The Destination Justifies the Path Forged
His ocean eyes were hooded by long shadows cast by his lumoons. With their bright colors muted, it should have been easy not to stare into them as he waited for me to do … something, but I couldn’t help myself. Now that he wasn’t Teo’s killer, they drew me in as surely as a wave retreating back to the sea, where it belonged, a part of a bigger whole.
This cave within the castle was so massive it was if it had been carved by giants. It should have made the man appear an insignificant speck in comparison. But Alobaz Hawxley, with his delicious manly sexuality, and the blood pulsing through his strong body that had no equal in its exquisiteness, was larger than life—even an immortal one. He was the physical embodiment of what a sänglure should be, the finest of specimens, muscled yet limber and fast, sculpted perfection.
Eventually, when I failed to provide whatever he expected of me, he scoffed. “Shouldn’t it be a good thing that I didn’t kill your brother?”
I backed away from him the length of the enchanted rope. The silk stretched some so that I was able to stand far enough away from him to resist his orbit—barely. Whatever force was responsible for drawing us together was nearly stronger than I was. The faithum-fueled object was just the reason for our physical closeness—a fine excuse—when I suspected I would want to be near him regardless.
Even though it seemed he truly hadn’t killed Teo, he remained my family’s archenemy, my subjects’ foe, the wicked conqueror of my world. All that made him, extremely decisively, my enemy.
I should still want to wipe the scourge that he was from the Opalese. I should punish him for the creation of the Domdurron Empire, which would not exist save for him. He was too competent, too skilled a fighter and a leader. He transformed the entire world in a way he had no right to do, all in his father’s name, yes, but that didn’t absolve him of his misdeeds. There was no forgiveness for sänglures like him—or for those like me. We were too good at killing to ever stop for long.
“You’ve been blaming me for something I didn’t do,” he said. “You stabbed me for it, for fuck’s sake, tried to carve my heart out. And now that you believe me that I didn’t do it, all I get is a, ‘Well, fuck?’”
I blinked, shoving aside the brutal relief that he hadn’t been the one to kill my brother, and gathered my defenses around me like a shield. “What do you expect, a parade with dancers and wizards shooting magic out of their asses?”
“Obviously not. Their robes would get in the way. But an apology would be nice.”
I snorted obnoxiously. “An apology? You’ll die of natural causes before I apologize to you.”
“Sänglures don’t die of natural causes.”
My mouth tipped up in an, Uh-huh.
He laughed darkly. “Of course. Why would I expect you to give a fuck about the harm you caused?”
My head jerked backward. “The harm I caused?”
“Yeah, Velle, the harm you caused.”
My mouth dropped open as I searched for the foulest insult I could engineer.
“Who told you I killed Mateo?”
My mouth snapped closed.
“You said it was someone you trusted, someone beyond reproach. So? Who was it? Who blamed me?”
My thoughts raced. Rafaela and Alonso had been so certain that I never doubted. I didn’t know who their spy was who’d pinned Teo’s murder on Alobaz, but that hadn’t mattered at the time. Alonso would never lie to me, not about anything. Rafaela might lie to me if she had very good reason, but she would never deceive me about my brother’s death. That was a line not even Rafaela the Ruthless would cross.
She was fond of saying, The destination justifies the path forged, but never when it came to our family’s survival. Everything Rafaela and Alonso did was for the strength of the family. Though born a Tulon, Rafaela’s priorities had long aligned with those of the D’Arcos.
My parents believed that Alobaz had killed Teo. That made either their spy a liar, when the person had to know it would precipitate their death in a horrible way, or Alobaz a liar—the more likely scenario, really.
I sidled to one side of the lumoons so I could better study his expression. “How can I be sure you aren’t lying to me?”
His eyes widened before narrowing dangerously. “Are you scorching serious right now?”
“Deadly.”
He spun around, muttering under his breath. “I don’t fucking believe it.” He tossed his hands in the air, the rope tugging me closer. “This scorching woman! I should’ve sentenced her to death and been done with it.” He shook his head, his thin braids plonking against the rest of his tied-back hair. “Fuck!”
“Jeez, okay, okay. Don’t go getting your britches in a tangle.”
He faced me. His ocean eyes sloshed like a storm. “You are unbelievable, you know that?”
At hearing his disappointment, my heart thudded, something it shouldn’t be doing, not for any reason, and certainly not for him. I bared my teeth in a brittle smile.
