“We’re the last of House Sethrak, Zavin.” His voice drops, reaching for something softer. “The same blood. The same—“ He stops, starts again. “You remember when we were young.” A breath. “The tutors. Those cargo tunnels below the residential tier, when we used to hide down there for hours and he never once thought to look.”
“You want to talk about blood?” My voice came out low, scraped raw. “Selin was House Sethrak. And you killed her.”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
I remember a smaller Kazren pulling me by the wrist through a service duct too narrow for either of us, laughing so hard he couldn’t finish the sentence he was trying to say.
That male is dead. He died somewhere between here and the throne he wanted.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks at me like he’s genuinely asking. “You’d turn on your own family for a human?”
His voice cracks on the last word. My heat-sensing pits register the sharp rise in his body temperature, sweat breaking along his hairline, the sour edge of adrenaline cutting through the confidence he’s trying so hard to wear. His eyes dart around, counting bodies, searching for the mistake in the trap.
He’s sweating through the lie, throwing our childhood at me like it still means something. He’s not the same youngling. Neither am I.
The moment he ordered Father’s enforcers to drag Miro from my quarters and place her at Father’s mercy, he stopped being my brother.Blood hadn’t mattered to him then. Neither did the House. Neither did me.
He’d looked at the female I loved and seen nothing more than leverage.
Brothers don’t do that.
Enemies do.
I spent years believing I was facing the most dangerous male in House Sethrak. Standing here now, all I see is a coward who let Father fight his battles until there was no one left to hide behind.
Something shifts behind Kazren’s eyes. Whatever he reads on my face strips away the last of his confidence.
Kazren’s fist catches the side of my jaw. My teeth slam together hard enough to send pain through my skull, but it barely registers. Kazren threatened my female. Nothing else exists except stopping him. He’ll keep plotting, twisting, working behind my back. He’ll keep exploiting the one good thing that’s ever happened to me.
I throw my fist into his stomach. He folds, sucking for breath, and I strike his jaw before he can recover. Every blow carries another memory with it. Selin. Nyssa. My operatives burned, their covers destroyed. Every lie. Every manipulation. Miro dragged from my quarters and thrown at Father’s feet like she was nothing more than another bargaining chip.
He recovers fast. His fist drives into the wound Father opened beneath my ribs and agony tears through my side, hot blood soaking the front of my shirt. I catch a fistful of his jacket and drive him backwards into the nearest cargo container.
The impact dents the alloy with a deafening crash that echoes through the bay. He spits blood in my face and I slam my fist into his face. Bone crunches beneath the force as his nose shatters.
Blood sprays across us both. He swings wildly, catches the side of my head, drives a knee into my stomach, and for the briefest instant the world narrows to pain and the taste of copper filling my mouth.
Kazren stumbles sideways, blood pouring from his face, and for one impossible heartbeat I think he’s finally finished. Then his eyes lock onto Miro. He throws himself towards her, one blood-slick hand reaching for her wrist. Something inside me tears loose. I catch him before he takes two steps, driving my shoulder into his ribs hard enough to lift him off his feet. He slams into the deck with a grunt that rattles through the bay, and I fall on him with every ounce of restraint finally gone.
I go down with him before he can scramble away, my knee pinning him to the floor while my fist rises again. Blood pours from his nose and mouth. One eye is already swelling shut. Years of swallowing my anger, years of measuring every word around him, years of believing I had to stay one move ahead or lose everything — it all pours into my fists until I can no longer separate one strike from the next.
It still isn’t enough. I draw my arm back one last time.
Slim fingers close around my wrist, light, gentle and certain. “Don’t let this death be on your conscience.”
The fury burning through me breaks apart because she’s right. My brother’s death would be the final taunt I’d live with for the rest of my days. I don’t want that for me. Or her. I won’t let my brother come between us again. The tension drains from my arm, my claws sliding back as I stagger to my feet and stand over him.
Kazren laughs through a mouthful of blood. “Look at you. Pussy-whipped. The great Underlord, brought to heel by a human bitch.”
Kazren isn’t a brother anymore. He isn’t even an enemy. He’s simply a broken male lying at my feet. “I’m finished being angry at a coward.”
I bring my boot down against his temple. His head snaps sideways and he goes still. Alive. Unconscious. Finally, blessedly silent.
I climb off him and stand, chest heaving, blood dripping from my knuckles. Resh’s boots ring against metal as he crosses the bay with four enforcers behind him, his eyes moving between Kazren’s unconscious body and whatever’s left of my face. He doesn’t ask if I’m all right. His eyes drop once to the blood soaking through my shirt at the ribs, then lift back to mine.
“Put him in the maximum-security holding cells beneath the House. Round-the-clock guards. He answers for every name he sold.” I look down at what’s left of my brother. “Summon every family he betrayed. They’ll decide what’s owed.”
My enforcers drag Kazren to his feet as he regains consciousness. Blood runs unchecked down his face, dripping onto the worn plating beneath him. One eye is already swollen shut. The other lifts to mine, and the calculation I’ve always found there is gone.
