"I assume now you know what to tell him, right?"
What to tell him?
What an endlessly hollow question. What to tell a ten-year-old child about everything?
"I don't know—"
Arkai's tears finally fell.
He scoffed even as they came, bitter, self-mocking, and his words failed him, crumbling into nothing. His hand moved to cover his eyes, to hide, to disappear.
But Cecilia's hand shot out, catching his jaw, cupping it with a gentleness that cut through the darkness.
"What do I tell him, Cecilia?" His voice was a whisper, broken and raw. "Tell me. Tell me."
Her sea-glass eyes held his, steady as a lighthouse in a storm.
"That his mother loved her brother? That she called on him every month, heat-drunk, in front of his chamber door, begging to be taken?"
His voice cracked on the words, each one a blade.
"That his father took that chance to rape her? That he conceived him in violence?"
Another crack. Another wound.
