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I eye him skeptically. “You didn’t seem this way when you first introduced yourself to us. Why reveal this to me now?”
Kaspias grunts his acknowledgment to a passing sentinel. In this silence, I look down at my hands covered in blood and strips of skin. My body still shivers from the dissipating adrenaline. And I still feel the heartache of being back on that beach. Dessin must be out of his mind with confusion and panic. They’ll all be wondering why I acted like a feral animal being cornered.
“I can’t always show my true colors,” he admits.
“Maybe you can prove it then? Help us get out of here.”
“Why did you kill a sentinel?” he inquires, moving on as if he didn’t hear my proposal. “You appeared to be in a frenzy when I showed up.”
The muscles in my back shudder. There was so much blood. I dissociate from the memory before it pulls me under like a riptide.
“Something brought me back to a memory I’d rather never relive.”
“What triggered it?”
“Blood.”
“Blood?”
“Dessin’s blood.”
He raises his chin.
“I thought I had moved past it, I guess. But it’s as if I was back at that place all over again…” I shake my head, burying the thought, the memory, deep, deep, deep in the well of my mind. I shouldn’t even be discussing this with him. Not until I know his true intent.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks innocently.
My eyes shrink to small slits.
“You still don’t trust me.”
I stare without blinking as we turn another corner in this endless hallway.
“No,” I answer truthfully.
“Tell me.” He pulls my damp body closer to his armored chest. “Do you want to marry my brother one day?”
The intimacy of that question throws me off.
“I do.”
“Then one day, I’m to be your brother-in-law, right?”
I nod while swallowing down my discomfort.
“Family?”
I nod again.
“Then we should trust each other.”
I look up at him until he redirects his attention to my face, tightening his jaw as he waits for my reply.
“I want nothing more than for that to be the case,” I finally say through a pent-up exhale.
Kaspias’s blackened eyes glimmer in the strange red and yellow lights overhead. And I can see a future with him in it. One where Kane spends time with him, making new memories that they were robbed of as children. It warms my heart to be able to assist in making this happen for them.
“All I’ve ever wanted was a family,” he says quietly.
