“My mother tried to convince my father that she hadn’t cheated on him with another male. I heard them arguing all the time over the coming weeks. They would fall silent whenever they saw me, and would turn away, neither of them willing to listen to me. In the end, they made me remain in my quarters. I lost everything. My family turned their backs on me one by one, shunning me. My father probably ordered it.”
His gaze roamed back to the canopy above them.
Elissa’s heart went out to him. She couldn’t imagine how he must have felt. Just a boy, scared and uncertain, unsure of what he was and what his markings meant, mistreated by those he loved and relied upon. He had gone from being the centre of his parents’ world to an object of hate and disgust. He had suffered so much, had been treated so poorly, dejected and disgraced, left to struggle with the changes happening in him alone when someone should have been there to hold him and guide him, to love him.
“My father refused to believe my mother because she couldn’t offer solid proof that she hadn’t cheated on him. They argued about me for months, growing more and more distant from each other, and from me. My father moved into the other wing of the mansion, as far from my mother as he could get. He refused to speak to her or me.”
He tensed and stared in silence at the canopy, his eyes blank, as though he was miles away from her. What pain was he reliving now? Tears slipped down his temple into his sandy hair and Elissa couldn’t stop herself anymore. She moved closer to him, rolling so her chest pressed against the side of his torso, and stroked his hair with her left hand while retaining her grip on his right.
His eyes dropped to her and he looked more lost and broken than she had ever seen him.
His voice cracked as he spoke. “My final memory of my mother is of her embracing the sun.”
He swallowed hard and didn’t look as though he could continue. Struggle shone in his eyes and flickered across his face, twisting his handsome visage into a pained grimace. She stroked his hair, gently running her fingers over the tousled sandy spikes, trying to give him some peace in the midst of so much suffering. She wished she had never asked him why he had chosen to call himself Payne or why he felt he deserved to suffer now. She had never meant to inflict this hurt upon him.
It pained her to see her strong, powerful male so hurt and weak, suffering and vulnerable, wrestling with his past and his feelings. It was little wonder he despised his incubus side and couldn’t accept it, and sought pain as a remedy to his desires. He had probably never stopped hurting in the centuries that had likely passed since he had been shunned as a boy. He carried his pain with him, an eternal torment, a poison that bred doubt in his mind, making him believe that no one could feel anything positive towards him. His family had instilled in him a belief that no one could ever love him as he was because he was an abomination, something that should be detested and scorned, not cherished and adored.
She could see that now, and she hated them for it. She wanted to seek out his family and punish them all for the pain that they had inflicted upon an innocent, warping his perspective of the world and causing him to despise himself and his mixed blood.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “I hadn’t been able to sleep and had felt her pause outside my room before moving on down the hallway. I followed her down to the entrance hall and found her standing near the double doors. She looked at me with so much pain in her eyes, so much misery, and then threw open the doors to the garden and let the sunlight stream over her.” His voice hitched and cracked again, and he ground his teeth, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes and his eyebrows knitting tightly. “I tried to stop her but I failed. I was too young. My hands caught fire. I wanted to die in her place... if I couldn’t have that... then I wanted to die with her.”
Tears filled Elissa’s eyes and she sniffed them back, her heart breaking for him. He had clearly adored his mother as much as he had said, and felt responsible for her decision to commit suicide. She stroked his cheek, his cool skin damp with tears beneath her fingers. He had suffered so much because of his mixed genes. She had never anticipated, had never dreamed, that he had been through so much. It was little wonder that he hated his incubus side now and wanted nothing to do with it. She couldn’t blame him for it either. It had stripped away all that he loved and had cherished, and something told Elissa that his suffering hadn’t ended at his mother’s death.
“The next thing I remember is waking in a dark room, in my parents’ bed. I thought perhaps someone had saved my mother and I was resting with her. When my vision cleared, I saw my father lying beside me, his arms swathed in bloodstained bandages.” He closed his eyes again and pinched the bridge of his nose. She gave him a moment to gather himself and brushed her fingers over his hair, letting him know that she was still there for him. “I was covered in bandages too. Every inch of me... all of them stained crimson. I wanted to cry but I stifled my pain and loss. When my father stirred, I expected him to make me leave. Instead, he drew me to him and told me that he had never meant for this to happen. I hated him.”