A pawn, a puppet... That's what I'd been all these years? The bitter taste in my mouth thickened with the wretched thought that had consumed me from the moment Aryn and Liira laid out what they had purposely omitted in their declaration of what brought them to Leif. I couldn't even be angry over the deception.
A uniting factor... I'd never hated a phrase more. Gaden had proudly used it on more occasions than one and I had proudly accepted it, both as a boy and a man. A prince and a king. Everytime time he'd mentioned it over dinners when he entertained, when he made introductions, purposely never referring to me as the broken prince that I was. I had felt accepted, comforted, loved, valued. All those years, he'd made me feel important with it. The phrase had given me a renewed purpose aft
