Page 28 of Bride of the Black Dragon
“Your scar…” I say and put out a hand to touch the side of his face…but then I draw back, fearing he might not want me to.
“My eye couldn’t grow back—it’s more complex than an ear, I guess,” he said. “It’s one reason my Drake is always on display—he sees for me on the left side because I cannot. But he didn’t come out all at once, so for a while I was blind on that side.” He shakes his head. “I remember lying on the cold stone floor, bleeding and crying, hating my mother for not paying the ransom…wishing I was dead so it would just be over.”
“Oh, Xaren…” I can’t keep the tears back any longer. The image of him as a boy lying in the dark, feeling so alone and abandoned twists my heart. My tears roll off my cheeks and fall like rain unheeded.
His back twitches.
“Are you crying for me, little dove?” he asks, and his voice is dull. “Don’t bother—it was a long time ago.”
“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was—it still hurts you,” I protest. “I can’t understand why your mother would refuse to pay the ransom and save you!”
“She wanted my Drake to come out, I suspect,” he says. “And if it didn’t come out, why, then she was rid of me—rid of a useless son who had no Drake, which was what she thought I was.” He shakes his head. “Dorian was always her favorite. Anyway, she got her wish about my Drake. When they?—”
He stops abruptly.
“When they what?” I’m not sure I want to know.
It seems Xaren doesn’t want to tell me, either.
“Never mind,” he says in a low voice. “They did things that broke me. They took…took things I wasn’t ready to give to anyone.”
I suddenly remember Tanzy’s story of how he beat the stable boys who were trying to rape the milkmaid. And then I think of how he’s refused to take me when I didn’t really want him to. Could it be that the kidnappers did to him what I saw Henri doing to Dorian? Only against his will?
The thought is horrifying…yet all too plausible. If that was done to Xaren, no wonder he hates rapists. More tears fall from my eyes as I think of what he endured. But I have to keep him talking—I feel like he needs to get the whole sordid incident out in the open.
“So…” I say softly. “So they hurt you and…and your Drake finally came out?”
He nods.
“I Shifted for the first time and ripped them all to shreds. Then I burned the remains to a fucking crisp.” There’s a note of grim satisfaction in his voice.
“I don’t blame you!” I exclaim. “I’m glad you were able to free yourself—no thanks to your family! They abandoned you.”
“Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Which is why I flew home and tried to burn down the Citadel,” he says blandly.
I suck in a breath.
“You did?”
He nods.
“If my Drake had been bigger, I would have succeeded. But he hadn’t gotten his growth yet either. My Uncle was still alive then. He Shifted into his own Drake—which was many times larger—and forced me to stop.”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d burned it to the ground!” I say fiercely. “Your mother and family betrayed you! Of course you wanted vengeance!”
He gives a rumbling laugh and looks over his shoulder at me.
“Bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?”
“I’m angry!” I say, clenching my fists. “At the way you were treated—it’s wrong. It’s not normal to be that way with your child. My mother and father would have done anything to get me back in that situation.”
“Then you’re lucky, little dove.” He sighs. “At any rate, they used it as an excuse to put my brother in my place. That’s how Dorian came to be the Crown Prince—not that I really care.”
“He’s not going to make a very good King,” I remark. “He’s too spoiled.”
“And I would?” Xaren barks a laugh. “I tried to burn the Royal Citadel to the ground!”
“Because you were young and angry—and you had a right to be angry,” I emphasize. It feels to me like everyone has blamed him all his life for what he did—I want him to know he had a right to try and seek justice for himself. I would have done the same in his place.
