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I rub at my temples. I’m so tired. All I want to do is wrap myself around Rina’s warm little body and sleep until the next full moon.
A knock at the door sounds. “Who the fuck is that?” I mutter as Noé gets up to answer it.Is it more ale? Or better yet, my raven, begging for my presence? No, it’s another Cyrun male.
“What do you want, Gray?” Noé snaps, not letting him into the room.
“I wish to speak with the deve.”
“He’s busy.”
“Noé,” I say wearily. “Let him in.”
Gray is as exhausted as the rest of us, except he and I both know he carries more burdens than most, and it’s obvious that today they’re weighing particularly heavy on him. I gesture to Noé’s chair on my right and he accepts the invitation to sit.
“I came to say a few things,” he announces.
“You always have my ear, Gray, you know that.”
He gives me a terse nod. “First, I want you to know I had nothing to do with the daft events of this day.”
The possibility did briefly cross my mind, but I’d rejected it. Despite not being an official member of the Range, Gray had volunteered to go out on patrol and wasn’t anywhere near the stronghold when Rina was taken.
“And second, I want to plead for my brother’s life.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Noé exclaims.
Gray ignores him, keeping his gaze on me. “He’s young, Luka. Surely you remember what it’s like to want to please your parent. My mother poisoned his mind, and he was so easily flattered by a man as important as Teo.”
“Poisoned minds do not easily recover,” I tell him. “And if he’s such an easy target for flattery, what’s to stop it from happening again?”
“I will. I’ll stop it. I’ll take full responsibility for Crion and his actions in the future if you pardon him.”
Eldon laughs. “Pardon him? Just like that? I don’t think so.”
I hold up my hand for silence. “Have you spoken to him?”
Gray nods.
“And did he tell you what they had planned for my little bride?” I’d had the truth from Dumfries and Gore already, but I hadn’t bothered with Crion.
Gray’s expression somehow becomes grimmer. “Twenty-five lashes.”
Renewed ire boils in my blood. “Imagine what twenty-five lashes would have done to her.”
“Believe me, I have.”
“And yet,” the volume of my voice rises, “you’re here asking for mercy when Crion would have shown none.”
Gray bows his head briefly as if to fortify himself. “I haven’t come empty handed, Luka.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll return to the Range. You’ll be short on trained men.” He swallows hard. “But I have a condition . . . I’ll only train the young recruits until I’m actually needed in battle. I do not wish to be interacting with the warriors on a regular basis.”
A half-formed sigh comes out of my throat, but after the unthinkable betrayal he suffered at the hands of my father, I don’t blame him. Obviously the night I’d found Gray in the dungeons, tied down and being raped by one of my father’s men weighs heavier on him than me, but I’ll never forget it. It was the catalyst for so much change in this realm. I’d put my dagger into the perpetrator’s heart, freed Gray, and then gone upstairs to find my sire. He was merrily eating and drinking in the Great Hall as if he hadn’t ordered an attack he hoped would mentally and emotionally destroy my greatest rival for the deveship. I’d challenged the despicable bastard in front of everyone.
Gray extends his arm to me and we clasp wrists. I don’t, however, let him go. I pull him toward me and look him directly in the eye. “Crion will take fifty lashes before I agree.”
“Twenty-five.”
