Mistakes

Valentine laid awake long into the night. He stared up into the night sky and listened to the crackling of the fire, but all he could think about was the man curled up in the sand on the other side of the flames.

Valentine did not have the words to describe what it felt like to be kissed by Wesley. Sure, their lips had connected before, but not like that. It was nothing but a press of lips to lips, but to Valentine it was everything. For that brief moment, he had felt whole again.

And he hadn't been stabbed, which was a bonus.

The pirate's lips tingled at the memory of the merchant's. Despite the brilliant view of endless stars stretching above him, all he could see was Wesley. His black heart ached for what it could not have and he silently cursed the gods for pairing him with a man that deserved so much better.

Valentine turned his head to gaze upon the other man. He was facing the flames as he slept, so the pirate was easily able to discern each of the merchant's impeccable features in the firelight. If Valentine had to describe them, he would use the word soft paired with strong. Every aspect of his face was distinctly masculine, but it lacked the harsh edges and severity that appeared on his own. Wesley appeared warmer, friendlier, and kinder just from the way he looked. Valentine couldn't quite make out the soft smattering of freckles across the merchant's cheeks in the dim lighting, but his memory would not let him forget about them so easily. He could see the flush of the man's cheeks and nose due to some combination of the alcohol and too long in the sun, though, and he found it rather endearing.

The more Valentine let his eyes linger on the merchant, the more his thoughts wandered into dangerous territory. He forced himself to look back up at the stars as memories of heated kisses and the man pinned beneath him resurfaced. Though the prelude to his latest injury had not been his finest moment, he found his mind drifting back to it often. The healed wound in his thigh throbbed as if remembering the knife, but that was soon forgotten as his mind played out scenes of what might've happened if his mate had not been so eager to kill him.

It was not a healthy train of thought, but he could not help it. He was as vulnerable to the cursed mate bond as Wesley was, if not more so. He suspected that very bond was to blame for Wesley's moment of weakness earlier that night, for he could not conceive of any other plausible explanation for the kiss.

Valentine turned on his side, away from both the merchant and the flames, and tried to rid himself of such thoughts. They were not doing either of them any good.

Sometimes the pirate felt as if Wesley was the one who had sung and that he was the one lost in an enchantment. It was ridiculous, he knew, but nothing else explained the painful yearning inside of him. All he wanted was to be closer to Wesley, and constantly denying himself that hurt far more than any knife wound could.

But he was doing it for Wesley, and that was what made it more bearable.

Sighing deeply, he forced his eyes closed and willed sleep to whisk him away from reality.

----+------+----

"So what did you do?" Wesley asked as he chewed his breakfast.

Valentine looked up tiredly, not quite sure what the merchant was asking about. Though he had not slept well, the bruises from their encounter the previous night had already disappeared from his face. They were replaced by the dark circles beneath his eyes.

When he did not answer straight away, Wesley gestured to the pirate's blackened hand, which by now sported tendrils snaking up to nearly his elbow.

"It's a long story," Valentine breathed, examining his afflicted arm lazily.

Wesley made an exaggerated show of looking around before saying, "I've got time."

Sighing, Valentine ran a hand over his face before figuring out where to begin.

"There are seven subsurface kingdoms. I am from the kingdom of Aurelia. The other six are irrelevant for this story so I won't bore you with the names."

Valentine looked at Wesley, unsure if he wanted to continue, but the man just sat patiently and waited for the tale to unfold. The pirate turned his gaze to the ocean.

"I-" he paused to clear his throat. "I am the bastard son of the Aurelian king."

Valentine left a pregnant pause for Wesley to process his words. It was not something he told lightly.

"You're a prince?" Wesley sounded both curious and surprised if not a bit doubtful.

"Bastards are not given such titles," he said, looking down at his blackened palm. "My mother was a young and beautiful sea witch. King Abyssal was entranced by her beauty, and though he already had a mate of his own, he wanted her too."

"I thought mates could only love each other?" Wesley narrowed his eyes.

"Love, yes," Valentine said, looking back at Wesley's swirling blue eyes, "but my father never loved my mother, and she certainly never loved him."

Wesley's eyebrows drew together in confusion, but slowly, he started to understand.

Val looked away again, unable to meet the merchant's gaze as he cleared his throat and continued.

"He kept her prisoner for years—using her to satisfy the despicable urges he could never bring himself to inflict on his own mate—and the product was me," he managed to say. "She was able to escape shortly after I was born, but she had to leave me behind. My father was largely disinterested in me, so I was raised by the people who staffed his palace. I grew up with five half siblings: three princes and two princesses. All but one despised me."

"Why?"

