Chapter 174: Leon’s Story [7]

Weeks blurred into months.

The Evercrests were a branch family of the main line. They had wealth beyond what Leon had expected and warmth beyond what he could have prepared himself for. The house was always loud. Someone was always talking or laughing or mock-arguing about something at breakfast or by the fireplace in the evenings.

Leon didn’t know what to do with any of it at first. He sat at the edges of things. He answered when spoken to and tried not to take up too much space. He helped with what he could and stayed quiet when he didn’t know what to say.

But the Evercrests didn’t leave space for edges for very long.

They kept pulling him in. Emilia dragged him to the garden to show him something interesting she’d found. Drelan invited him to sit in on training sessions and asked his opinion afterward like it genuinely mattered. Althea simply started putting his plate at the table as if his being there was never a question.

Slowly without quite realizing it was happening Leon started sitting closer to the center of things.

He started laughing at meals.

The dark rotting thing that had been living in his chest since he left the palace began to change shape. It didn’t disappear. But it became less heavy. Like something in the air of this house was slowly working on it from the outside in.

One evening at dinner Emilia reached over with the focused determination of someone doing something important and put a prime piece of roasted meat directly onto Leon’s plate. "Try this! You’ll love it Brother!"

"Brother?" Leon repeated, blinking.

Then she froze.

Her eyes went round. Her cheeks went immediately and completely red. "Oh! I’m so sorry!" She covered her face with both hands. "It’s just a habit! I have so many cousins I always—it just slipped out—I didn’t mean—"

"It’s fine," Leon said.

She peeked at him from between her fingers.

He was looking at the piece of meat on his plate. A soft expression had settled onto his face that he hadn’t worn in a very long time. "I don’t mind at all."

Emilia’s hands came down from her face. Her eyes were lit up like she’d just been given something precious. "Really?!"

"Really."

"THANK YOU BROTHER LEON!" She bounced in her chair and nearly knocked her cup over and Drelan caught it without looking up from his own plate and Althea shook her head fondly and the whole table was warm with it and Leon sat in the middle of all of it and let himself stay.

Across the table Drelan and Althea looked at each other for a moment. Said nothing.

Their eyes went back to Leon.

He was already part of this. Had been for a while now. This was the first evening it had been said out loud and it changed nothing because the thing itself had already been true.

A full year passed.

Leon came downstairs one ordinary morning and opened the dining room door.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEON!"

Streamers hung from the chandelier. A cake sat in the center of the table with more frosting on it than seemed structurally advisable. Food covered every surface. Drelan was grinning from ear to ear. Emilia was bouncing on her toes. Althea stood with her hands clasped in front of her and the expression of someone who has been looking forward to this moment for weeks.

Leon stood in the doorway and looked at all of it and didn’t move.

"What is this," he said. The words came out very quietly.

Althea walked over to him. "None of us know your real birthdate. So we decided that today becomes your birthday. The day you came into our lives."

Leon blinked. "The day I came here?"

"Yes." Her smile was the kind that comes from deep down. "Have you really not realized? It’s been a whole year."

He looked around the room again. The streamers. The ridiculous cake. Emilia who had managed to already get frosting on her thumb from somewhere. Drelan who was holding a knife over the cake.

A fullness pushed up through his chest. He pressed his lips together and looked at the ceiling for a moment.

Althea watched him. Then her expression shifted slightly and she took a small breath. "Leon. There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while now."

He looked at her.

"It feels strange," she said softly. "Calling someone who has shared our table and filled our home and been part of our family for a year just by his first name." Her eyes had gone bright. "Would it be all right if I called you my son?"

The word landed in him somewhere very deep.

He stared at her.

Then the tears came. They just came. Hard and hot and the kind that have been held in for a very long time and don’t ask permission when they finally arrive.

Althea’s smile disappeared into alarm. "Leon? Oh no—did I say something wrong?"

Drelan looked up from the cake with immediate distress. "Althea what did you—look what you’ve done to the boy!"

"No." Leon got the word out somehow. He pressed the back of his hand against his eyes but it didn’t help. "It’s not that." His voice was shaking. "It’s not that at all."

He lowered his hand. He looked at Althea and the tears just kept coming and he let them because there was no stopping them anyway.

"I’ve never had a family before," he said.

The words came out so quietly.

"I was always just... extra. A nameless orphan who was taken in because someone found something useful in my body. Something that might be worth something to the kingdom someday." He swallowed hard. "Nobody ever wanted me for me. Nobody ever called me their son."

His shoulders were shaking.

"So." He breathed in unevenly. "Thank you. Thank you so much for wanting me."

Althea stepped forward and pulled him into her arms the way a mother does. His head went against her shoulder and her hand went into his hair and she held him close and didn’t say anything for a moment because there wasn’t anything that needed to be said.

"You ridiculous boy," she said finally. Very softly. Her own tears were running. "You don’t thank family for loving you."

Leon pressed his face into her shoulder and let everything he’d been holding up come down. The lonely orphan in the palace. The boy who stood in the royal arena and watched his only worth reflected back at him in silence. The night at the fountain when Aurelia’s words had hit him and slid off because he hadn’t believed a single one of them. Every year of telling himself that he was just a vessel and a burden and a person who took up space without having earned it.

He cried for all of it. He cried until his lungs hurt and his eyes burned and then cried a little more after that.