“Let’s not,” I said flatly. “Ryker, let her go. Rynn, get your ass over here.”
Reluctantly, Ryker dropped his hand, but as usual, Rynn didn’t do what she was told and instead walked over to the wardrobe and pulled out a shirt from the bottom shelf. Without a flicker of modesty, she dropped the towel, giving us a view of her muscled back and perfect little ass.
Ryker muttered something before turning away, sitting rigidly in the chair next to mine. Wordlessly, I passed him my glass and he finished it off in one gulp before refilling it and passing it back to me.
“I’ll tell you what I was up to”—Rynn wrapped the towel around her hair and walked over to join us, grabbing the decanter from the table and drinking straight from it. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth—“if you tell me what the deal is between you and Draven. He told me you were an asshole. And you were cruel today.”
“Why do you care?” I asked a little too sharply.
“Usually people care about their friends and the people who are absolute pricks to them.” She took another drink.
“Fine.” I leaned forward and held my glass out. “But you tell your story first.”
“Nice try.” She snorted as she refilled my glass before leaning back in the chair and curling her legs up underneath her. “I’m not falling for that again.”
Ryker’s wolfish gaze bounced back and forth between us, but he didn’t say anything.
“The first time I met Draven, I was visiting the Sovereign House on official business and Queen Velika invited me to stay for a party she was throwing that night.” I rolled my eyes. Velika had always thrown stupid lavish balls. “She was trying to tempt me to her bed with Lucian, but even as adventurous as I am, I had no interest in that.”
“Shocking,” Rynn deadpanned.
A genuine smile graced my lips. She might be frustrating as all the hells, but I did appreciate her dry sense of humor.
“Despite what you think, I do have standards, and those two always made my skin crawl.” I wrinkled my nose just thinking about them. “But it kept me in Velika’s good graces, so I flirted and teased like someday they might convince me.”
What I didn’t say was that I probably would have slept with them if I’d thought there was something to be gained by it. Fortunately, it’d never come to that.
I took a sip of the liquor and enjoyed the way it burned down my throat while I thought about how to phrase the next bit. Warrick was one of the few things I refused to talk about with anyone.
“Someone had put me in a foul mood that particular time,” I said carefully, earning a snort from Ryker, since he knew exactly who I was referring to, but Rynn just furrowed her brows as she listened. “I needed someone to take out my anger on, and there he was. The perfect Moroi Prince everyone was so in love with. He was a spoiled brat, and it was evident to me that, much like his mother, he was a waste of space. While Velika guarded her desires quite carefully, Draven did not. Samara was at that event as well, and he was so obviously in love with her, it was painful to watch. The way he’d steal little glances when he thought no one was looking. For a heartbeat, his entire demeanor would change.” I chuckled. “He really made it too easy. Almost took the fun out of it.”
Rynn’s mouth pinched together. “Only you would see someone madly in love and think it was a great way to torment them.”
“We all have to find our fun somewhere.” I raised my glass before knocking the rest of it back. “At first, I entertained myself by watching how pathetically he hid his secrets, but then he said something. What, I don’t even remember, but it pissed me off. So then the game changed to how many carefully worded truths I could fling at him like little daggers and watch as they shredded his soul.”
Rynn stared at me for a long moment. “I understand why you might have hated him back then, but I know Samara gave you and the other Alphas a rundown of Draven’s situation. He was doing his best to survive while also trying to undermine not one but two cruel leaders with too much power. I would think that, given your own family history, you would cut Draven more slack now.”
“And I would think you’d be smart enough to see the difference in our situations. I was a child, and I still fought back. Draven went along with all the fucked-up shit his parents did well into his adulthood,” I said coldly. “But it seems your judgment is lacking as usual when it comes to the Moroi.”
Her jaw hardened. “You’re a real prick sometimes.”
“Most of the time, actually,” I said mildly. It wasn’t long ago that Kieran had said something similar to me, and my response to him had been far crueler than what I’d said to Rynn, so she would just have to get over it. I didn’t like being compared to Draven, and I liked talking about my family even less. They were dead, so what the fuck did it matter?
Matters enough that you have nightmares about it decades later.
A muscle along my jaw twitched. I didn’t want to think about my past anymore, especially with an empty glass in my hand.
“I told you mine. Your turn now.”
“A deal’s a deal,” Rynn agreed. “I want to fix that broken mirror beneath the Alpha stronghold, and I’ve been striking out, so I decided to have a chat with Erendriel.”
The glass cracked in my hand at the same moment Ryker exploded from his chair and snarled, “You did what?”
Rynn gave us both a look of pure boredom before taking another drink, then let out a satisfied sigh after polishing off the remaining liquor. “I had a lovely chat with the Seelie King. Got a few ideas to pursue.”
“You were under strict orders not to speak with him, and Samara knew this,” I said tightly. “Sooner or later, Erendriel will get free. Right now, his anger is largely directed at Samara and the Moroi. We don’t need him to also look at us.”
“Samara wasn’t there.” She shrugged. “So she upheld her end of the deal. And as for me, I’m not really feeling inclined to take orders from you assholes at the moment.”
