Dante did not keep secrets from his father.

It wasn’t because he loved him, but he respected Aurelius more than anyone else. Before Aurelius killed off the previous would-be-boy-king, before Aurelius took the crown for himself, before Dante became heir of Odara, he had simply been his father.

But he’d been a child then, nothing more than a boy who couldn’t see the hunger in his father’s eyes. He never would’ve thought Aurelius would find an Elven god to help him take the throne.

Aurelius never treated him poorly. When his mother abandoned him with nothing more than her necklace, his father took him in without complaint.

He knew his father loved him, as most fathers love their sons, but it was empty, obligation.

The constant urge to be loved, to be wanted for something other than shared blood, had followed him from childhood to adulthood.

Perhaps that was why he had taken such an interest in you: the child of the man his father had slayed.

He remembered Cassius, your father, the rebel leader that had nearly had Aurelius’ head. He remembered Cassius’ body strung up on display as a warning when he’d failed.

Dante did not keep secrets from his father, but he did not tell him how he’d emptied his stomach later that night.

When a soldier of Aurelius’ had caught you near the border of Vesta—the Elven kingdom—claiming you to be a rebel spy, Dante should have turned you in. Instead he’d taken you for himself. His father would kill you, but he didn’t want you dead. He didn’t know what he wanted at all.

He knew you were human, you had a twin sister named Devoria and a younger brother named Roan. You were part of the rebellion in Odara against his father. And now you were being nursed back to health in a cabin a ways from the capital. You couldn’t run away with the wound. Whoever had stabbed you through the middle had meant to kill you.

“It’s infected,” he said, though you’d yet to give any reply. “Put the blanket between your teeth. This will burn.” He uncorked the bottle of alcohol.