“No,” he agrees, “I suppose it’s not.”
He had never been a hero, Jarris. He had begun to understand - only recently, perhaps too late for it to make any difference at all - that he had been born a villain. Even if he did not have the teeth to show for it. Even if he did not look the part and never had. He had begun to understand, too, that maybe that was worse.
The greatest pain of all comes in acknowledging how many hearts could have been spared if only he’d been born to look like the monster he would become. Plumeria’s especially, for she deserved the heartache least of all.
But he makes no mention of this. He doubts she has any interest in hearing an old man recite his regrets. So, he is silent instead. Silent while the gold pools at his feet. He looks down at it, watches the edges spread. Watches as it reaches for her feet, too. He wonders if someday it will simply drown them all.
He looks up at her question. “My daughter,” he tells her. He does not hesitate in answering. But there is a pause that comes after. As he remembers. How he had tried to save her and how he’d been forced to kill her instead.
“I’m afraid it wasn’t as simple as it looked on the surface.” He rolls his shoulders then, flinching against the pain of the thorns shifting on his brow. He draws in a thin, shuddering breath. “But I have come to find that things are not always as they seem.”