time coming for the first time he’d spoken the words to my father, because it was clear by the knowing look in his eyes that he’d heard them many times from Marlowe.

He responded just as heartfelt. “Even in death, our love will never extinguish.”

Wow.My father actually had a romantic bone in his body after all.

I’d never seen him that way with my mom. Then again, now I’d been subjected to her true nature, that wasn’t a surprise in the least.

But itwasa surprise that my father had this in him. I’d thought, except when it came to me, that he was locked up tight, unable to give anybody any part of himself. I’d thought that washowI’dneed to be asKing too, to be unfeeling, stoic, not allow anybody to get under my skin, not allow myself to feel anything strongly.

But now there was this with him and Marlowe.

It changed things for me.

“No need to lurk, son,” my father called out in a worryingly strained voice.

I stepped into the room, hating the sight of the almighty Saryan Hart tucked up in his huge silver four-poster bed draped in black silk sheets.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” I responded as I made my way over to the bed.

Marlowe smiled out at me sadly.

My father shifted his weight in the bed, grunting with the effort.

He was already covered in sweat, it was literally dripping down his face and his bare chest, and I could hear his labored breathing also.

But the most striking thing of all was his skin, the black veins all fucking over every visible inch of it. They were so prominent, I could even make them out through his Fae markings.

“How is Alena?”

That was his first question?

“Father, I don’t think—”

“Well, I assumed Abigail healed whatever wounds she’d sustained, but I meant mentally.”

“I came here to talk about you, to seeyou.”

“Son, you’ll need to discuss it, to face it. Don’t shut down. I know it’s painful, but she needs you to do this. You need to be strong for her.”

“It’s not about being strong.”

“There are different ways of showing strength,” Marlowe interjected.

“Being there for her, rather than merely plotting how to avenge her,” my father said.

The two of them knew me well.

Too well.

I shoved my hand through my hair. “That day in the dungeon, Constantine taunted me with having… had her. But when we brought her back to the infirmary and Abigail began healing her, I saw some evidence of it. Seeing it is very different from merely hearing about it.”

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