LAST CHAPTER:

There was exactly one truth that Regina knew.

One truth that had bound every single potential murderer that had met with Regina in these darkened tunnels of death.

“Do not tell me,” said Regina, resigned to the absurdity of her existence. “You are here because you have a secret plan to falsify my death and smuggle me out of the country.”

~♦♥♦~

The one thing about having parents who Regina had thought either planned to murder her or sell her was that she had no desire to make them proud of her.

Therefore, Regina was more horrified than pleased when she saw the wide smile slowly spread across her father’s face.

“I knew,” he said triumphantly, “that our girl got her perception from me. We did not even have to draw her a large chart with arrows before she realized what we were planning.”

Based on how many things Regina had recently gotten wrong about her life, Regina was terrified that she did have the perception of her father, who apparently had not realized that Regina did not wish to be compared to him.

None of this made sense.

Regina had the laces in her hand from her father’s obvious attempt at caring for her and none of it made sense.

Regina had been there.

Regina had been there when Ava died and her parents had expressed neither sorrow nor anger.

Regina had been there when her parents had nodded as the elders had talked about how Ava was useless and worthless and her death was a tragic but happy accident.

Regina had been there when her parents covered up the obvious murder of their eldest daughter.

So how did they dare act as though they cared for her?

Both rage and confusion warred inside Regina as she stared first at her father and then at her mother.

“Why?” she asked, at a complete loss for an explanation. “Why would you bother to do such a thing?”

The way her parents stared at her in utter confusion and perhaps even betrayal made Regina angrier than she had ever been in her life.

“I spent years,” she said, fighting back tears of grief and rage, “trying to hide from you and everyone else in that house. Even as invisible as I was, people tried to murder me multiple times and you never stopped them. Never.”

Dimly, Regina could see something like horror dawning on her parents’ faces, but she could not stop.

She would not stop.

“I never had a moment of safety or rest,” she said. “I never knew if you would be one of the people who would kill me if I did not live to the Sheridan standards, even as my cousins died around me no matter how hard I tried to save them.”

A strange wounded sound came from her mother.

“I made myself invisible,” said Regina, “but I was already invisible to both of you… and I felt safer that way. Even if other people were trying to hurt or kill me, so long as it was not your faces that I saw handing me a cup of poison, I could pretend that maybe that would be your line. I could pretend that you might sell me, but that you would not murder me yourselves.”

Her father’s eyes were closed, and blood was dripping from his hand, so tightly were his nails pressed to his skin.

“I did not want,” said Regina, feeling as if she had opened a dam and all the toxic poison water of her past needed to rush out, “to think about how you never sought me out anyways. There was no need for me to hide because you were never there.”

“Gina,” said her mother, almost pleading.

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“NO!” Regina screamed. “No, you do not get to do this to me! You left me to die! You tried to keep your hands clean, so that all you had to do was stand back if they killed me! Just like with Ava-”

Regina’s mother snarled.

The sound was so wild and feral that Regina felt her words dry in her throat, even as she wondered if she had pushed her mother too far –

Then, to Regina’s surprise, she then saw her father touch her mother for the first time in years, perhaps since Regina herself was conceived.

Her father put his hand on her mother’s arm in a gesture of… solidarity, even as Regina was startled to see him blink back actual tears.

“Do you truly think,” her father said, and his voice sounded strangely hoarse, “that your mother and I were not affected by Ava’s death? Do you think that we were involved in her death? Do you think we have not spent every day of our life since cursing those blood-damned elders who murdered our daughter without warning?”

For as long as she had known her father, she had always thought him cold, remote, and uncaring of anything not inscribed in his company ledgers.

Yet his voice was full of years of grief when he said, “We could say or do nothing when those monsters killed Ava because you would have been next if we protested or showed our feelings!”

“The elders would have murdered you next if we did not cater to their whims,” her mother added, her tone mingling venom with her grief. “To them, it does not matter if we have built a fortune and children for them out of our magic and our bodies. We gave them everything they demanded from us, be it our youth or our freedom. However, when we asked them to allow Ava to live despite them considering her abilities useless–”

Her mother made a noise that was closer to a wounded animal than a human being.

Regina could not look away, could not turn her head from the raw pain on both her parents’ faces.

“The only reason we did not burn down the Sheridan manor and kill every last one of those thin-blooded bastards,” Regina’s father said, “was because we were afraid for you.”

“W-what…?” Regina said, her mind stuttering just as her tongue did. “Why would you – what made you –”

“Because we want you to live, you fool!” her mother hissed. “With Ava dead, you are all that we have… and we have done everything we can to save you from her fate!”

“Yes,” her father echoed, even as the hand he raised to his eyeglasses trembled. “Everything we have done for the last few years has been to get you away from our cursed family. We could not let them know we cared for you. My own father told us he killed Ava explicitly because we pleaded for her life. We had paid discreet monitors to ensure your safety since we had to minimize our contact with you until you were of age.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed before he continued. “Obviously that failed. We truly had no idea you were being harm-”

His voice broke off entirely and his shoulders shook even as Regina’s mother stepped in front of him, shielding him from Regina’s view.

“We had a plan,” Regina’s mother said flatly. “We had to make sure none of our weak blooded elders could control you even if you were married away.”

For a moment, Regina stood stock still, trying to make sense of her parents’ words.

Then suddenly, she realized what they truly meant.

“So you two,” she realized, even as her mind churned into nothingness, “are the reason why I, and not any other unmarried Sheridan woman, was married into the royal family. I tried my best to be as forgettable as possible, so it is not as though the elders would remember me over Anne or Elizabeth or Henrietta when it came to marrying a prince.”

“Yes,” her mother said, looking both pleased and sad. “We wanted you to marry into the royal family so that none of the Sheridan monsters could pressure you for favors later… or steal away your children if they should manifest magical powers.”

Regina’s eyes widened at that, even as her mother sighed.

“The elders can and have kidnapped the magical children of powerless cousins married outside of our family,” said her mother. “Even they occasionally worry about how few Sheridans survive to adulthood… not that they will stop murdering our children to help with the Sheridan family’s numbers.”

“We never wanted you to lose your children to the elders as we did,” Regina’s father added as he emerged from behind Regina’s mother. He looked completely exhausted. “After all, your mother and I know how… how painful that can be.”

Regina stared at both of her parents, as her entire life shifted and altered into meaninglessness.

She had spent so many years being afraid every moment of every day.

The two people in front of her had featured in more nightmares than she cared to recall.

It was possible still that they were lying to her, that this was part of some larger plan she could not quite understand.

Yet in the end, Regina realized that she was going to have to decide what kind of life she wanted to live for herself.

Fear was a useful companion, but Regina had to decide whether or not it would be the only guide for the life she lived.

Taking a deep breath and a deeper leap of faith, Regina asked, “Please, tell me more.”