Chapter 82

Ellery

Ryker sighedand rolled onto his back. When he draped his arm over his forehead while staring at the ceiling, I was sure he was going to say we should return to hunting, get something to eat, or any number of things that meant he wouldn't have to talk about this.

Propping myself on my elbow, I gazed at the vein throbbing in his temple. This was the longest he'd gone without providing a distraction after our conversation turned to his father. While mentally prepared for him to say it was time to go and I'd have to crawl out from under the warm blanket, I was also hoping for an answer.

"My mother died when I was six," he said.

Sorrow for him clenched at my heart as I rested my hand on his chest. It devastated me when I lost my father. I would have given anything for more years with him, but at least I was grown when it happened. I couldn't imagine losing my mother so young.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"It was centuries ago, but I remember her well. She was beautiful and kind, and she loved me very much. I remember her hugs, kisses, and vows of love while she cradled me on her lap and read to me. And I loved her… so much."

The picture of him as a young boy, nestled in the arms of the woman who had loved him and who he'd adored, brought tears to my eyes. I blinked them away.

"She was the opposite of my father; I have no idea what she was doing with the man or how they came to have a child together. They never married, and I know he didn't love her; perhaps she loved him, but I was too young to know much about that.

"I only knew she loved me, and until I was six, I had little to do with my father. Those were the good days. After I turned six, my lightning bearer ability manifested, and he decided she was making me too soft. I've come to believe that when my power manifested, he realized he'd gotten what he wanted from her, a child who was a lightning bearer, and forced us apart. She was the one who had the genetic line with lightning bearers in it, not him. She tried to fight for me but lost."

Horror churned in my belly at this revelation. The duke had helped to do something horrific to Tempest, but separating Ryker from his mother was crueler.

"You were able to control lightning when you were six?"

It wasn't unheard of for someone to develop an ability that young, but because being a lightning bearer was such a powerful skill, it usually manifested later in life. Mine did.

He gave me a half-hearted smile as he twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. "I couldn't do much more than create sparks on my fingers until I was a teenager, but from the time I was six, everyone knew I possessed the ability."

"Amazing." When he tugged on my hair, trying to draw me closer, I realized he was trying to change the subject again. I wasn't going to let him. "Did your father kill her?"

Ryker eased up on my hair, though his attention remained on it as he ran his fingers through it. "No, a troll did that after he expelled her from our old castle. Standing in the window of my old bedroom, I watched his guards drag her out of there while she screamed for me. She was from a prominent family, but she was the only surviving member by then. She had no one to help her fight my father."

I was going to be sick or burst into tears, but I couldn't do either. He was finally opening up to me and would stop if he knew how much my heart broke for him and her.

Ryker had endured so much suffering at the hands of the ophidians, but I was beginning to realize that was nothing compared to what his father unleashed upon an innocent child. The more I learned of the duke, the more I hated him.

"I tried to get out of my room so I could run to her and be with her, but he'd ordered me locked inside. He kept me in there for a month," Ryker continued. "Before that month was up, I learned she'd died from one of the servants who brought me food.

"The servants weren't allowed to speak to me, but that woman braved my father's wrath to tell me. I think she couldn't take my cries for my mother anymore. I never saw her again, and for all I know, my father killed her too. I've always believed he paid the troll to kill my mother.

"That month wasn't the first time he locked me away. As I grew, I spent many days, weeks, and months in my room, a cell, or locked out of the castle. What he did throughout those years was unforgivable, but it helped me survive the ophidians without breaking. They didn't have a chance of hearing me scream after what my father did to me."

I closed my eyes as I swallowed the lump in my throat.

"Once my mother was gone, the best part of my life went with her," Ryker continued. "After that, I didn't know love; I only knew misery and beatings meant to make me a stronger, better man."

My gaze darted to the scars covering his chest as I recalled what he'd told me about some of them being from his past. "Your father scarred you."

"He was the first; I doubt he'll be the last."

My teeth ground together at those words. I would destroy anyone who tried to harm him again, but our inner scars were often far worse than our outer, and if I wasn't careful, I might inflict worse on him.

We hadn't exchanged any words of love or promises of forever, but he must care for me at least a little if he was telling me this. I doubted many others, outside him and his father, knew what had transpired between them.

He's revealing his secrets to me, and I harbor too many of them.

I should end this between us or tell him the truth about the Robber.

I bit my bottom lip as my head spun and my heart broke. I loved him. I didn't know when it happened, but it had. Somewhere along the way, I'd done the thing I'd vowed not to do… I'd lost my heart to Ryker Locke.

And since immortals only ever loved once, that meant he would always have it, even if he hated me. I didn't want to hurt him, but it might be inevitable.

What have I done?

There were so many answers to that question, but none were good.

"He stopped beating me on the day I stopped screaming. I was nineteen, and it was the worst beating he unleashed on me, but I didn't scream. I stared at that fucker the entire time and scared the shit out of him by doing so.

"It was the last time he touched me with a whip. My father spent years torturing me in an attempt to break me. He was determined to bend me to his will and make me submit. He beat me because, as a lightning bearer, I was stronger than him and he hated it, but he didn't realize that once he took my mother from me, he was never going to beat me into submission.

"He assumed separating us would be the start of him breaking me so he could mold me into his obedient little follower, but all it did was make it so I would never cave to him. So, I took his beatings, his abuse, his imprisonments, and his coldness, and I turned them into a hatred so deep it allowed me to withstand everything he ever did to me.

"When the wounds the ophidians inflicted on me healed, my father's scars also returned to mix with the newly created ones. I don't know why since the ophidians took a lot of my skin off… many times, but they came back. I can only assume they run so deep that they're seared into me. They're forever a part of me."

I knew Ryker didn't want them, but I couldn't stop my tears from spilling over to trail down my cheeks. Lifting my hand, I went to wipe them away, but he did so first.

"It was centuries ago, Ellery. I've moved on since then."

My lower lip trembled as I whispered, "That doesn't make it better."

"Maybe not, but time has a way of changing things, and life has a way of throwing little surprises at you that make it better. You're one of those surprises."

My eyes closed as love and self-hatred battered me. Would he say such things if he knew the truth about the Hooded Robber?

No, he wouldn't.