Page 5 of Microburst

Can we heal from this?I didn’t think so, but I agreed with her that I couldn’t stop now.

“All I ever wanted was Rhys, and I want to make him happy, but even if I can’t stand to look at Sagan, she’s still my daughter. She’s still the baby I carried and gave life to. I can’t betray her. I can’t just replace her like he wants. And even worse, what if it happens again?

“He’ll leave me. He’ll divorce me or give in to the elders’ demands and take a consort or another mate to have a male heir. I would leave if he did that anyways. It was the only time I told Rhys no for anything. I won’t share him. I can’t. I gave up everything to be with him—I can’t live knowing he shares another woman’s bed.”

The inconsistencies gave me pause. I raced through my mother’s words, detached from my own emotions as I tried to make sense ofheremotions because clearly this was all coming from her upset.

It was a few pages in that I got the answer and what broke my soul.

“Some days I hate my dragon for not letting me get pregnant again. Rhys would love me like he used to and we could forget Sagan ever happened—let her live her life as a royal who abdicated or something—find any other reason she couldn’t be his heir other than the truth. It’s all her fault. The gods and my dragon’s fault I suffer like this.”

Apparently, I hated myself as much as my mother did, because I kept reading and found out my father never had any intention of ever letting me take the throne. The exact opposite, and he wasadamantthat I never become queen. Mother had asked him why he bothered training me as his heir and wasting time teaching me if it was never going to happen.

His response?

“She’s all you and the gods have given me, and it would be a bigger embarrassment if she was an idiot along with being a monster.”

I burst out laughing when I read that.Uglylaughing that I knew wasn’t sane sounding.

And then I lost my mind, tearing through mymother’sbookshelves to find all the journals. I opened every fucking book and checked for a language my father couldn’t read to hide her secrets, her lies that she was trying to get pregnant with my replacement knowing her dragon wouldn’t let her.

“You lied to both of us and the whole world, you fucking bitch,” I seethed as I found another one. “Proud of me? Fuck you. You were the monster. Both of you. I was yourchild!”

There were dozens, and I would read every fucking word and kill any love, any family bond with them. All of them.

I have no family. Not anymore.

“It’s not anyone else’s fault,”Iris argued.

They’re all to blame for not seeing this! Seeing what was done to me and letting it happen!

My dragons argued, but I wouldn’t hear it. I was going to grab a bag of hers, but I didn’t want to touch anything else, just the books I needed. And even if I hated to have them in my suite, I couldn’t stay in their space any longer.

I carried the first stack out of there, ignoring the guard who watched me with confusion. Then I brought a bag from my room—my room that had almostnothingbecause I was broke because of them and grabbed the rest. I left the tray outside the door and asked the guard to please call for it to be picked up, apologizing for that.

But honestly, I didn’t fucking care… About anything really.

The Khirriln wine was in my suite and I swore a bit that there were only three cases as I unloaded the stacks of journals. I would need a lot more than that to deal with all of this bullshit.

I opened a bottle and poured a glass before laying out all of the journals and looking inside the covers. I chuffed as I got annoyed over something that most would probably think stupid.

“You couldn’t like fucking date them or number them, you stupid bitch? Anything you could handle,Mother?” I snorted. “And I’m the disappointment? Fuck you. Seriously, just—fuck you both.”

I picked up a random one then and sat to read it while drinking and scanned it for more about me. I could go back and get the gossip or even more about her family later.

In that moment, I wanted to know how badly my parents hated me. It couldn’t get any worse, right?

Oh no, it could.

On top ofeverything else, my parents were grossed out by how “childlike” my mystic dragon could be, humiliated when Father’s siblings made comments that she seemed to be developing slowly.

“Not my fault!”Eloise sobbed in my head.“Never let out! They hid me. Never—only cared about Iris. People only like Iris!”

All three of us broke down crying and I knew it had been all lies. Iknewit couldn’t have just been my parents.

I picked up my phone, not caring how many drinks I’d had, not caring about anything else but Eloise. For once, all that mattered was her.

“What’s wrong?” Benson—the head of the Queen’s Guard—answered. I didn’t call him to chat. I messaged him if I needed something. Calls were for emergencies, so I couldn’t even blame him.