Page 75
“Laria . . .”
“And put this feud to rest. Or at least to bed, for a nap. Seriously, Torr. You have to see Kenton is on our side—”
“I don’t like him.”
“Fine! But you can be cordial to him. Besides, Charlotte and Alessandra are good friends.”
He shrugged. “Alessandra, I like. Despite her taste in men.”
They’d arrived on the street just below the two mansions. If they kept walking, they’d reach their temporary home; if they turned right, they’d arrive at Kenton’s doorstep. Straight ahead, Lawrence’s and to the right, Kenton and Alessandra’s. Which reminded him—
“He refuses to turn Alessandra, and yet she stays with him,” he pointed out.
“That’s different, and you know it,” Laria said, granting him no ground to stand on. “There are legitimate concerns with turning a Cheld. It’s never been done, and until Kenton has evidence it can be done safely . . .” Laria produced a frustrated sound in her throat that, for some reason, made him laugh.
“You sound like a wild boar.”
“And when is the last time you heard one?”
“It’s been a few years, I suppose.”
She’d already veered right, which was how he found himself begrudgingly standing next to his sister as Mary opened the ground-level door to the Henry Hutton house. Ushering them up to the living room, she asked if either of them required a drink, but Laria declined.
He followed suit. The drink they needed wasn’t one Mary could fetch.
“Laria.” Kenton rounded the corner, spying his sister first. “Alessandra isn’t . . .”
“We know,” his sister said. “She’s at Murphy’s with Charlotte.”
Kenton watched him as he would if they were still on the battlefield between their land. Wary. Ready. Certainly not friendly.
“I convinced Torr to come for a drink.” She said the last word with special emphasis.
Kenton’s eyes narrowed, his gaze as sharp as ever.
“I see.”
Nodding toward the red room, he followed them up to the fully stocked bar.
Kenton knelt down low, disappearing, and emerged from the small refrigerator with a bottle of what appeared to be sloe gin. He glanced at Laria, who nodded, and then poured three glasses of the deep red liquid.
“If Mary were to accidentally pour from that?”
Laria pulled her phone from her purse. “’Scuse me.”
Although the phone had been ringing, Torr found it awfully convenient he’d been left alone with Kenton.
“Cheers,” Kenton said tightly, lifting his glass.
“Sláinte,” he responded, drinking the entire cup of blood in one gulp.
“Been a while?”
“Yes. Too long.”
He looked into the clear blue eyes across from him, trying to reconcile the man he knew with the one standing at this bar in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. He remembered staring at this same man from across a battlefield. Morley had been in full armor, ready to do battle to steal Clan Karyn’s ancestral lands out from under them. It had come to nothing but a brief skirmish—one in a long line. The land had remained with Clan Karyn, to whom it belonged. And yet, he and Kenton Morley had tangled many more times over the years.
“Provins,” he said, remembering. “Fourteen seventy—”
