Callie scanned the room’s occupants until she saw a woman around two-score-and-five years behind the massive crowd. The crowd parted, giving the unknown woman a pathway from the door to Sin.
Her face flushed and dark brown eyes bright with tears, the noblewoman approached Sin with the quiet dignity of a queen. Her long, red dress was a stark contrast to the lady’s black hair and dark eyes. There was something oddly familiar about this stranger.
She stopped in front of Sin and gave him a glare of such loathing that Callie was amazed it didn’t cause him to disintegrate right before her eyes.
He didn’t move at all as he regarded the woman with the same contemptuous sneer.
“Damn you for killing my son. I wish you had died in my womb,” the noblewoman said cruelly. “Better I should have killed myself than ever given birth to a monster such as you.”
Callie gasped as she realized this was Sin’s mother and it was his similarity to her that she had noted as the lady crossed the hall...
Which meant the man last night who had tried to kill him was his own brother. Callie’s legs went weak with the knowledge.
Her black eyes lethal, his mother slapped Sin hard across the face, laying his cheek open.
Still Sin didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. Not even when his mother rotated the ring around on her finger in a hateful gesture to let all know she had cut his cheek on purpose.
“I demand justice,” the woman cried, turning to Henry. “I want this bastard to pay for what he’s done.”
“You would condemn your son, Countess, without a trial?”
Tears ran down the lady’s cheeks as she fought against her sobs. “I have no son. My only son died by the hands of a filthy killer.” Raising her hands like claws, she rushed at Sin who caught her by the forearms and held her back.
“I want you dead for it!” she shrieked in his face. “You’re despicable and vile. I wish to God I had killed you the very hour of your birth.”
His eyes blank, Sin still said nothing as he kept her from clawing him.
Henry ordered his guard to take the distraught woman from the room and to escort her to her chambers.
Callie moved toward her husband and reached up to touch the bleeding cut on his cheek.
Sin flinched from her as if she were a viper. “It will heal.”
“Some wounds never heal, milord,” Callie said as her heart ached for him. She couldn’t imagine a mother being more cruel to her child than what she had just witnessed. She could only guess at what other atrocities the woman had visited upon him over the years.
No wonder he had refused to speak of his mother last night when she’d asked him about her.
Sin glanced to Henry, then he turned and stalked back down the hallway toward the chapel.
Callie followed after him with Henry one step behind her.
Once Sin reached the chapel, the priest took one look at Sin’s angry visage, shrieked and ran from the room.
Ignoring him, Sin grabbed their wedding papers from where they’d been left drying on the altar and started for the fire in the hearth.
Henry quickly stepped into his path. “What are you doing?”
The rage on Sin’s face was terrifying. “I want this marriage dissolved. Now.”
“Sin...” the king’s voice was thick with warning.
“Step aside, Henry.”
Callie held her breath. She’d never seen Sin like this. This was the man who really could kill someone in their sleep. He was cold. Icy. His eyes filled with turbulent agony.
“You burn those papers and I will see you in chains.”
Sin gave him a hard, droll stare. “Think you that matters to me? If you’re trying to scare me, you will have to do better than that.”
