Chapter 56 Chapter 56

Chapter 56 Chapter 56
ANNA’S POV

I didn’t plan to answer Damon the way I did, and I didn’t expect the question to hit me so hard, yet the moment he asked what I thought about Tribids, something inside me twisted painfully.

I had spent years pretending I didn’t think about them at all, because thinking about them meant remembering things I hated remembering. And although my face stayed calm, my heart did not. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed it until it ached.

I told him they were dangerous, and I told him the world was better without them, and I told him that having all that power in one body was too much for anyone to control. My voice sounded steady, but only because I had practiced—practiced holding myself together every day since I was a child. And while I spoke, I felt tears pushing up, but I forced them back because I didn’t want Damon to see.

I didn’t want anyone to see.

Especially him.

Because he didn’t know the real reason.

No one knew.

I hated Tribids for one reason only, and it was a reason I kept buried so deep that sometimes even I forgot it. But when Damon asked that question, the memory rose again like a wave I could never stop.

The truth was simple.

I was not the firstborn.

Everyone believed I was an only child, and everyone believed my mother died because of me, and everyone believed my father’s bitterness came from grief, but that wasn’t the full truth. My mother did die, but not right after giving birth to me. She died a few years later, slowly and silently, while my father watched her fade and blamed me for every second of it. He remarried almost immediately afterwards, and I grew up with a stepmother who hated me as much as he did.

My stepmother was cruel, but she was honest in one thing. She told me something no one else ever did. She told me that I had an elder brother. A boy who had lived before me. A boy I never met because he died before I was old enough to remember him. A boy whose name she refused to tell me, no matter how much I begged. A boy who was taken from the world long before I knew he existed.

She told me that Tribids killed him.

She didn’t tell me how. She didn’t tell me when. She didn’t tell me why. She just told me that they did, and she told me with such anger and disgust that I felt sick, and because I was a child who didn’t know anything else, I believed her. I believed every word. And she made sure I did, because she repeated the story over and over for years, always in that cold voice, always reminding me that Tribids were monsters who destroyed families and took lives and brought nothing but tragedy.

And because of that, I hated them.

I hated them deeply.

I hated them blindly.

I hated them long before I even understood what the word “Tribid” truly meant.

I never told anyone about my brother. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want people asking questions about a family I hated remembering, and I didn’t want to think about a child whose name I didn’t know. It felt like remembering him would break me in ways I was not ready to break. So I buried him in my heart, just like I buried my mother and my father and my entire childhood.

So when Damon asked me about Tribids, I thought about him.

The brother I never knew.

The boy whose death was the first story of my life.

And tears filled my eyes before I could stop them.

I wiped them away quickly because I didn’t want Damon to see. He already looked troubled for some reason, and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t want him asking questions, and I definitely didn’t want him seeing me cry. So I stood up fast and said the first excuse that came to mind.

“I’m going back to the servant quarters, Damon. I have so much work to do.”

Normally, he teased me.

Normally, he smirked or made a comment just to see me roll my eyes. Normally, he found some way to pull me back into conversation, even when I wanted to run away from him.

But this time he didn’t.

This time he just looked at me quietly.

And he replied, “Alright then. We’ll talk later.”

Something in his voice felt different.

I wasn’t sure. Maybe I was just imagining it, because I always overthought things. I was an expert at overthinking. I could turn a simple look into a disaster in my head. And maybe that was what was happening now, because I suddenly felt like he didn’t like me anymore, or that I had said something wrong, or that my answer changed something between us.

But I didn’t have the strength to ask.

I didn’t want to hear something that would hurt.

So I only nodded.

Then, without thinking, I leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. I didn’t know why I did it. Maybe I wanted to distract him. Maybe I wanted him to think everything was fine. Or maybe some part of me just wanted to feel close to him for one last moment.

Then I walked away before he could say anything else.

The moment I stepped out of his room, my legs weakened, and the tears that I had fought so hard to hold back came rushing out all at once. I covered my mouth with my hand so no one would hear, but the sobs still shook through me because the memory of my brother came rushing back, and Damon’s strange silence made everything worse.

I hated Tribids.

I hated them for what they did to him.

I hated them for what they took from me.

And I wasn’t sad they no longer existed.

I would never be sad about that.

Not after everything.

I walked faster, wiping my tears even though they kept falling, and for a moment, I wondered why Damon looked so sad when I said those words. But I pushed the thought away quickly, because I didn’t want to think about him right now. I didn't want to think about anything except the ache in my chest and the brother whose name I would never know.

And as I reached my door and shut it behind me, I finally let myself cry the way I couldn’t cry in front of Damon.

I would forever hate Tribids.