I nod and try my best to think through the right thing to say. I want her to like me. I want her to trust me, but the trust we had is something that was built up over a lifetime. And I’m just a stranger in a kingdom of strangers to her.
“Have you heard anything about the king?” I ask instead.
“Careful,” Malace whispers.
Shit. I have to be cautious what I say to Ivy, but I also have to be cautious what I say in front of Malace.
“Only that he’s very accepting. Especially to, you know, people who never really felt like they belonged.”
My stomach drops then.
“You... you didn’t feel like you belong?”
Ivy was always the pretty one. The kind one. The one everyone liked.
“I just never really felt like I fit, I guess. My life wasn’t terrible I just—I didn’t fit in as who I really was. I felt fake. My parents worked a lot. We didn’t connect. I felt... I felt alone. Isolated. Even when I was surrounded by people. I just wanted that family that would listen when I told them something was wrong.”
My heart joins my stomach in a pit that has been dug.
She felt alone.
How did I not know that she felt like that?
“Did—did you have any siblings?”
A smile lights up her face, but it’s interrupted. Confusion seeps into her big blue eyes like a fog is pushing out the light. There’s a lost look in the depths of her gaze that sinks into my soul itself.
“No. I didn’t.”
Rage rips through me.
He fucking erased me! He made her feel alone. He isolated her and made her feel like she had no one.
Or did he?
What if I never realized just how much pain my sister hid behind her pleasant smiles?
I swallow that thought down and try not to let it show.
What if Leavon didn’t isolate her? What if I did?
“I see,” I say instead.
How do I connect us? How do I form a lifelong bond? How do I tell her not to trust him without telling her not to trust him?
“When I was sixteen, I had my first real boyfriend.”
I feel her interest watching me. As well as Malace’s.
I try my best to ignore them both and say what I know needs to be said.
“I’m so bad at picking men.” My laughter sways, but it’s empty. It’s meant to be funny, and most people usually laugh it off. But... it’s not funny. It’s my life. And it’s shit. “Even at sixteen years old, I thought he was the one. The most amazing guy I’d ever be lucky enough to say was mine.”
But he wasn’t mine. Not really.
“He cheated on me. For months. With everyone. My friends. My enemies. Ev-ery-one.”
“What an asshole,” Ivy whispers.