That sick feeling in Helion's gut was cold and unpleasant. 
Arabella hugged her midsection, and tears continued to well and spill down her cheeks. 
Still on his knees before her, Helion pulled his hands away from her legs.
Despite himself, they hung limply by his sides. 
Helion... we need to talk.
Had she lost her love for him after so many years?
Was she going to leave?
He cleared his throat.
"What do you mean, my love?"
Arabella raised her gaze and looked up at the ceiling, fingers pressing harshly into the flesh of her sides as though attempting to compose herself. 
Silence stretched, and Helion was loathe to break it. 
At last, Arabella loosed a shaky sigh, and closed her eyes, chin lowering to her chest.
Helion has felt fear in his long life. 
He had been beaten and cursed and cast aside, nearly died in battle, lost friends, lost wars. 
But he had not felt fear like this in a very long time. 
He supposed it was an over reaction, that they had needed to talk for the entire time she had been staying in Day. 
But she had left before. 
And things change after a few centuries. 
Promise me you'll forgive me. 
Dread curled like a serpent in wait inside him, but still he said nothing.
Arabella stood, sliding off the bed and floating to the twin desk chairs across the room.
Helion got to his feet and followed. 
"Arabella," he said, sitting across from her, voice gentle. 
"What is this about?"
She gave him a weak smile that died before it really became real.
"Helion, there are..." she cleared her throat. 
"There are things you need to know."
She paused, and looked at him warily, eyes wide and expectant.
It killed him to see the same dread in her eyes that he felt in himself, but he nodded for her to continue. 
Arabella twisted her hands in her lap, the rosy color of her clothing illuminating the porcelain of her skin. 
"You must listen to me until I have finished.  I cannot do this otherwise, my love."
Now, more than dread, he was filled with concern, and still he nodded.
She sighed and looked down.
"Helion, you remember when... when I left.  Well, when I never came back."
Helion wanted to open his mouth, to say something, but he managed to give her the same weak smile she had given him only moments before. 
Of course he remembered. 
The day she had left and never returned haunted his dreams. 
She continued on, though her voice was thick. 
"I never got the chance to explain to you why I never returned.  I have no excuses," she said quickly, eyes fully on him again. 
"But I did have my reasons.  When... when I returned to Autumn, I had every intention of returning to you.   Going back to Beron was hell.  I wanted no part in it but to see my sons."
She hesitated, and Helion fought confusion. 
He knew these things. 
Arabella was stalling, and he didn't understand why.
Again she spoke, her voice steadily getting weaker.
"A month later, I was making preparations to come to you again.  As we had planned.  I... I discovered that I was pregnant again."
Her voice stuttered and wavered.
Helion had assumed as much being that Beron's last son had been born months after she had left him. 
"Beron... when it was my time, he refused to let me out of his sight.  With all of my boys.  He had me under lock and key, and constant observation of midwives and guards."
Helion felt a fierce scowl creeping onto his face. 
The rage he felt for the late Lord of Autumn was generally unmatched. 
Arabella's breath caught, and he could see the silver line of tears once again staining her stunning eyes. 
"I tried to find a way to write you, but I was so afraid, Helion."
Her eyes were wide and pleading.
"I wanted to let you know that I had not abandoned you.  That I couldn't come back.  But Beron watched me, day and night.  He wanted to ensure that this next child would be strong, another competitor for his throne."
Her composure had cracked and chipped, her voice shaking, her hands trembling.
She breathed in shakily, and Helion didn't know what to do other than sit, listen, watch. 
The tightness in his chest was strangling.
"When... when I gave birth to Lucien... Mother, he was so small.  Beron- he took one look at my precious boy and scoffed at him.  Blamed me for bearing a weak son. I spent days -weeks- begging him to let Lucien live."
Helion felt sick.
His hands were clenched on his knees to keep them from shaking.
Beron was an evil male, but to kill your own child?
Helion had never been a father, but he had wanted so badly to be.
That anyone would harm their blood born son made Helion physically ill.
It was a battle to keep his mouth shut as Arabella spoke, but at the same time, he had no words.
"He finally relented. Allowed me Lucien. Thank the Mother he didn't want anything to do with him. But... a few months after I gave birth, Beron found out I had been-"
She glanced at him, and the strife in her eyes was like a physical blow.
"That I had been unfaithful,"
Her voice was shaking again, and so, so quiet.
"He tried his best to find out who it was, but he gave up. And he never gave me any kind of freedom again after that. With Lucien at my breast, I was too terrified to try."
Now tears were falling once again, but she plowed ahead, staring at her hands that twisted fervently in her lap.
...
Arabella could feel Helion's gaze on her.
She could smell the distress and anger pouring off of him in waves.
He felt things so strongly.
Just like...
She pushed down a sob, staring at her hands without seeing them.
The stinging pain around her fingers told her that she had picked them raw and bloody in her anxious fit.
Cauldron damn her, she had to tell him. Already, she was so close.
It was like a dam breaking, but at the same time like dragging her own body across nails and glass.
The relief and agony clashed within her.
And she couldn't speak.
Her hands twisted as her mind raced, spelling out every torturous way she could begin to tell him something so wildly important that he should have known for centuries.
Silence stretched, she knew, but a rushing sound filled her head, her ears ringing.
"-i."
"Ari," Helion said, his voice shaking.
At last, Arabella glanced up at him.
His own eyes were rimmed in red, his jaw clenched, his hands shaking.
"May I speak."
Arabella didn't know what to say, so she let him say everything.
"Beron was no male. He was a monstrous... thing that didn't deserve life. To treat your own son...."
His voice broke, and Arabella's heart along with it.
"If I had a son," he whispered, "I could never-never- do what he did. He was no true male."
Venom laced his words, but it was the words themselves that made Arabella's chest tighten painfully and she doubled over, clutching her belly, weeping with such force she thought she might retch.
When she felt Helion's warm, comforting hand on her shoulder, she shrugged away.
Better to reject his loving touch now than to seek it after the truth came out and he reject her.
"Helion," she forced out, refusing to look up and see the hurt in his warm, beautiful eyes.
"Helion, I should- I... "
Arabella, still bent over her lap, took a deep shaking breath.
Chills assaulted her skin.
Nausea pervaded her senses.
"Lucien, he was always different from his brothers."
Looking at the sandstone floor, tracing the lapis veins with her eyes, she rocked herself back and forth as she spoke.
As she tried to forget Helion was there.
"He was... kind. Good. Nothing that Beron did to him.. it never got rid of that. Even..."
Her breath caught.
"Even through all the pain," she gasped out, tears streaming down her cheeks.
This was it.
I have to tell him. I have to tell him. I have to tell him.

