Something Peculiar

2.6

My first thought was the most obvious: He's lying. This was quickly followed by: What if he isn't lying? Hye-kyo, by all accounts, had been a horrible mother who cared very little for me. I thought of the encounter I'd had a few minutes earlier with Suzy. But that couldn't be, she looks way more younger to be my mother, but she had lovingly caressed my dress, saying, I've imagined this day for a very long time.

Suzy stood by nearby, wringing her hands. She met my eyes for the first time and smiled hopefully at me, but there still seemed to be a sadness in her face that I didn't understand. I didn't look like her, not any more than I looked like Hye-kyo. They both far surpassed me in beauty, but Suzy really appeared much younger, only in her early thirties or maybe in her late twenties.

"So. . ." I swallowed, forcing my mouth to work, and turned to Oren. "You're saying that Hye-kyo isn't my mother?"

"No, unfortunately, Hye-kyo is your mother," he said with a heavy sigh. This confused me more. his admission gave more credence to his words, though. It would be simpler for him to lie to me. He could've told me that he and Suzy were my parents, if his plan was to entice me into staying and taking his side. But he'd told me that Hye-kyo was my mother, which left me with an alliance to her, which couldn't possibly benefit him.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"You need to know the truth. I know how fond of games Hye-kyo is." Every time Oren said her name, it came out bitterly, as if it hurt to speak it. "If you have all the facts, it will be easy for you to make a decision."

"And what decision is that?" I asked, but I thought I knew.

"The only decision that matters, of course." His lips twitched with a strange smile. "What kingdom you will rule."

"To be perfectly honest, I don't want to rule any kingdom." I twisted a stray curl that had come loose from my hair tie.

"Why don't you sit down?" Suzy gestured to a chair behind me. After I sat, she took a seat nearer to the King.

"So. . ." I looked at her smiling sadly at me. "You're my stepmother?"

She just shrugged her shoulders

"Oh." I sat in silence for a minute, taking it all in. "I don't understand. Hye-kyo told my father was dead."

"Of course she did." Oren laughed darkly. "If she told you about me, she'd have to give you a choice, and she knew you'd never choose her."

"So how did you . . . " I floundered for the right word. "How exactly did the two of you . . . get together to . . . you know, conceive me?"

"We were married," Oren said. "This was long before I married Suzy, and it was a rather brief union."

"You married Hye-kyo?" I asked and anger boiled up.

Initially, when he'd told me he was my father, I'd thought it was an illicit affair, like the one Hye-kyo had with Lisa's father. I didn't imagine that it'd be something of public record, something that every single person I'd met in Förening would've known about. 

Including Lisa. When she'd been going over the Trylle history, giving me a crash course on everything I needed to know about being a Princess, she'd failed to mention that my mother had been married to the Vittra King.

"Yes, briefly," Oren said. "We were wed because we thought it would be a good way to combine our respective kingdoms. Vittra and Trylle have had disagreements over the years, and we wanted to create peace. Unfortunately, your mother is the most impossible, irrational, horrible woman on the planet." He smiled at me. "Well, you know. You've met her."