The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 321

Liora’s POV

My mother had been suffering from her mental illness ever since I could remember.

Ever since I was a young child, I had always thought of my mother as a timid and fragile woman. I loved her as much as any child loves their mother, but I learned from a very young age that I couldn’t trust her in the same way other children could.

Her illness made it very difficult for her to think straight much of the time. She often crumbled under the slightest bit of pressure, which meant that, as a queen with many responsibilities, she was crumbling often.

One of my first memories involved my mother having a mental breakdown one morning over breakfast because she insisted that someone had poisoned her food. Even when the food was thoroughly tested and confirmed to be free of poison, she refused to believe it.

She only drank broth for a month.

Another one of my earliest memories was the time when my mother became bedridden for so long that she developed sores, shirked her royal duties, and refused to even see me because I broke one of her favorite vases.

It took a long time to forgive myself for that, even though my father assured me that it wasn’t my fault.

The worst thing about all of it was that my mother never yelled at me. She never yelled at anyone, in fact; she was flighty and unpredictable, but she was still kind and softspoken, even to the servants.

And right now, she wasn’t yelling at me. In fact, she was reaching out to me, tears leaving wet tracks down her pallid face, and she was whispering my name.

“Liora… Liora…”

I hesitated in the doorway, my heart pounding. Part of me, the small child in me who had watched the healers have to turn my mother over and clean her festering sores, was almost afraid to enter that room.

I rarely entered my mother’s bedroom; it smelled like sickness, and the curtains were always drawn tight, the windows never open. Her bed always looked like a coffin to me, with its tall posters and heavy drapes and the way that the few times I’d set foot in this room, she’d always been laying there looking like a waking corpse.

My mother sighed. “I won’t be angry,” she said, “but you mustn’t continue on like this. You are a princess, not a street rat. Please promise you won’t race ever again. Please.”

I looked at my mother for a long moment. On instinct, my lips parted to make that promise, just as I had made so many for her sake before. Don’t run, Liora. Don’t climb, Liora. Don’t go outside on Wednesdays, don’t play with that doll, don’t talk to that boy…

But the words wouldn’t come. Because I’d spent so much of my life feeling cooped up and afraid and like I had to follow all of these rules just to keep her from having a mental breakdown.

Over the past few months, I’d become so much more confident in myself, and I felt so much freer, so much happier. It wasn’t just racing, although I’d developed an unexpected fondness for the sport in such a short amount of time. It was school, and my friends, and all of the things I’d experienced since I left the palace.

I wasn’t sure if I could make that promise. Because I knew it would just lead to others, and soon, I would wind up right where I started: a scared child who would bend over backwards, putting her entire life on hold, to tend to the emotional needs of a mother who didn’t see beyond her own OCD.

When my answer didn’t come, my mother’s face fell. She released my hands, shoving them away, and scrunched her eyes tightly shut.