Page 62 of Blood Bearon
“Unfortunately, it does,” he said quietly.
A sob ripped from her throat, and the tears Rachel had been so valiantly holding back finally fell. “Go,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Rach…” he said, his heart feeling like it had just been cleaved in two as he saw the pain he was inflicting upon her come home.
“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t. Just go, Khove. Just leave.”
He wanted to say more. To reach out and gather her into his arms, to hold her while she cried. Dammit, that was what he was supposed to be doing. He shouldbe therefor her! But even as he took a step forward, she recoiled from him.
Khove stopped dead, whatever hope he’d still had shattering into a million pieces. He’d had something good with her, and now a crazed Traitor and murderer was destroying it simply because he existed.
“I…” he stopped, hanging his head in defeat.
“Go, Khove,” Rachel said. “Go now, before I change my mind and arrest you for conspiring to commit murder.”
Whatever resolve he had left crumbled into dust at that pronouncement. Rachel was still crying, and the tears were coming harder now, but she was firm in her stance, no doubt drawing strength from her commitment to upholding the law. She had the righteous on her side and she knew it.
Khove didn’t. In this case it didn’t matter, because Khove was unlike any criminal she’d ever come across before, but Rachel wasn’t a true believer. Not yet, and so she still thought that a pair of handcuffs would hold him.
“Don’t go after him,” he said over his shoulder, turning to go. “It will only result in death. He’s not human, Rachel. Remember that.”
She refused to meet his gaze. “I know how to do my job,” she stated, looking at the ground.
Khove sagged in defeat, heading off into the darkness of the night, letting it envelop him, and matching the blackness he felt in his soul. Things had come so close between them, their partnership had been growing stronger by the day. But the fates had spoken, and they had made their choice.
It was never meant to be.
30
“What else would you have me do?”
Khove tried to contain his anger, for he wasn’t mad at the speaker, but the situation. “I don’tknow,” he growled, throwing his hands in the air. “There must besomeother solution, my Queen.”
Kaelyn, ruler of High House Ursa, stared back at him impassively. “Korred cannot be allowed to live. He has killed too many of our brothers and sisters already. I will not risk letting one of his power and ability escape back into the wild so that he can try again.”
Khove snarled in impotent fury, pacing back and forth in the newly-repaired Throne Room. He’d been talking to the Queen and House Ursa Council for an hour now, trying to convince them to come up with a non-lethal punishment. A way to imprison Korred for the rest of his days.
He’d begged and pleaded, cajoled and debated and now he was resorting to flat-out fury in an attempt to intimidate. Like all his options before, though, none of it was having a solitary effect, and he knew why. He didn’t believe what he was saying. Khove agreed with the Council.
But he had to try. For Rachel. She may never know it, but he’d decided to try anyway. She deserved that much from him.
The Magi spoke up now. “Khove, I have scoured the books, read every resource I have. I even contacted the Mage’s Council. They are all in agreement,” he said, his soft voice carrying across the distance from where the Council sat on their stone chairs, down to where Khove paced on the floor. “There is nothing that will hold a prisoner that can be defined as humane.”
“There must besomething!”he half-shouted. “Staking him out with uranium and other radiation simply isn’t an option. The humans dictate that their prisoners must be treated humanely. Dying of rad poisoning does not fit that definition, no matter how much the Traitor might deserve it.”
Silence followed. One or two of the Council members shifted uncomfortably, but none of them said a word. Khove glared at them one by one. Most stared back impassively, a few defiantly, but none backed down.
“Leave us,” the Queen commanded quietly.
Several eyebrows went up at the casual dismissal. It wasn’t like the Queen to treat her House like that. Khove stood still as the other Title Holders filed out of the Throne Room, leaving him and the Queen alone, minus her two bodyguards who stood in the shadows behind her chair.
“Khove,” Kaelyn said, descending from her throne. “What is going on here? Is there a problem with the mission I’ve sent you on?”
“No, I will finish it.” he said immediately.
His Queen lifted an eyebrow. She didn’t believe that was all there was to it, and she was right.
“The human—” he began.
