Page 33 of Judgment Day

The woman nodded, her eyes still full of caution. “With a C, not a K. It means—”

“Little dark one.” Or more literally,black.I was Grey, and he was black. It felt like a curse, and I hated Sadie for marking him with that darkness before he had the chance to be something different, something more.

She studied me briefly, then looked over at him. To a blind eye, her expression betrayed nothing. Her thoughts were her own. But I knew what she was doing. She was comparing him to me.

She peered up at me. “Come inside.”

She tried to sound composed, but I heard the naked emotion in her tone. She was worried. I saw it in her eyes. She’d been his caretaker, his friend, his mother for twelve years. And then I showed up, and she had no idea why I was here or what to expect from me.

Inside, the cottage was large, open and welcoming. An oversized chair and light brown sofa flanked a large, stone fireplace. In the open kitchen area, books were scattered across a round breakfast table. The whole place smelled like freshly baked tea bread that sat on the kitchen counter.

This was his home.My son grew up here. I drank it all in, suddenly worried that no amount of land or horses or fancy things would live up to the comfort of a real home.

Could I make my house a home?

For him, I would.

Ciaran took a seat in the chair. “Does Her Majesty know you’re here?”

“How do you think I found you?” I pointed to one side of the sofa. “May I?”

The woman nodded, then sat on the opposite side.

“How do you know the queen?” he asked.

I sat down, holding his stare. He was tall. He seemed tall, anyway. Not that I knew many twelve-year-old boys to compare him to. His face was strong and mature, not round and young as I’d expected. He wore gray shorts and a white polo, sophisticated for his age, proper for a young boy to wear around a country house in the middle of nowhere.

“I’ve known her for a very long time. Since she was your age,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Yes.” I considered my next words. “She was different then.” I missed that girl, the one I used to spoon-feed cranachan while we picnicked in the garden. I’d lick the cream off her lips, then dry fuck her against the stables.

“What’s your name?”

I didn’t blame him for having questions. I expected more than this, harder than this.

“Grey.”

He sat back in his chair, processed my answer, studied my face. “She talked about you once. She said I look just like you. The king told her to never say that again.”

She told him about me.It was a simple statement, but knowing she’d said it breathed new life into me. She’d told him he looked like me. She’d given him my name.

I wanted to tell him everything. He deserved the truth—all of it. So much had been taken from him already. I owed him the truth at least.

“Why do you think that is? That you look like me, I mean.”

He shrugged.

“Has anyone ever told you about your father?”

“Yes. They said he was in prison for doing bad things.” There was a hint of vulnerability in his voice, a splash of pain in his eyes—blue eyes, sad eyes,myeyes.

The woman at the other end of the sofa cleared her throat, as though he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to. They didn’t have to hide anything from me. I wasn’t a threat, regardless of what Sadie and Winston had made me out to be.

“Have you ever opened a fizzy drink and had the foam spill over the top and make a mess?”

He nodded, silent.

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