PRESENT DAY•••
[Violet]
My lips pressed together after Alarich explained his connection to Hilary. She was his mother.
As impossible as it sounded, I believed him.
He didn’t say it with pride or bitterness, just a quiet, matter-of-fact resignation that made it clear this wasn’t a theory. It was a truth he’d lived with.
But if he was Hilary’s son and Fenrick was my father—didn’t that make me both his half sister and niece?
I almost gagged.
What kind of twisted, rotting tree did our family line branch from? And all of it could be traced back to Hilary.
She was the root, the cause and the curse.
It wasn’t Alarich’s fault he’d been born into that nightmare. Maybe he didn’t even know he was being used—though deep down, I suspected he did. Maybe a part of him still clung to the illus
