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Yukimi stared at him in disbelief. "What do you mean?"
Ri-is' shut his eyes, brows knitting as he spoke. "My mother's pregnancy with us triplets wasn't planned. She had already gone through many unspeakable things when it came to her family. Let's just say that when they found out that the most terrifying warlord in the heavens and hells was going to be a mother...people tried to get rid of us...they thought that having children would make her even more of a problem, y'know...overprotectiveness and whatnot...not to mention she'd have heirs to her newly acquired kingdom. They weren't wrong though. One night some power-hungry relatives sent an assassin to kill us in our sleep. My eye was grazed by a poison dagger when I was pulled out of the way by my mother.
My aunt who was present at the time told us that she awoke to my mother screaming 'if he never opens his eyes again then neither will you!' My mother was already very paranoid and scared of just the thought of raising kids. She thought she wouldn't be a good mother. Even so, more than anything, she didn't want us to suffer the same fate she did growing up without parents...struggling to survive. Things just got worse when we started growing up."
Yukimi listened silently. In the short period of time that she knew Ri-is, she knew him to be kind and considerate, to always put others before himself. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine he could make the expression he was making now. Still, from the first time she met him, she felt a sense of likeness about him. Though she had to admit, she didn't think that he could be so talkative.
"My mother didn't come into power by playing nice. She has a lot of enemies, especially ones that happen to be nobles. They take every opportunity they can to find fault and undermine her. Not just her authority but her skill as a mother too. When we got older and started attending school it just exposed us to all those snobby nobles."
Ri-is hung his head. "I ended up being an easy target for them. I'm not as strong or accomplished as my brothers. Even though we come from such an esteemed lineage of warlords, fighting and leading armies and the like really isn't my thing. It made me the faulty link in their eyes."
Yukimi as a silent witness watched as Ri-is shift awkwardly between his words, like he hadn't spoken to anyone about this in some time and was struggling to find the right words.
"I was...I was so ashamed. If I told my mother about what they were saying it felt like I would be blaming my mother for the way I turned out when I knew she wasn't at fault at all. It just got worse. To the point where they no longer used words to jeer at me. They went out of their way to physically torment me every chance they got. Whether it was pushing me from the academy balcony to see if I could manage to spread my wings before I hit the ground or making sure to pick on me extra hard during training. It was awful..."
Ri-is trailed off, getting a distant look in his eyes. His lips trembled as he seemed to be recalling a memory.
She reached out and gently placed a hand on his arm."You don't have to say it..." She whispered.
