POV Julian
I never really understood what it meant to "grow up in a family."
At home, there was no warmth, no safety, not even affection. Just muffled screams behind closed doors and the persistent smell of alcohol.
My father, Duke Frostvine, was a broken man long before I was born. A son of a bitch every time he drank. Alcohol made him violent, unpredictable. I saw him raise his hand to my mother more times than I could ever count. And me, useless kid that I was, I just stood there, unable to intervene because even I would get my beating afterward.
My mother…
For a long time, I blamed her for her weakness. Her resignation… I resented her for never protecting me, for never taking me in her arms to tell me everything would be okay.
Then I grew up… I understood she was a prisoner, just like me. Prisoner of a marriage she bitterly regretted, prisoner of a man she had learned to fear and not to love.
So our relationship became distant…