But I am so afraid.

"I think... I think Beron knew. He refused to say anything because it would humiliate him, but he- he knew."
She murmured, almost to herself, and thought it sounded akin to the ramblings of a mad man.
Helion spoke, his voice soft.
"Arabella, where is this going?"
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
She finally forced herself to uncurl.
To straighten her spine, and she looked Helion in his eyes.
Her head throbbed, her heart ached, her stomach clenched.
"Beron knew. That Lucien wasn't his son."
A spark of recognition and realization lit in Helion's eyes, and disappeared just as quickly, his face unchanged.
Mother above she was going to be sick.
"Helion," she whispered.
"He's yours. Lucien is your son."
She watched, and her heart sank as his eyes seemed to glaze over, his body locked into place.
"You are Lucien's father."
It echoed in her ears.
But Helion... his eyes were unfocused.
She couldn't feel his emotions. 
There was a wall, a shield, that had dropped down the moment she spoke those words.
Arabella could glean nothing.
A sort of inevitable panic gripped her tightly, and the words just spilled out. 
"He's so much like you, Helion.  Even when he was born, I could see it.  As a boy he could light up a room... just by walking in.  Lucien... he's so... so good, and bright.  And even after he suffered so much, and... lost, he never truly lost that light.  I... it was the only way I could reconcile not being with you.  Seeing him, seeing your smile on his face, your nose, that same little pinch in your eyebrows when you think too hard..."
Her voice wobbled dangerously, but she could no longer weep. 
Her body was tired and weak and her heart hurt too badly.
One tear slipped away and chased the others, dripping onto her collar bone. 
"Helion, please say something," she said softly, so quietly, afraid to shatter the last stretch of illusions in her mind.
Helion didn't speak. 
She watched as he shifted, ever so slowly, and she could hear the protest of his locked joints as he painfully stood, unfurling halfway, and wandered aimlessly towards the doors of his chambers. 
Without purpose, without direction.
Like he was walking in a dream, but the curve of his shoulders betrayed the devastation she had wrought upon him.
Arabella's eyes followed Helion, her ears protesting at the unnaturally loud sound of the large doors opening, and finally closing, cutting off her view of the male she had loved so deeply, and now that she was losing.
She stared at the closed doors, but didn't call after him, didn't give chase. 
Sometimes, the pain is so deep that tears are not enough, and all that's left is numbness. 
Emptiness.
So Arabella sat, anchored in her chair.
And she caught Helion's scent, just outside the door, ears tuned and straining until she heard the scrap of cloth against stone, of his back sliding down the wall to the floor.
This... she had known that she could not make him swear to forgive her.
This was unforgivable.
And it would be the end of them.
After a thousand years, her secrets would destroy them.
And it tore her apart from the inside.
Weakly, her hands scratched at the wooden arms of her chair, deepening the intricate carvings, peeling off polish and stain, keenly aware of it caking beneath her already bitten down nails.
But the raw pain... it was good.
It was a way for her to punish herself.
Because she had watched everything she loved, crumble before her eyes.
And now it was happening again.
She had done this.
...
Helion played Arabella's words in his mind over and over again.
Father. You are Lucien's father.
He was not Beron's son.
Beron knew.
He is your son.
Your son.

My son.

