XXIX

I jerked away from Isaac, needing out of his head. I was all too familiar with the memories he showed me, and I didn’t need the additional pain of an alternative perspective.

“H-how?” I choked.

Isaac’s touch felt foreign, but oh so familiar. As if I had always known it. Hands drifted from cupping my cheeks, falling down to my shoulders. His shirt had slipped over my petite frame, leaving one shoulder bare, and one hand drifted over my shoulder blade, finding my birthmark there.

He looked down on me with golden eyes. Golden eyes that if I thought hard enough, I had always known were there. Always hiding just outside my periphery, barely out of reach. But thinking hard enough to find them required I wade through too much pain to reach that safe place.

“I’ve always known, Princess,” he whispered. “Your mother knew before you were born that your father had ill will, and she had me give you a staking mark as soon as she realized…”

I nodded, gulping down air I so desperately needed.