Chapter 56: The Fat Lady sings (unedited)

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Hermann

"I expected to see a little boy who hardly reached my knees. You have become quite a young man."

I stood at his voice and faced him. He was a similar built to my father but looked significantly younger. "Uncle Alexander. I assumed you would have been in the country when I saw Wolfgang."

"We returned together," he retorted. "Your father called for it."

"It must be strange to be home."

"No strange than it must feel for you. We have all been vagabonds for much too long," he said with a pleasant smile. "Why don't you greet me properly Hermann?"

I took a step forward and stopped. "Aren't you afraid?"

"Of what?"

"What they say about me?"

My uncle shared a soft smile. "Your father assumes you have checked every room of the place in search of your sister because you don't trust him..."

"I have."

He chuckled softly. "Yes, trust is a thing that you both struggle with. However, you are afraid of the rejection."

He read me like a book. My uncle was the first person my father took away from me before he stole Skillet. Pretending to be anything other than I was was foolish because he saw through it like water.

"I do want her to be alive. I have wanted that for as long as I have lost her. Yet I have changed so much. I am not the brother she would want to come back to. I partly hope that he is toying with me, so she doesn't have to see me or hear of the things I have done."

"He isn't toying with you," my uncle replied and my throat sank into the pit of my stomach. "Friedrich took her and was in hiding in one of his allies' homes, pretending she was Johanna. Your thought you were both dead or badly injured wherever you were. When Friedrich brought a girl so badly injured beyond recognition, your father accepted it to be Belle and used the funeral as a ruse to lure one of you out. Belle escaped and came to live with me in Germany as your father had originally planned. However, you were lost for two years and he could not act against Friedrich."

"My father would never act against Friedrich. His games are far too more important to him."

"He almost did ten years ago." Alexander took a step closer. "You test your father, Hermann. Like someone who knows he won't act against you. You may be angry but deep down I think you always knew where your father's thoughts were."

"Did I?"

My uncle smirked. "Didn't you?"

"At least at first. I always wondered why he banished me..."

"Because he knew that was the only way to send you both away without raising suspicion. You and your sister were inseparable. There was not a place you could have gone where she would have not decided to follow you."

I sighed deeply, lowering my face into my palms. "What does he want, uncle? I assume there's a reason he sent you."

"Need there be a reason for me to speak to my nephew?"

"I know how the king operates. He knows I have no interest in what he has to say."

"I wanted to apologise, as I am the one who failed to intercept you and your sister. I am the reason you have lived in exile for so many years."

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