His knees were weak as he sagged against the wall outside of his rooms.
His rooms that had closed in, become suffocating, the sunlight that had become blinding even as it died away.
The rose oils and woods that became cloying and overpowering.
He didn't notice time had passed until his vision began to dim and he forced himself to breathe again.
Thighs burning from being stuck in a crouch, Helion let himself fall heavily to the ground, arms limp on the cool stone, back pressed against the ragged wall.
There was no doubt in his mind that what Arabella had said was true.
How he had not seen it before... he had met Lucien. More than once.
Never anything grand, simply in passing.
But now... he cursed himself for not seeing it.
A father.
He was a father.
A sharp ache tore at his chest.
He was a father, and his child had suffered being raised by a sadist, a monster.
Helion's son had grown up to be bitter and closed off, and there had been no way to stop it.
He would never get those years back.
He would never see his son as a babe, or teach him to handle a sword, train him on a horse, teach him to be a proper heir.
All this flashed like a blazing fire in Helion's mind.
And yet it all disappeared in the wake of something brighter, something that created, that did not destroy.
He had a son.
He was a father.
And not only that, but he had fathered Arabella's child.
She had said before that Eris was the best of Beron's sons.
But Lucien was not Beron's son.
Lucien... Lucien was his.
Shock still deadened Helion's limbs.
Arabella... she had hidden this from the world for 500 years.
She...
His stomach rolled.
She had hidden it from him.
For half a millennia, the female he loved had suffered, alone.
Had kept a damning secret, alone.
Had ensured their son's safety, had protected him, had endured Beron's wrath.
Alone.
And now, he had left her alone again.
Shakily, Helion got to his feet, and his shoulder slammed painfully into the wall as he lost his balance.
But the blooming bruise and weeping scrape in his skin was nothing to him, and he pushed open the doors.
She was still there, in her seat, twisted around as though she had been watching the door.
Her fingers scratched at the chair arms, and he caught a whiff of the metallic scent of blood.
His heart caught in his throat, his breath stolen, at the look on her face.
Broken.
She looked just as empty and broken and beaten as she had the day she had arrived at his door.
Helion stood by the doors, listening to them slowly close. 
Arabella had turned her head towards him, but her eyes were still downcast.
And suddenly, his reaction to her news had destroyed the progress that they had made in the time she had been in Day. 
Guilt pecked at him, like a carrion bird at a corpse.
Slowly, he approached.
His legs were still weak, his stomach ill. And by all reckoning, his face must have been three shades paler.
He stopped before her, unable to gather the strength to sit in the chair.
The only sound was her scratching at the carvings on her chair.
Helion watched as blood began to smear in the grooves that she picked at.
Long minutes passed, until...
A shiver shook the length of her body, and though she refused to move,
"I am so sorry, Helion," she breathed, near silent.
His skull throbbed.
He should do something. He should respond, take her into his arms, comfort her.
But some confounded force held him back.
"I am so, so sorry."
Helion stood and stared, frozen, until he finally forced himself to fall back into the chair across from her.
The loud drop of his heavy body into his seat drew her eyes up briefly.
He hated how beautiful her eyes looked after she cried.
There should be no beauty in her pain, and yet everything she did was lovely.
Even her tears, as much as they drove daggers into him.
"I know I have no excuse. I know I was wrong. You have every right to never forgive me. Every right."
Weak, and tired.
That was what her voice sounded like.
Exhausted, and worn to the bone.
The sound of her scraping filled the room and assaulted his over sensitive ears.
"Please, don't forsake Lucien. I ruined enough of his life. Let him know a good father, my lord, I beg you."
My lord.
Helion sat up, and knelt before her as he had so many times.
He took her hands away from the chair, feeling the wetness of blood smear his palms, gripping her tightly as he forced her to look into his eyes.
"Arabella, look at me. Look at me!"
He shook her slightly.
She needed to see the genuine desperation in his eyes.
"I needed a moment. Perhaps I still do. This..." he shook his head and released a sigh that was meant to be a huff of laughter.
"This is hardly light news. But you cannot apologize for how you protected him. How you-"
His voice was thick and he could feel tears welling.
When he spoke again, one finally broke loose past his lashes and down to his lips.
"You protected our son, Arabella. Our son. And I... I wish so many things, Ari, but more than any of them I wish to have you here with me, and to have our son at our sides."
Arabella's tears may have stopped falling, but Helion's own were no longer keen on hiding in the wake of a newly found heir.
His voice was harsh, and low, and fierce, and just as broken as they were.
"Never apologize.  I may have missed years with you, with our son, but if I had known... would that I had, but if you had told me... I would have started a war to get you both back."
Arabella leaned forward, and pressed her brow into his neck, body shivering.
Helion could hardly speak, but he continued on as his tears dropped into Arabella's copper hair. 
"I would have started a war for you," he choked.
"I wouldn't have been strong enough... I wouldn't have had the strength you did to sacrifice so, so much for the greater good, Ari.  So never.  Never apologize."
He released her hands and clasped the back of her neck, drawing her into a tight embrace, weaving his fingers through her tear damp hair. 
"I love you," he whispered. 
And through the pain, and regret, and guilt, he knew that Arabella didn't have to say it back for him to know: she loved him just as much. 

And they would find their son.