ELRETH

Her rage boiled.

No wonder her father was furious. Her mother had been hiding people from him, training them to leave him, and never told him about it.

For twenty years.

It explained so much—why she was being stubborn, and he wasn't letting it go. He'd figured out that she'd essentially been working against him, and hiding it from him. Yes, yes, she could claim it had only really been in numbers in the past few years, but Elreth would have gambled that her brother would never have started this if her mother and Gahrye they hadn't already known how to do it. And that Gar had done it specifically because it threw shit at her father behind his back.

She wanted to bite something.

She wanted to scream.

She kept seeing Aaryn's caution, the concern in his eyes. She remembered how raw and emotional the stories from these disformed had been.

She could see now that she hadn't needed to worry about the disformed congregating together and rebelling. They weren't interested in revolution, Aaryn was right. He hadn't been lying.

They weren't going to rebel against the throne. But that was because they were poised for flight.

They were going to abandon it, instead.

Elreth began to trembling, but she clenched her hands into fists on the arms of the chair and forced herself to stay still.

She glared at her mother and brother, though.

Yet her mother met her eyes calmly—and with the caution that only a mother can.

Elreth reminded herself that being Queen outranked being Mom.

Didn't it?

"El," her mother said with a sigh, "We are not traitors because we mean it when we say, the equipment we give people, the skill and practice we provide them, is always, first and foremost at the pleasure of the King—or Queen."

"How could the King have called upon an asset he did not know existed?" she said through her teeth.

"Because his Queen knew, and she would have told him. But it has never been needed, so the former Queen allowed the people to live in peace."

"Peace?"

"Yes, peace. You could imagine the conflicts that would arise among the people if they were to suddenly learn that the people among them that some of them despised were suddenly in a position of power and influence over the Crown."

"I would think the disformed would want to see themselves in positions of power!"

"We do, but safely," Aaryn spoke in quickly. "Had it been needed, we would have given it to your father and at his use of it, immediately proven not only our worth, but our loyalty. Even the most vicious critics would have been unable to deny what we'd achieved. But people are rarely wise enough to value the answer to the problem they do not know exists."

"My father already crossed the traverse safely… twice!"

"And it almost killed him!" her mother cut in. "Which is precisely why we wanted to make sure he would never have to risk that again!"

"What do you mean it almost killed him?" Elreth spat. "He said—"

"He told you what you needed to hear as his child so you would not worry for him. But trust me, as his mate, I can tell you: the traverse is a danger to anyone. Your father would have done it again if there had been a need. But there wasn't. And he praises the Creator for that."

Elreth snorted and looked away. "We are moving off track. The issue is not the traverse itself, but that you have a secretly formed society, working in the shadows, developing a skill without the knowledge of the crown, and we are just supposed to trust you that if it were ever needed, you would just hand it over?!"

"Yes," Aaryn, Elia, and Gar said, all at the same time.

Elreth stared at each of them in turn. She didn't know what to say. Her mind spun—she couldn't imagine anything she would measure as important enough to be hidden from her father. And now her? "There has to be more to this than you are describing," she snarled through her teeth. "A simple crossing isn't—"

"Look, El, I told you I wasn't coming to this because I didn't want to work for you. But I realized that I was hurting other people by choosing that for my own pride, so I'm here and I showed up, and now you need to listen to my story," Gar blurted.

Elreth almost swallowed her tongue. Even Elia seemed shocked.

"Gladly," she said quietly. "I would gladly hear your story, Gar."

He nodded. "Then I'll tell it to you. But you have to promise me you won't tell Dad. And you have to promise to listen to the whole thing, and not get stuck on some detail. We can come back and answer questions about anything you want. But don't interrupt me, and don't start telling me all the ways I'm wrong before you hear the whole story."

Elreth ground her teeth, but she knew Gar wouldn't even start unless she agreed, so after one glance at Aaryn's fingers, where he was holding the sign for, 'Please' in the form of a submission to her will, she sighed. "Fine," she snapped. "I won't interrupt you, and I won't argue with you until you're done."

"Okay, then," Gar said and his face went strangely pale. Elia put her hand to her son's shoulder, and Elreth suddenly felt very isolated.

Why didn't her mother look at her with that kind of worry and concern?

But then she caught Aaryn's eye—and he had exactly the same look on his face. For her.

Something in her heart swelled, and her anger shrank.

She wasn't alone.

She never had to be alone again.

The thought made her lungs suddenly open so she could breathe again. She made a sign up on the spot, something they'd never had reason to sign before. Where in the past she had made the sign 'I admire you' by using two fingers to point back at herself, while making the sign of admiration with the other fist pressed against the back of the first hand, this time she made the sign for love with that second hand.

They'd never signed it before. But Aaryn's eyebrows popped up and she heard him take a deep breath.

"Okay," she said calmly. "Go ahead."