A CHEAT?

LYRA’s POV.

I don’t remember leaving the gardens.

One moment, I was standing beneath the moonlight, watching Kael hold the little girl against his chest as though she were the most precious thing in his world.

Next, I was inside my chambers. The door closed behind me with a soft click, but the sound felt deafening.

I stood there for several seconds, staring at nothing.

Father.

The word wouldn’t leave my head. Neither would the way she had run into his arms, the way Kael had caught her without hesitation, the way his entire face had changed when he looked at her.

I had never seen that expression on his face before.

Not even when he looked at me.

My throat tightened.

My hands shook as I gripped my silk robes, trying to ground myself, but the world felt like it was dissolving around me. I turned away from the door and walked toward my bed, but my legs suddenly felt too weak to carry me. I sank into the edge, my hands trembling in my lap.

A daughter.

Kael had a daughter.

My eyes burned. No. There had to be an explanation.

There had to be.

But the questions came faster than I could push them away. Who was her mother?

I closed my eyes. Did he love her?

My chest tightened painfully. When did it happen? I swallowed hard. The girl looked around seven, perhaps eight.

Eight years. The same amount of time I had been gone.

My breathing stopped. Slowly, I opened my eyes.

No.

I shook my head immediately. That couldn’t be it.

Could it? If she were truly eight years old, then..::

My fingers curled into the fabric of my dress. She could have been born before I left. The thought struck me so violently that I felt as though someone had driven a blade between my ribs.

Before I left?

I couldn’t breathe.

Was that possible?

Had Kael already been with another woman while he was still mine? While I was still his?

My stomach twisted.

I remembered him from eight years ago, his hands moved around my waist. His mouth against mine. The way he used to look at me was as though there was no other woman in the world.

The promises he’d whispered against my skin. The nights when I had fallen asleep in his arms believing I had finally found the one place I belonged.

My eyes filled with tears.

Had all of that been a lie?

“No.”

The word escaped my lips, barely audible. I pressed a trembling hand against my chest. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t.

But what other explanation was there?

If that little girl was his daughter, then somewhere in those years there had been another woman, or maybe the woman was still here? Who was she? A woman who had shared his bed.

A woman who had touched him. A woman who had received the parts of him I once believed belonged only to me. I want to leave.

My chest was hurting from the amount of panic

My eyes squeezed shut. A sob tore through my throat.

I hated myself for caring. I had spent eight years telling myself that Kael no longer mattered, that whatever we had was dead. That I had buried the girl who loved him beneath years of discipline, prayer, blood, and silence.

But apparently, I had lied to myself, because the thought of another woman loving him hurt. And the thought of him loving another woman broke my already broken heart into splinters.

It hurt so badly I could barely breathe. I slid backward onto the bed and curled into my side, pressing my knees against my chest.

“Why?”

The question came out broken, I stared toward the ceiling, but my vision was already blurred with tears.

“Why would you bring me back here? Why would you make it a must for me to come back here?”’ My voice cracked.

“Why would you make me see him again?” Silence answered me.

Only the faint sound of the wind moving through the trees outside reached my chamber. I looked toward the window.

The moon hung high in the sky. The same moon I had prayed beneath for years. The same moon that had watched me leave Silver Crest with nothing but a broken heart and blood on my hands that was never mine.

I pushed myself upright.

“Was this your plan?”

My tears spilled freely now. “Was this what you wanted?” My voice trembled as I stared at the moon. “I obeyed you, I did everything you asked for and yet, you still subject me to this amount of hurt?”

I had spent years serving her, years learning, years healing people who came to me with wounds I couldn’t even understand, I had given up everything, including myself.

“Then why him? Why do you keep putting me in his path? He hates me for crying out loud.” The memories came rushing back, the hatred in his eyes.

I lowered my head into my hands. “Does he love her mother? Does he love the mother of his child? How am I supposed to endure this pain, Moon Goddess?”

I didn’t want an answer, but my mind gave me one anyway. Maybe he had.

Maybe after I left, he found someone else. Maybe he had looked at another woman the way he once looked at me, maybe he had held her the way he held Freya. Maybe he had smiled at her or whispered her name in the darkness. Or maybe he had done that thing he did anytime he was inside me, or maybe he had moaned her name.

Maybe—

I stopped myself. I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t torture myself with things I didn’t know. But one thought remained.

Was he cheating on me?

My heart shattered with the possibility. I pressed my palm against my mouth, trying to silence the sobs. If Freya were eight…

Then perhaps the betrayal had happened before everything.

“Just let me go, I don’t want to be here anymore. Let me out of this bond, please. It hurts.” I cried as the realization dawned on me.

“I don’t want to want him anymore.”

Because somewhere beneath all the anger and betrayal, beneath everything that had happened between us, there was still a part of me that wanted to run back into his arms.

And that frightened me more than anything.

I needed to find out if he cheated on me, and I will.