Page 272 of Venom Sweeter than Honey
I shake my head. “Whoareyou? If all this time you actually wanted a daughter, why were you never there?”
My father’s smile dissolves like ash in the wind.
“Your mother and I had a great many differences, and she couldn’t appreciate my aspirations to grow my empire—so thatone day, you, and all the generations to come after you, might be able to live and rule beyond this city beneath the sea.”
He pauses, features giving way to resignation.
“I will not try to deceive you into believing that she had no just reason for keeping you from me. From here, your home. She feared that I would corrupt you. Inspire you to be... like me.”
His throat dips as his eyes briefly cast over Levi, Azrael, and Lazarus.
“... A monster.”
When his gaze returns to mine, there’s a brief flash of vulnerability.
“Until her ascension, I tried with all my powers of persuasion to convince her to come back home to me. To convince her that this was the best place for both of you but no matter what I did to make Sinsól more appealing to her, nor what words, platitudes, promises, and gifts I gave, it made no difference. Not when I was waging a war, and I was incapable of being the male she wanted me to be.”
His gaze grows distant as if his mind is traversing memories. Painful ones if the grim look on his face is anything to go by.
“We were never right for each other... I will never understand why Akashbound our souls together; even if there isn’t another soul in existence I’d desire.”
His brows knit together as his gaze returns to mine. “I loved your mother more than life itself. It broke me when she left with you. It’s why I waged warabovein the first place.”
The floor beneath my very feet seems to tilt at his words. My features slacken with shock.“What?”
“Your mother left for many reasons, but perhaps most undeniably was that she was not meant to live her life beneath the sea, away from the sun and the forest. Sinsól was once submerged underwater with only the mer, selkies, and other sea-dwelling people as its citizens. After I met her, naturally, Iwanted to take her home with me. I had to, after all, the sea is my domain.”
I have almost no historical knowledge of Sinsól. I had denied my curiosities and predilections so that I could continue to ignore the half of me that felt like a wound that refused to close—but I do know that, once upon a time, Sinsól was only inhabited by mer-folk and the like.
The realization that he changed it forhermakes me feel like I’m standing on a fault line threatening to split the ground beneath me and swallow me.
He draws in a deep breath, expression deflated. “She wanted trees and flowers, so I filled my city with flora like she’d never seen. Welcomed beings from land to seek refuge so that she might feel more at home.”
His features tighten. “None of it worked... So I followed her above.” His features contort into a scowl as if tasting something putrid. “To live in Narudi.”
He pauses for a moment before he gives a mirthless chuckle. “I was still so naive then.”
It’s nigh impossible for me to imagine my father as anything but the cruel king that he is, much lessnaive.
“The ways above were more corrupt than anything I could have imagined or prepared myself for..."
My father’s eyes glint; like a blade catching lunar light. “It requires a certain... ruthlessness to survive there..." His voice takes on a bitter note at his next admission. “Andpearlsaren’t exactly a form of currency.”
I shake my head. “But you said I was born here.”
His gaze slides back to mine. “You were.”
“So she came back with you eventually.”
He heaves a sigh. “Not of her own free will. At least not at first. She hated me for a time... but she eventually forgave me.”
An echo of my mother’s words are a whisper in the back of my mind. Words that I was too young to understand at the time, but that had forever been imprinted in my mind.
“Nothing I do is for him..."
“Everything I do is to protect you.”
“Your father is my soulbound. I couldn’t be with anyone else even if I tried.”
