Page 70 of Griffin Undone
“Oh.” Guess thatwhywas no longer a mystery.
I should’ve expected it, really. I was just Kat, after all, living in the shadows, always alone. I closed my eyes, and the scent of our lovemaking—or fucking—filled my nose. As the enormity of what I’d done, what I’d lost washed over me, I rolled onto my back, waving a hand in the direction of the door. “You can leave now.”
I forced my face to calm, maintaining the blank facade I’d trained myself to present for so many years. No tears, no hysterics. Right now I needed him to leave, and then I’d figure out what to do. Where to go.
As if he’d read my mind, he said, “You’re not going anywhere, Kat.”
His words jerked me out of my calm, but I refused to let him know. Instead I imagined a wall, block by block, surrounding me, keeping everything and everyone out. Keeping me safe, like I was before this craziness ever came into my life.
“We will finish your training, and then we’ll take Maddox out.” Arik’s footsteps strode to the door, and he snatched it open. “This has to be done, Kat. You may think I’m a monster, but I’m nothing compared to that male. When it’s over, I’ll take you to Sun, but until then, you’re mine.”
I didn’t respond, and he slammed the door shut in his wake. The sound rippled across the room, across my still body. Then the room settled once more into quiet.
The quiet before the storm. If I had a storm in me.
The tight clamp I’d forced on my muscles didn’t ease. It was the only thing keeping me from shaking apart, and I wouldn’t give Arik that satisfaction. I’d gifted him with my body, and he’d been lying all along. He’d given me a glimpse of a different life, a life where I belonged, where I could have someone of my own, love, happiness. Instead all he’d left behind him were the bitter dregs of betrayal.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, fighting to contain the pain, but it was the ache in my lower body that pulled me to awareness sometime later. I rolled off the bed, balling myself into a fetal position to ease the throbbing from Arik’s taking. My body, so stupidly new to sex, protested the activity vigorously. Funny how something that had been so pleasurable at the time could leave such painful consequences.
In the bathroom I turned the water as hot as I could get it before slipping into the shower. Only when I was beneath the spray did I allow my guard to fall. Only a little bit. For a few precious moments I didn’t have to be strong. Not yet.
Instead I raised my arms away from my body and lifted my face to the water, let it wash away the evidence of Arik’s possession, the pain of the memories, and the tears of disillusionment that poured down my face, leaving only cold, hard reality behind.
ChapterThirty
Sun
The scent of night-blooming jasmine permeated the evening air as I stepped into the King’s Garden. I stood for a moment, letting the surroundings wrap me in comforting arms. My father’s retreat had been one of my favorite places after settling outside Nashville, but tonight its magic seemed far away. The last twelve hours had been vile, terrible in a way I hadn’t experienced in a millennium. Rage and despair still banged a harsh rhythm against my rib cage, refusing to settle—not that they would, not for a long time. But the arrangements for Thomas had been finalized, and I could no longer wait to speak to Solomon. I had to convince my king of the need to act.
That need pulled me forward along paths lined by flowers and grasses luminous with the moon’s barely existent glow. I focused on my boots, on the close-cropped grass cushioning my steps, anything but what I would say. What I would have to do if my father refused to bend.
I rounded the turn into the central courtyard. My gaze fell on my father, and I stopped, taking a long look at the male who had led the Archai for hundreds of years before I was born. King Solomon sat on a bench to one side, his gaze concentrated on the phoenix statue spraying water into the air in the center of the quiet circle. Hair now silver with age fell back from a face that could easily have passed for fifty, not the fifteen hundred years my father had seen since birth. Rainbow eyes flashed in the dark, matching my own. A king of dignity, power, discipline. Courage.
At one time he had been all those things. Now…
Taking a deep, heaving breath, I moved into the heart of the garden.
Solomon turned his regal head and speared me with a knowing gaze. I refused to slow, refused to cow. I had not bowed for Solomon since the night Arik had sent his human with a message, nor would I now. Instead I stood, shoulders back, spine rigid, as rigid as the will of my father.
Solomon’s body went tight. “You brace for conflict, my son. Why?”
Solomon knew; I had no doubt. Would I develop a taste for these games when I took the throne? I sincerely hoped not.
I let out my breath as I settled into the seat beside him without invitation. The trickling water gave me focus when my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Why had it come to this? In all my long years of service to my people, I had refused my father nothing, yet here we were, at the crossroads of our past and future, and the outcome, I feared, was inevitable. My continued loyalty to my father king would mean my people’s death.
I knew which road I must take.
“The pyre is prepared.” Another breath. I turned to meet Solomon’s eyes. “I must tell the clan what happened to him.”
Silver brows rose. “You will tell them nothing. I gave my orders regarding this business; they did not change with the loss of one warrior.”
Agony forced my eyes to close briefly. I’d hoped, in vain, that my father would honor Thomas with the truth. “So you would let our people believe he died for no reason, just some careless act of his own making? Fate, perhaps? You would bury both Thomas and the need for justice?”
The king shrugged, the action stiff on his dignified frame. “Justice is overrated. The clan will believe the word of their king.”
“If you believe that, you don’t know your people anymore.” Tension pushed me to my feet. “Not only should the people know, they must know. War is inevitable. We must prepare if we hope to give our people any chance at survival. The battle began here”—I said, gesturing behind me to the door that led to our clan, to Thomas’s memorial pyre—“and if we refuse to stand, we guarantee our failure and the extinction of our people.” Believing anything else bordered on delusional. “We go to war.”
Solomon stared up at me, white-lipped with anger. “No, we do not. Our people need peace.”
