~…How can I forgive what you've withheld from me all these years?~
Rhys's pipe had gone out. He didn't notice until he drew on it and tasted nothing but cold ash.
Maela's words landed on him like a lash across his back. A back that already held many old wounds. His father had warned him that these secrets couldn't be shared, even with his own wife. Rhys's own mother had never known the truth of the family's origins, and that had pained his father deeply.
He could still hear his father's voice, rough with age and salt air, on the night he'd first escorted Rhys into the dark, briny caves that held the family's most carefully guarded secrets.
"Not your friends. Not your knights. Not even your wife, Rhys," his father had said. "Your mother never knew, and I've had to love her across that silence for thirty years. It's the price we pay to keep the family alive. One day, you'll pay it too."
