Page 2 of The Royal Flame
“I’ll see you later tonight,” I assure River as I turn around. “Are you okay, though?”
He hesitates. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I… I’ll talk to you when we’re together again. I don’t want to stress you out about this.” He pauses as a man says something to him in the background. “I have to go. I’ll remove you from the missing person’s list for now, but if I don’t see you later tonight, I’m putting you back on it.”
With my lips smashed together, I nod. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you soon.” With that, he hangs up.
A second later, Grey enters the room with a piece of paper in his hand.
“Maddy, can we sit down and talk?” he asks, gesturing toward the sofa.
I eye him over, trying to determine if I look like him. We have the same eyes and hair color, but that doesn’t mean much. Maybe he’s wrong about this.
“Sure.” I take a seat.
He sits across from me and props his foot up onto his knee. “I got the results.” The way he’s looking at me reveals what he’s about to say.
Because he’s looking at me in disbelief, as if I’m a goddamn unicorn.
Or his long-lost daughter.
“The results for me and you are a match,” he tells me with a slight tremble in his voice. “You’re my daughter, Maddison.”
To say I’m surprised would be the understatement of eternity. Sure, I suspected that this could happen. But it also seemed so implausible.
It also leaves me feeling lost and confused, questions flooding me like a goddamn canal in a pouring rainstorm.
“I don’t understand,” I mutter. “If that’s true, then… Why in the hell did you and my Aunt Ellie let believe those abusive assholes that raised me were my parents.”
He blinks in shock. “I didn’t know you existed. If I had, I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”
“It still doesn’t excuse it,” I snap, my voice quivering with rage. “Even if you didn’t know… and my aunt Ellie did…” I shake my head furiously. “Why did my aunt Ellie lie to me?”
“To protect you,” he explains. “I don’t know why she kept you from me, but I do know that…” He swallows audibly. “Your aunt Ellie is an Everford.”
I gape at him, “But that still doesn’t explain why it’d be better if my mother—Evalynn raised me. She’s an Everford, too.”
He shakes his head. “No, Ellie and Evalynn are half-sisters. Evalynn doesn’t know this. Their mother—your grandmother had an affair. Ellie accidentally discovered this when she was eighteen—close to the time we met. She was looking into it then, trying to figure out how the Everford bloodline still existed when everyone believed it to be extinct, but I’m not sure if she ever found answers—her real father had already passed away by the time she found all of this out.”
Is that why she’s gone MIA? Was she looking into this, and something terrible happened to her? Or did she have to lay low because someone discovered her real identity?
“Do you know where Ellie is?” he asks, measuring my reaction closely.
I shake my head. “No. She sent me this message saying that I needed to be careful and told me that I wouldn’t be able to get a hold of her for a while. And I haven’t been able to.” I fall silent, attempting to sort through my thoughts. “I still don’t understand why you suspected I was your daughter. I know you thought I looked like Ellie, but she’s also related to Evalynn. And even if you wondered if I was her daughter, why would you assume you were the father?”
Sadness floods his features. “This isn’t something I’m proud of, but when Ellie and I were secretly dating, she told me she was pregnant.” He stares down at his hands, fiddling with a ring on his finger. “I told her I couldn’t be a father—I was already betrothed to another woman. And while I didn’t love this woman I was betrothed to, going against my family like that felt… ominous, I guess.”
The gravity of his words presses against my chest—they sound similar to mine and River’s situation.
“We didn’t talk for a few weeks, and I hated every second of it, and I was plagued by guilt. But when I finally did get a hold of her again, she told me… She told me she lied aboutbeing pregnant because she was trying to get me to marry her. I’ve always had doubt that she was being truthful. I’ve wondered if she told me that because she no longer trusted me with the knowledge that her—and you—were an Everford. And she had every right to. I betrayed her.” A slow exhale eases from his mouth, and he lifts his gaze to mine. “But when I saw you in the grocery store, you looked so much like her.” He pauses. “And you look like me. I can see so much of myself in you. You have my nose and my eyes.”
I instinctively touch my nose but then lower my hand. “I don’t know how to feel about this. It’s a lot to process.” I bounce my knee up and down. “I think I need to go. I’m not sure what you want from me, but I need time to think about this and figure stuff out.”
“I understand that. I really do. And the reality is that until we can get more answers and find Ellie, we need to keep this as quiet as possible.” He leans forward and rests his arms on his knees. “However, I need to ensure you stay safe, so I’d like one of my bodyguards to watch you once you return to the academy. Based on rumors, classes start again on Monday. I have a house near the academy, and I’ll have Trystan, my best bodyguard, stationed there. He’ll do sporadic checkups on the perimeter of the academy.”
