Page 150 of Red Ruin

“Azrid Supreme,” Remy says the title matter-of-factly, like he’s reading off his grocery list.

TheAzrid Supreme.

The first Sentinel. The first vampire. The legendary imperial general, who almost single-handedly held back the first monster hordes as a human, then offered himself as a test subject in the risky experiment to empower our species with magic before we went extinct.

In my mind, I’m already tearing down his statues.

There’s no innocent reason to kill your son. “Don’t remember him either. Only happy, stable memories.”

“I have none.”

Right. “Me neither. If we survive whatever escapes that seal, we’ll try making new ones.”

His mood darkens. In a blink, Remy flips me onto my back and pins me to the mattress.

His gaze is…not entirely sane.

Black rings grow around the reds of his eyes, totally at odds with his drunk and lazy smile.

When I swallow, Remy watches the bob of my throat, licking his lips. “Why take up this fight?”

“Someone has to.”

“Why you?”

Because you abandoned ship?“Who else can?”

“Anyone. No one. Let them save themselves.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Why, why, why?“Because I’ll hate myself if I can stop people from suffering, but I run away instead.”

Remy chuckles, low and rich, but his eyes aren’t laughing. “Is that really the reason?”

I tense under the stroke of his silks.

Kevan never used our soul bond to read my emotions—or if he did, he didn’t care to do anything about them. I’m so used to guiding Sentinels who don’t give a fuck about me that it’s easy to forget the connection cuts both ways.

Remy can tell that I’m bullshitting.

My motives have never been that pure.

Not that I don’t love guiding Sentinels, defending Faervaine, and all that noble nonsense. But everything I do, I do at least a little bit just to prove that I can.

Because, if I don’t…

I remember my father’s revolving carousel of mistresses. They came and went, but ever since my mother became his wife and baroness, she’s never lost her position at the top of his petty heart.

She raised me to fight for favor, then dropped me on Kevan.

I don’t know if I ever really loved him.

Iwantedto.

I needed any one thing in my life to feel stable. To feel real. For a long time, he was all I had.

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