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color=" height="0em" width="1em" align="justify">“But her mother has,” Azir snapped back, his grating tone rasping against Abram’s nerve endings. “She committed adultery against me in her false marriage to another man. She stole my son and turned his heart against me even as she and her American courts ripped from me my right to have him returned to me. ” Azir’s expression twisted with fanatical fury. “My precious Marilyn. She turned Khalid against me, and because of him, you have turned against me. I blame her for the atrocities Khalid has committed against God in his sexual depravity and I blame her for the deaths of your brothers. And her daughter will now pay the price. ” He was screaming. Staring back at Abram, the rage infecting not just his sanity, but also his control over himself.
“They were no brothers of mine!” As far as Abram was concerned, this was the last straw for Azir. He would never again claim blood relation to Azir or to the bastards who nearly killed him and Khalid. The same two men had created the situation Abram now found himself in. “Had they still lived when I claim the province from the King’s emissary, then I would have ordered their death’s myself. ”
Azir glared back at him, his expression working furiously, his face brick red with fury. The old bastard had never been rational where Ayid and Aman were concerned, no more than he had been rational where Marilyn was concerned. Rational or sane.
“You and Khalid were responsible for the deaths of their wives and still you would hate them for their retaliation?” Azir questioned him incredulously, as though he himself had had nothing to do with their vocation or their wrath. “They lost what they held dearest. Chaste, faithful wives and you bemoan a whore who willingly shared her body between you and Khalid as though she were no more than a bitch dog in heat? I should have turned the two of you over to the Matawa the moment I discovered your perversion instead of believing that you would learn your lesson with your wife’s death. ”
Abram felt the clawing, black ice he continually fought beginning to build, to overtake him. That dark, inner core freezing over, obliterating honor, morality. He stared at Azir and all he could see was the bastard’s blood on the floor, sinking in, staining the stone and forever marking his sins.
How easy it would be to kill him, Abram thought without so much as a hint of guilt. But killing him now would only cause more problems than it would fix.
He was aware of Azir watching nervously now. Abram could only stare, his entire being centered on not killing the evil old bastard.
He couldn’t trust himself to speak, to move. Not just yet. Not until he could wipe away the image of his hands wrapped around Azir’s throat, his bloated, fanatical expression slowly turning blue.
“Forgive me, Abram. ” Azir suddenly spoke nervously as though realizing how close to death he was coming. “That was never an option. Never would I see you turned over to the authoritie”
Too little. And he would have preferred that if only he could have kept Lessa safe all those years ago.
“In three weeks the king’s emissary will arrive to take your vow to oversee the lands and return to our family the payments they froze so many years ago. Before that day, I give you leave to bed the daughter of my faithless wife. Her bastard child is my gift to you until that day. I have spoken with Tariq and given him leave, nay, I have ordered him to assist you however you wish in the enjoyment of her corrupt body. Once you have given the emissary your vow, you may escort her back to her mother, or if you so choose, you may have her as the first addition to your own harem. ”
To his harem?
Abram could feel his stomach recoiling sickeningly. In what demented fantasy did his father ever believe he would actually give that vow and remain here to allow Ayid and Aman’s legacy to continue to grow?
“Do not betray me again, Abram. ” Azir’s voice was hoarse as he spoke. “Betray your king if you must and leave to join your brother and your whore when it is done. The account is held until your vow is given. It will be mine, or what happened to your precious Lessa will seem a blessing compared to the hell that bastard sister of Khalid’s will know. I beg of you, do not test me in this. ”
If he had to stand here another moment and listen, then he might lose the last hold on his murderous temper.
Turning, Abram stalked from the room Khalid’s mother had once shared with his own mother for a short time. His own suite was above it with a private entrance to the secured quarters that had once held Azir’s harem.
Abram moved up the stairs with a deliberately calm pace. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides while the tightening of his teeth actually had his jaw aching with a hard burn from the stress of the pressure.
He needed to regain control. He needed to still the rush of adrenaline and come down from the high of the black icy fury that had filled him while he was with Azir.
He had to do it before he made it to his suite, before he saw Paige.
Because there was another side of the black ice.
There were consequences to the thaw of that icy rage.
And if he didn’t get a handle on it, then it would be Paige that felt the full force of it.
6
The other s
ide
of black ice.
Abram had been forced to learn to hold back that killing,murderous rage the day he found his mother beaten to death, and knew it had been Azir’s fists that had killed her.
He remembered feeling it. Freezing, like shoving his entire body into an icy black nothingness and forcing himself to stay there rather than trying to find the man he called father to shove the knife his mother had given him straight into his black heart.
How many times over the years had he wished he had done exactly that?
Retribution would have been taken. He would have been punished severely, maybe even killed himself. But had he taken that punishment then so many other lives may have been saved.
