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“Please, sit down.” With the sweep of her hand, she indicated a specific chair.
He sat, lifted one leg and crossed his ankle over the opposite knee, then leaned back in the chair and looked up at her.
She sat across from him, on the sofa, and folded her hands demurely in her lap.
“Eve is my child. She is Raintree. I will not allow you to harm her, and I will never allow you to take her.”
“You aren’t leaving us any room for compromise.”
“You’re right, I’m not.”
“Then let’s say that—for the time being—I agree with you. I will leave Eve here with you, knowing you will continue to safeguard my child as you have done since before she was born.”
Mercy didn’t trust Judah. And with good reason. He had said, “for the time being.” Did that mean he intended to eventually claim Eve as his?
“Eve will stay here with me until she is an adult.” Mercy wanted to make sure Judah understood.
“We won’t argue over details of when and what. Not now,” Judah said. “I’m leaving this afternoon, and Eve will remain here with you.”
“But you plan to return.”
“Someday.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t leave?” he asked, his tone light.
“Don’t ever come back.”
“I’d forgotten how spirited you are.” His gaze raked over her. “Actually, I’d forgotten many delightful things about you.”
Mercy willed herself not to react to his taunts, to show no sign of emotion. She stood slowly. “I don’t see any need for you to stay a minute longer. If you’d like, I can arrange transportation for you immediately.”
Judah burrowed deeper into the chair, relaxing even more. “I’ll leave this afternoon. And I’ll arrange my own transportation.”
“Why stay?”
“I want to spend a few hours with my daughter.”
“No.”
“Don’t make this a test of power.” Judah rose to his feet and faced Mercy. “We don’t want things to get nasty, do we? Not in front of our daughter.”
“If I allow you time with Eve, do you promise not to harm her in any way? And that includes any kind of mental or emotional indoctrination. And will you leave here without her and never come back?”
“I promise to leave without her. And there is no need for me to try to undermine the Raintree side of Eve’s nature. The Ansara part of her may, for the most part, be lying dormant inside her, but one day it will become dominant and Eve will be a true Ansara.”
Mercy hated Judah for painting such a frightening picture of Eve’s future, but he hadn’t said anything that she hadn’t thought about a thousand times since her child was born.
“You may spend a few hours with Eve, but not alone,” Mercy said. “Sidonia will stay with her.”
“No, not Sidonia,” Judah replied. “If you don’t want her to be alone with me, then you can stay with her. With us.”
Terrebonne, Monday, 10:30 a.m.
Cael enjoyed breakfast on the terrace. Alone. Although he and Alexandria had consummated their relationship and she believed she would one day be his Dranira, he had no intention of being faithful to her now or in the future. He preferred sex with human women, because they were so easily controlled. He kept a small harem of bewitched females in a secret brothel, solely for his physical pleasure. Often he shared his whores with the young warriors he wanted to woo into his service.
As Cael drank a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, he glanced through the open doors and into the house, his gaze locking onto the television. The all-news channel was once again showing film of the raging fire that had swept through a Reno casino. Dante Raintree’s casino.
