“Would we not fair better if he was dead?” Xirin asked. His steady gaze was trained on you, as though watching for a specific reaction.

He wasn’t just watching to see how you’d react, though, he believed what he said. If his father’s bastard son died, Ailea’s—his older sister—position as the heir wouldn’t be threatened. Lathael was a hindrance. Xirin hardly cared to know the bastard’s name.

Whether Lathael was a product of an affair or if it happened prior to your marriage to Aiwin, Xirin didn’t care. He existed and he needed to be dealt with.

Xirin was not foolish enough to believe you had no regrets when you married Aiwin, and then had three children with him, Xirin included. You were human, your home was Odara, not Vesta, surrounded by elves who likely hated you. The marriage had been for peace, and that had hardly mattered now. Your younger brother, Xior, was dead, and his family had been killed in a coup years later. Odara, under the reign of the usurper king, was preparing to launch another war against Vesta. Everything you had sacrificed had been in vain.

“His Majesty must already have a plan,” he continued. Xirin was uncertain if you’d outright mention what Aiwin intended to do if he asked. “Surely he agrees Lathael cannot live.”

Xirin had begun calling Aiwin by his title the same day he realized he would never be made heir. He was younger then, with dreams of being king. He studied day and night, learned to master the sword, but Aiwin had always preferred Ailea to him or Kelas, their youngest brother. Xirin gave up on being named heir, and two years later Ailea was.

His loyalty to Ailea was absolute, truly, but his fatuous ambition of finally catching his father’s eye had gone up in smoke.

Like the rest of his siblings, Xirin was closer to you. Aiwin had his duty as king, but you were merely regarded as his spouse. It was you they all spent time with. It was you who they all preferred. You felt like an actual parent. Aiwin was his king before he was Xirin’s father.