Page 302 of Sky’s Edge

There was a good possibility he would not have fought, and instead, hidden to save himself.

“You could have told me,” Arnaud complained.

“You wouldn’t have been able to beat the truth serum if I did.”

“I had the potion to beat it,” he snipped.

“Which was fortunate, considering you also had to deny you murdered that child,” she fired back.

Arnaud seethed.

Tatra was seeing the errors of her ways in allowing this behavior from her son.

It was abhorrent, to be sure, but it kept him docile and eager.

She’d have to keep a much firmer hold on him in future.

She didn’t mention that because she never would, but also, regrettably, he wasn’t done speaking.

“And you went after the citadel for reasons I don’t get.”

That had just been for fun.

Destroying something (or attempting too, sadly, that had failed too) that Darynda had loved.

That Tanyn loved.

Desecrating her resting place.

She didn’t really mind that particular mission wasn’t accomplished.

Or she’d lost the beings she’d sent to accomplish it.

But she lamented the loss of the fighters that had been sent in.

It wasn’t easy getting your hands on battlecraft.

Arnaud wasn’t finished.

“Catla Truelock is a cossetted heiress, and somehow, she managed to survive a contingent of twelve of your assassins. Of course, we knew Tanyn,” he said his half-brother’s name like it tasted bad, “would survive. It was his mate we were after. And we didn’t get her.”

Considering he wasn’t letting this go (usually, her son had a very short attention span), also with practice, Tatra knew she just had to wait this out.

As she knew he would, Arnaud kept at her.

“And now the tapes and feeds are all clogged with news we’re murderers. I mean, I can’t believe you murdered my father.”

At this, he was pouting.

She probably should have brought him in on that.

They’d had no real relationship. Whatever affection Riland showed Arnaud was under Tatra’s control.

It was incredibly inconvenient that he kept developing a resistance to the drug.

Further, it had cost a fortune.

But Arnaud had genuinely liked the male.