Page 63 of Gothikana

Ajax chuckled without humour. ‘Good ol’ Slayers. Who the hell knows? This whole mountain is cursed as far as I’m concerned. I don’t understand anyone who would stay here longer than they need to.’

Vad Deverell, the man who had been here for years, popped into her mind.

‘I have a professor who’s been here a long time,’ she told him.

‘Really?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Who?’

‘Vad Deverell.’

His eyes flew to her, his eyebrows almost hitting his hairline. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Fucking bastard found you.’

Corvina straightened at his words. ‘Excuse me?’

A toneless laugh left him as he turned to look at the black mountains in the distance. ‘I’m a bit shocked, that’s all.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What’s going on?’

‘Fuck, I need a drink.’ He ran a hand over his scalp. ‘He’s just… I don’t even know what to say.’

Her heart sank. ‘Can you please explain?’ What the hell was this man talking about?

His gaze went distant. ‘I met him when we were seven in a home for lost boys. We were all an odd bunch pushed there together. And it was a… dark place, let’s just leave it at that.’

Corvina’s fingers tightened on the stone railing as she listened to the story, palpitations making her heart crash against her ribs.

‘There was an old lady at the home with us.’ His knuckles turned white. ‘She’d been the caretaker but turned blind with age. But she knew things about us we never told anyone. Odd things. How someone would die. Then they did. How something would happen, and it did. Just things, you know? We would eat her words up.’

‘Okay,’ Corvina urged him to go on, confused as to where this was heading.

‘She told Vad to look for purple eyes,’ Ajax looked into her gaze. ‘We were just kids. We made fun of him about that. Nobody had purple eyes, you know? But that’s all she told him.’

Corvina felt a shudder steal through her. ‘Are you messing with me?’

‘I wish.’ He blew out a breath, staring into space again. ‘I didn’t even remember it until I saw your eyes this morning.’

‘What… what happened after?’

‘His grandfather came and took him out of the home. We stayed there until it burned down and took most of the boys with it. Those who survived went elsewhere.’ He rubbed a large hand over his head. ‘I saw him again years later here at Verenmore. We were in the same class, but we weren’t really friends.’

‘Wait.’ She held a hand up, trying to wrap her mind around the onslaught of information. ‘You say his grandfather? You mean his actual grandfather? Not a foster family?’

‘Yeah.’

But he’d told her it had been a foster father. No, he hadn’t. Corvina remembered his words, his carefully chosen words. He’d implied a paternal figure, never actually saying anything about it being real. He’d lied to her by omission, right after she’d told him about her mother. Why?

‘Given your eyes and your questions, I take it he’s more than just your professor?’ Ajax inferred correctly. ‘Since you seem like a nice girl, let me tell you something. This is information only the investigators have access to, but I think you should know this.’

Throat dry, Corvina waited for him to continue, her stomach leaden.

‘His grandfather died suspiciously the day Vad became an adult,’ Ajax informed her, his voice lowering. ‘Fell down the stairs and broke his neck. Except the stairs were too low and little to cause such a grievous injury. Vad became the sole and legal heir of everything, since he was already an adult.’

‘Hunter.’ The deep, gravel voice from the gazebo had them both turning. Think of the devil was too appropriate a cliché not to even cross her mind. Vad Deverell stood in a black peacoat, collar turned up, his streak of grey hair shining in the moonlight, his face carefully neutral as he watched them both.

‘Deverell,’ Ajax greeted back in the same tone. ‘Funny, we were just talking about you.’

Vad pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘Must have been one hell of a conversation, you didn’t even notice me coming.’

‘You always were good at sneaking up on these grounds,’ Ajax said, his tone hard with a shared history between the two. He tilted his head toward Corvina. ‘Looks like Old Zelda was right after all. You found your purple eyes.’

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