Chapter 118

Despite my tears, I laughed wryly. "It's you who's been brainwashed, Ingrid…or maybe I ought to call you Camilla…is there still any part of her left in you? Dad was right about you. You are insane. You left your own family to blindly serve this villain of a king."

"You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't know what my life was like. I loved Aiden.

He was everything to me, and then you came along. I never wanted you, but I gave in to his requests for a child, because I loved him. You stole him from me." She was saying the words calmly, her eyes set on the bite marks on my neck as she proceeded to tend to the wound.

The spite every word contained mixed with the calmness and affection by which she expressed them made her one of the scariest people I'd ever met. I couldn't begin to fathom how broken a creature my own mother was. I was certain, however, that even though I had been born of her womb, she was now a complete stranger.

No more words were exchanged until she was