Page 97 of Broken Souls
“Ryo Shadow.”
My lips part in a soundless gasp, but then I quickly close them again, an insensitive question on my tongue. About whether he did what the person in the song did – suffered from depression until he committed suicide.
“It’s a beautiful song,” I say instead. “Did he write many of them?”
“A few, but that’s the only one I remember.” She stands, and the sadness in her eyes is beaten back by an explosion of cold anger. “Antonio killed him on his wedding day while I was trapped in the Plane of Monsters. I never got to bury him. I didn’t get to bury my only grandchild either because I ran off to go kill Aleric, half-cocked and full of rage.” Her eyes dart to my stomach. “And I almost aided in killing my next one.” Her gaze lifts, holding mine. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am, Micha –”
“You can fucking try.”
She stops with a small smile, a bit of pride in old green eyes. “I am sorry I attacked you. I misjudged your love for my son and for my family. I have tried to enjoy the peace of the last three decades, but the paranoia I developed in the time before, when we were at war with the Death Hunt and the Blood Fangs, when I lost child after child, with parts of them mailed back to me in boxes… I learned to trust no one but my family, and I raised my firstborn to value that same paranoia, thinking it would save him.” She shakes her head sadly. “But instead it is killing him.”
I still, my anger rising from the embers it’s been sizzling at. “He isn’t fucking dying over thi–”
“He threatened me this morning,” she cuts in. “Said if I ever said another negative thing about you, he’d sell me to Aleric. The same fucking Aleric who butchered over half my children, who raped me repeatedly, and stabbed me multiple times in the stomach after killing three of my kids damn well in front of me.” The fire in her eyes burns hot enough to compete with my flames. But then it cools as she looks at me softly. “Varius cares about you, Micha. He just made a mistake, and he’s paying for it.”
“No,I’mpaying for it. Varius didn’t pray to the gods, begging them to take his life or his magic, anything they wanted as long as they would save our child.” I raise my hands, forcing her to look at them. “It isn’t a mental block that’s stopping me. It was a trade Varius forced on me, and I will never be able to control magic on my own again.” I feel that truth in my fucking soul, and I clench my teeth shut to stop the pain that wants to escape on a scream. “So I don’t give a damn if he made amistake,” I continue. “His choice will affect me for the rest of my life, and there isnothinghe can pay that will measure up to that.”
“Not even if he suffers for the rest of his?”
“He won’t.” It’s been one day, and he’s already getting his dick wet. He’ll forget about me in a week. I never gave him any peace of mind, never gave him anything that he didn’t already have other than a vagina to hit anytime he wanted. Our relationship was too new. He was just getting comfortable with me. So he hasn’t lost anything but a toy to play with, and he will easily replace me with another.
Sau looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Do you know how hard it is for him to trust someone, Micha? For him to love anyone?”
“He doesn’t know what love is.”
“No, and he never will because he is firstborn. But your child will also be firstborn, and you will end up having this same conversation with her fiance. So will you tell him to hold on to his misery like you’re doing now, or will you try to convince him your daughter loves him as much as she is capable?”
“I will teach her what love is.”
“Youdon’t know what love is. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be shutting him out after one mistake.”
“He tortured me. That’s not something like forgetting our anniversary.”
“Talon lured you back on a day you weren’t supposed to be here, a day when all the boys were out. He wasn’t here when he brought down the wards, and none of us knew they could be lowered from afar. The suspects were either me or you, and you were the one kissing Antonio.”
“He forced me.”
“It didn’t look like it from where I was.”
“He took me by surprise! By the time I could even think to move, he was gone.”
“You could have shoved him away and thrown fire at his face, and I still would have thought you were with him. You would not be the first girl having a tat with her lover. The ward came down. The wolves attacked, and I know I was not the one who did it. You were the only other one there. And then Talon came back, and he told everyone you were the one to help Antonio take Khalid.”
“He punched a hole in my stomach.”
“Talon told us Khalid did it, and Varius thought he was about to lose not just a brother or the reaper but the last person he could trust.” She shakes her head. “I betrayed his trust by blackmailing you. He thought you did by being a mole for Antonio. Khalid was all he had left, and he did what he thought he had to do to save him.”
Not wanting to listen to her fucking logic, I snap, “Whydidyou blackmail me?”
An ironic smile curls her lips. “Because I didn’t want him to trust you.”
“You bitch.”I swing for her jaw. She twists her torso, moving the barest amount needed to get out of the way. I feel the heat of her skin as my fist passes but never touches. Hammering my arm to the side, I twist it at the same time so my knuckles will connect with her face.
She simply ducks and moves to the side.
Then rises again. Her foot kicks out to connect with my chest, but it stops an inch before contact. She poises on her other leg in perfect balance. “I’m not going to fight –”
I try to grab her leg so I can haul her to me with one hand and pummel her face in with the other. But she moves it out of the way, swinging it down and sideways, then up in a perfect arc to connect with my face.
