Kieran's POV
The cold, furious energy rolling off our father filled the room, sharp and suffocating.
I could feel it pricking against my skin, a familiar kind of rage, but coming from a stranger. It should have made me wary. Instead, it just twisted the knot of confusion in my gut even tighter.
My mind was a mess, thoughts crashing into each other. All this time. All this time.
The reason our parents couldn't find us… was because we were hiding. We'd spent our entire lives believing we were nobody's children, ghosts who'd sprung from the darkness of Zarek's dungeon. We built a fortress of secrecy to protect ourselves, and in doing so, we locked our real family out.
A sharp pang of regret burned in my chest. What if we hadn't hidden? What if, as scared, traumatized teenagers, we had decided not to keep ourself hidden? Could they have found us then? Would our lives have been… different?
