Page 88 of Possess Me at Midnight
“Were you going to Renounce me before you accepted Lucan’s claim? Do I not warrant at least a refusal now that your brother has painted me a villain? Certainly, you want to put me in my place.”
Sabelle hesitates, looking at me with beseeching blue eyes that nearly implode my chest. She silently begs for understanding. But the sight of her with Lucan, knowing she intends to accept a wizard who doesn’t fucking love her, pushes me past my boiling point.
“Ice, the fact I must Renounce you has nothing to do with your station and everything to do with my role in stopping Mathias. Without me as Lucan’s mate, Bram may not be able to sway the Council to vote against him. They’re so fearful of their own shadows. We don’t dare leave magickind’s fate to chance. Besides, you weren’t honest with me. You vowed to show Bram what it was like to lose a sister and?—”
“Meaningless words spoken in anger, long before your birth.”
“But you two hadn’t spoken since, had you? When the opportunity to join the Doomsday Brethren arose, you must have seen the chance to link your two favorite causes: defeating Mathias and making Bram pay for not helping you with Gailene. Your suit was sudden and left me no time to think. You Called to me nearly as soon as we were alone.”
Does she really believe I can fake such passion and abiding love?
“Instinct, princess. I knew from the first kiss you were made for me. If I tasted you now, that same lightning bolt of certainty would crash through me, settling deep in my bones where instinct lives. The fact that you’re brave, strong, giving, caring, and bright simply tells me I would have loved you, regardless of instinct.”
Uncertainty tinged with disbelief tightens her face. Rage crashes through me again, like powerful waves pounding the craggy rocks on the shore outside. “And still, you don’t believe me.”
Sabelle says nothing for long moments, as if she wages some inner battle. Finally, she lets down her barriers. Agony explodes across her face. “You said nothing to me about your sister or avenging her death! Not a word of being Bram’s friend, seeking a Council seat. Stupidly, I believed that you and Bram disliked each other for no more reason than your resentment of his position and his disdain for your behavior. You had a million chances to tell me all—hell, any—of this. But you remained silent. The only reason I can conceive is to hide your perfidy.”
Bloody hell, that she thinks so little of me is like an ax to my soul. I’ve sought to protect her from the ugly truth and the worst skeletons in my family closet. Those truths shame me. I never wanted to taint Sabelle with the nasty history Bram and I share. Or any of the rest of my shameful past.
Now, to have any chance of preventing her mating with that wanker Lucan MacTavish, I must reveal everything.
Fuck. How badly will that hurt?
I heave a rough breath, then tighten my grip on Sabelle’s wrist and drag her closer. Surprise widens her eyes. She stares at me before her gaze cuts to the unmade bed with panic.
“No, I’m not trying to work my way between your pretty thighs, princess.” At least not yet.
God willing, I hope Sabelle will be mine forever, and I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time there absorbing her pleasure and drinking in her cries of completion. First, I have to get through the next half hour.
“Come with me. I want to show you something. I’ll tell you every fucking detail of the terrible reality I tried to keep to myself.”
She digs in her heels, but she’s no match for my strength and anger.
I pull her out of my room, down the cavernous hallway cut from the cave’s grayish, windowless rock. My conscience twinges me, but I ruthlessly squash it. Sabelle wants the truth? She’s about to get every last hideous bit of it.
Nor have I wanted to bring her here before we exchanged vows. She’s used to far finer. But it’s done. Perhaps this humiliation is for the best. She knows I’m Deprived. But does she really know what it means?
“Ice, stop!” she shrieks. “Where are you taking me?”
I say nothing. Almost there…
“Blast it all, Ice. I?—”
“If you want the truth, even the truth Bram doesn’t know, then shut up. You want me to tear off the scars so you can see inside my soul? To determine if I’m a fucking liar you should Renounce immediately? Then come along and listen.”
A hopeless fury grips me, one I haven’t felt in two centuries. After Sabelle hears about the train wreck of my past, instead of convincing her of my sincerity, she’ll likely refuse me on the spot. And the fact I’m powerless to stop my beloved from leaving me for another crushes me as profoundly as Gailene’s brutal murder.
At the end of the cold hall, I throw open a small door and push Sabelle inside. I know exactly what she sees: a nearly empty wardrobe, a pallet of two ragtag blankets beside a dirty, worn pillow, and a faded red ribbon tied to a spur of the cave’s stone wall.
I swallow, throat tight, as I prepare to hammer the nails into my own coffin. “My father believed all females, unless used for pleasure or to breed sons, were useless. My mother gave birth to me, and much celebration ensued in the Rykard clan. Three years later, my mother gave birth to Gailene.”
Sabelle pales. “Three years?”
Of course she’s shocked by that, when the difference between magical siblings is often decades or centuries. A witch’s fertile time does not come often unless…
“Which should tell you something about the frequency with which my father bedded her.”
“C-constantly?”