"The queen was very jealous of my mother for the attention my father gave her. I don't think she ever realized the extent of what he did, but she knew that her mate was being unfaithful, and because of their bond was inclined to blame my mother for his misconduct. When she found out about me, she was furious. Her hatred bled into her children as they grew. My little sister, Cordelia, was the youngest, and at the time had not yet tasted her mother's poison. She should be close to thirteen now and has likely grown to hate me, too."

It all sounded so awful to Wesley. He couldn't imagine growing up like that. "How long have you been gone?"

Valentine thought for a moment before producing the answer, "Six years, I think."

"What made you leave?"

"My eldest brother, the crown prince of Aurelia, was nearly the same age as me. I was younger only by a few months. As is tradition, when he came of age, he set out on his first hunt. He could only choose one person to accompany him on this sacred rite of passage, and to everyone's surprise, he chose me."

Wesley's attention was solely on Valentine, for he had not heard a tale so grisly before. He didn't know much about sirens, but this window of insight piqued his morbid curiosity.

"My brother had taken pride in tormenting me throughout our childhood. I wasn't sure why he had chosen me over all of his friends and advisors, but I knew it wasn't good. That gut feeling was confirmed when he tried to kill me once we were alone."

Wesley felt a frown tugging at his lips as he imagined the scene unfolding before his eyes. He didn't have any brothers, but he couldn't imagine wanting to kill someone he called family.

"I was able to fight him off and flee to shallower waters, where we were forbidden from going. I had hoped that would stop him, but it didn't. He followed me, intent on finishing what he started. I suspect he had orders from one of his parents to do so. Though I was a bastard, my mother's blood gave me access to some powerful magic that I believe made the royal line feel threatened by me. I never had plans to usurp the throne, but it was likely something they feared."

"What happened?" Wesley asked quietly, prompting Valentine to get back to the story and away from speculation.

"My brother followed me closer to the surface, where we were ambushed by a ship of humans. They were siren hunters. My ability to manipulate water helped me evade the worst of the attack, but the prince was not so lucky. His wounds were fatal. I sank the ship and did my best to drag him back to the safety of the depths, but it was too late. He died in my arms."

Wesley didn't know how to react, so he didn't. He stayed silent and waited.

"I brought him back to the palace and laid him before the king. They didn't even give me a chance to explain what happened before they blamed me for his death. They called me a murderer. The queen demanded to have my head, but one of the king's advisors convinced him that banishing me was a far worse punishment. I was sentenced to live the remainder of my life among humans, as human, and a binding spell from a sea witch ensured that if I ever returned to the sea in my true form, death would come for me."

Both of their gazes shifted to the black spot that had enveloped his hand and part of his arm.

Wesley's eyes softened slightly. "You resorted to your true form to save me from drowning."

The pirate nodded. "I did."

"And now you will die for it."

"I will," he confirmed, taking a deep breath and looking away from his hand.

"I've made mistakes, Wesley," he admitted. "I've made a lot of them. After what happened to Marius, my life was stolen from me. Everything I ever knew was gone in the blink of an eye. The good and the bad. I blamed humans for that, so when I was forced to live above the surface, I vowed to make them pay for what had happened to me. I terrorized them through piracy. I did things that I believed they all deserved. I thought maybe that revenge would heal the pain I felt, but it wasn't until I met you that I realized how wrong I was."

Wesley ignored the last bit because he wasn't sure how to address it. Instead he asked, "Why is being human a fate worse than death?"

Valentine looked at him sadly before looking away.

"It is considered to be a life without a mate."

Wesley regretted asking.

----+------+----

A/N

Did the slice of Valentine's backstory help ease your hatred for him? At least a little?

Any thoughts on what his executioner might look like? Who it might be? What it could be? How they will kill him?

By the way, if I spam you with emojis in the comments, just know that that's my way of saying "I have read and acknowledged your comment." It helps me see quickly whether or not I have read and responded to your comment when I'm going through looking for new ones. (I have to manually search through the comments on each chapter because I get a boatload of notifications every day from all of my books combined. There's so many that Wattpad can't even show them all to me, so only a fraction of what's actually happening shows up in my feed.) Keeping an odd number of replies to your comments let's me know I've addressed it already and that I don't need to keep opening up old comments to see if there's new replies. When there's an even number of replies on a comment, I know to look for a new response from one of you. It is my little system for making sure I get to interact with as many of you guys as possible, so once again, I'm sorry if your notifications are filled with a bunch of random emojis after you comment on my book. I try to answer intelligently whenever I can, but not everything has a witty reply easily waiting.

Next update on Tuesday,

-Mora Montgomery