Page 67 of Greed: The Savage
He gave his head another wry shake. “And leave it to you, Addien, to hear my brother is a traitor to the Crown and betrayed his business and saw me released from my responsibilities at the Home Office as a commentary on the Ton.”
Addien pieced it together.
When the air between them took on the seriousness of before, Addien spoke. “That’s why they called you Mauley.”
“That’s why some still do.”
The insult hadn’t been in the staff stripping the marquess of his title. It’d been a nod to Malric’s ties to a traitor.
“I didn’t know that.”
He looked at her askance.
“Would it have made a difference?”
He sounded genuinely curious.
Addien considered and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “At the time, I don’t think it would’ve.”
And now he slid closer, gesturing her one way so he could resume his care of her.
Addien looked to where the provisions were and shook her head.I don’t need any more tending. It was on the tip of her tongue to say as much, but she didn’t. He’d already let her in and needed a shift in topic, considering what it had taken a man of his pride and secrets to share. She didn’t reclaim her seat forher as much as for everything he had shared. She still wanted to know more.
“Was the duke unscathed?” she asked as he rung out a cool compress and pressed it against her face.
His lips twisted in a hate filled smile. “The duke is always unscathed.”
“Well then, I think you should find some comfort in the fact that you will one day be duke and benefit from the same…” The rest of her response withered on her lips.
Hate burned from the depths of his eyes with a scorching intensity. She checked her arm for marks. So convinced it was her who he directed his wrath at. It took a moment to register that loathing belonged entirely to the man who’d sired him.
“I want nothing of the Duke of Calderay. Were it in my power to sever all ties and begin anew upon this earth with naught but what I could wrest from it with my own hands and blood, I would do so gladly. All that I do is for the sole purpose of thwarting him—and making him suffer.”
The haunted glimmer in his eyes was one she knew well. She had seen it in her own reflection, in windowpanes and mirrors, when the ghost of Mac Diggory came calling. Shadows born of cruelty and suffering haunted them both.
Addien chose her words with care as he set aside the cloth he had been using to bathe her face. This time, he plucked an ice cube from the bowl.
“It is far easier to say one would rather be born with nothing than to have truly been born with nothing.”
His fingers tightened around the ice until it shot from his grasp and landed in her lap. She retrieved the cold fragment and held it out to him.
Malric made no move to take it. “Ahh,” he purred. “You think you know so very much.”
“I know you have never been hungry,” she said. “You were not born not knowing your mother’s name—because she was some nameless whore—or your father’s, for there were too many possibilities. Hate him as you do, he yet has power and connections from which you have benefitted.”
His eyelid twitched—the telltale mark of displeasure.
“I do not judge you in your world, yet you judge me in mine,” he said, his whisper edged with steel.
“I am not judging you. I am speaking from a place of truth.”
His nostrils flared.
Addien sighed. “Malric, if your entire life is devoted to vexing your father, every choice and every provocation made solely to enrage him, then you know nothing of—”
He pounced, close enough that the words faltered on her breath. Framing her with his broader body, he held her fast in his gaze. “Nothing of what?”
“Suffering,” she answered simply.
