ALL SECRETS ARE DEEP. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets. But they never stayed buried, somehow they always had away of coming out into the light.
Even with that thought in his mind, Grayson couldn't figure out his feelings, a sensation of confusion and conflict. A son of a king? He wasn't a prince, he was far from it.
Grayson couldn't even imagine a life as a royal. That wasn't him, it would never be him. He was...angry. Dark. And no matter how hard he tried to feel safe in the world, he didn't. Never did he know what to do about it. To be a royal he will have to have control over himself, his demons. Something he never was capable of doing, instead of him controlling them, they controlled him instead.
Instead of waking up to a palace of beauty. He would wake up to another morning, fighting his demons that left him so tired the night before. He knew all too well that the devil was real. And he's not a little red man with horns and a tail. He was the man he most hated in the world. Grayson had experienced that at first hand himself, multiple time in his life. In waking life and in times of death.
"Damn you." Grayson spoke ever so softly under his breath. Marcel was vindictive, but he couldn't be that vindictive to cast a child away from that life, a life that would've been different.
King Gabriel was his father? There had to be some lie in that somewhere...Marcel wouldn't do such a thing, to kidnap a infant but then again the hate Marcel had for the King was far more stronger than anything else.
"Grayson, at least say something?" Emily spoke, looking at him intently.
But how could he? What could he possibly say to her statement. For so long he had searched for answers over and over again, always coming short handed and now he had heard exactly what he had longed for, but it didn't feel like he had hoped it would feel like.
He felt angry. For his 'parents' were sitting on thrones, right in front of him. While he was getting a beating, everyday of his miserable life. And did they ever do anything to change that, no they didn't. But instead they didn't fruitfully, without him.
He rarely hated anyone besides Marcel, though when he hated, he hated murderously. No matter how hard he tried to sallow it down and rid of this hatred he felt for them. This abomination, a subversion of what should've been good. He never saw strong hatred except where love is betrayed or destroyed in some manner...
"I don't believe you?" He whispered. Looking anywhere, the trees, leaves beneath his feet, anywhere but at her.
"Eli-" She started to say but was cut off before she even spoke his given name.
"Don't. Say. That. Name. It's not mine." He seethed, he hated everything about that name, it didn't belong to him, it belonged to a prince and that simply wasn't him.
"That is your name—"
"That name belongs to a lost prince, which in fact you have him mistaken with me. So you're wrong, they aren't my parents. They can't be." He continued.
"Eli-Grayson I know what I saw, when I touched you that night." She said.
"You are mistaken."
"I assure you I'm not wrong, Grayson they have searched for you for so long-" She said, but it just made him angry, it brought fury within his eyes.
"Not hard enough." He said, hate and angry laced his tone.
"We didn't know Marcel had taken you, his vindictive, you know that. But when I saw you at the bar, you looked familiar and when I had touched you, it made perfect sense." Emily tried to defend but the look he was giving her, said otherwise.
"Fine let's say that's true. Where are they now, I don't see them?" He asked, but spoke again when he saw her conflicted face. "I want the truth Emily. No more lies."
"I gave you the truth..." She spoke, faintly.
"Perhaps you did but it doesn't change the fact that they never were there, they let Marcel get away with it. I'm sick of all this." He continued.
"I understand-"
"Do you?! Trust me you really don't-" He cut her off but just as he did, she did to him, cutting him off mid sentance.
"What do you want me to say Grayson?" She asked, but he wanted was the truth and only the truth.
"I don't know! Anything but that..." His voice suddenly faltering at the end. Things didn't make sense. They never made sense. For someone as powerful as Gabriel, he should've fought back, searched harder.
"I'm telling you the truth, I thought that's what you wanted." She continued.
"It was...but nothing is making sense." He narrowed his eyes at her. His face dropped, saddened by the thought. His parents would hate what he had become, no one would ever want a monster. A freak show of a breed.
In the moments of quiet it came to him, that hate he felt for himself. Maybe it wasn't his parents he hated but himself.
A shadow of a feeling, a sort of broken hearted that is akin to a smooshed ice-cream melting on a hot road; then there was that akin to lighting a match, enjoying the flame and leaving ashes.
The moment she realised she'd misinterpreted his actions, his expressions for days now... as if he'd been speaking a language she couldn't understand... that moment her words stopped was the moment her heart sores for him. He looked broken. His emotions were full on display.
"Look, no one deserve to be kept in the dark...Grayson there is more than what I'm telling you." Emily said, grabbing his attention. What could there possibly be more? More secrets about him? What made him so special?
"I'm more involved than I'm letting on, I'm actually a century years old." She said, looking anywhere but him, why was it difficult? Maybe the guilt that she felt, the guilt of what she did to make Marcel what he is.
"How's that possible? What about Alison?" Grayson asked.
"Magic, I preserve my youth with a simple herbal spells of internal youth. Alison from this century, she's only eight-teen. Her father had just found his mate and decided it was time to die with them. You know how it goes, love changes everything." She explained.
"I'm the reason Marcel is who he is. I was the witch who ha cured him to eternity of darkness. A vampire. And I was the one that had killed him." She finished.
There was a time when he was young, Marcel had spoken to him in honest, as a father would do to a son. 'The pathway into evil begins as small acts of cold heartedness...' Marcel had said once, and in a way Grayson understood that in this moment what he had meant. Just like with any journey those small steps became significant as they add up. And so did the hate.
Every single word that Emily had said, sunk in hard. 'She killed him.' He thought, 'She was the one who had turned him into what he is?' His mind raced, with questions. "Why?" He finally said.
Emily's gaze shifted, staring him further in the eyes as if she didn't want him to miss what she was going to say. He wasn't he was invested. "For what he did to Atia." Her eyes hardened at her name.