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Aidan peeked one eye open, scanning her face. “You’re kidding me.”
“But we can’t be talking about the same man. What are the odds?”
Aidan sat up and rested his back on the headboard. “When it comes to Faieara? Pretty damn high, apparently. I served on a ship calledMarada, captained by a demon named Sebastian. Sebastian is now mated to one of the Faieara Princesses, Anya, or rather, Analia. We call her Anya for short. Sebastian’s brother Cale is mated to your Queen, Kyra. Ethanule was also on the ship with us.
Onnika was rendered speechless, dizzy with the realization that her people had survived the invasion. For so long she’d craved information, any information…gathering none. Now she was getting firsthand knowledge. She remembered Kyra and Analia, daughters of the king, along with their sister Nadua. Uncle Ethanule had worked as a guard at the castle. On the day of the Kayadon invasion, the princesses were spirited away. Later, so were Onnika and Caryn…thanks to her uncle.
Onnika hadn’t thought of that day for a very long time. Her mother had begged her uncle to find safe passage off planet for her and Caryn, believing, since the King was sending his own daughters away, that it was the only way to save her children. “When the Kayadon attacked,” Onnika told Aidan in a detached voice, “Uncle Ethanule found us a shuttle and sent us away. I watched from a porthole as those horrid ships bombed my planet. My people. At the time, I was old enough to understand what was happening. Caryn? All she could do was cry for our mother and cling to me in fright.”
Aidan urged her on with his caring expression.
“Though I was just a child, I was old enough to care for her on my own. But I was still too young to fly, so Uncle Ethanule put the ship on autopilot and set a course for a planet called Veya, where we should have found shelter with the Veyans. Unfortunately, we found nothing but death there. I suspect those who invaded Evlon had found Veya first. Someone had, in any case. I can’t imagine they would have destroyed themselves so thoroughly.”
“I’m so sorry. How did you manage, all alone?”
She laid her head back on his shoulder, tucking it under his chin. “Some dwellings on Veya still held stores of food, so we waited there, hoping for rescue. We waited years. We knew nothing of farming, and after a while what was left of the preserved food was either running low or going sour. We started to survive on grains and what little we could forage from the forests. I’m still haunted by how thin Caryn had grown by the end.”
She shuddered. “When travelers finally came, friends to the Veyans who had no knowledge of what had happened there, I was wary of them, but Caryn was certain we should go with them. We certainly couldn’t stay on Veya. By this time, I’d grown to rely on Caryn’s magical ability. She always chose the correct path for us. So we went. But it was I who decided to trust these strangers more than I should have. I told them what I could do and the next thing I knew, they took us to a slave market and sold us to the highest bidder. The one consolation was that we remained together, but that was the first time we were betrayed.”
“But you managed to get away?” His voice was stilted and rough, like he’d spoken through his teeth.
“We always did…eventually. It seemed every time we fell in with a new group, allowed ourselves to trust, they either sold us or tried to exploit us in some way.” Propping up on her elbow, she noticed Aidan’s expression had tightened. She didn’t need magic to sense how saddened he was by her story. Clearing her throat, she added airily, “Rinse and repeat, and the rest is history.”
“I fear there’s much more to it than that,” he said. “I despise the difficulties you must have endured. I want to burn the bastards who sold you. Anyone who could be so cruel to children deserves a prolonged and painful demise.”
She shrugged, though his words touched her. “In the end, I believe it was for the best. I believe Caryn’s instincts were correct. If we hadn’t gone with them that day, who knows what would have happened to us on Veya. We might have starved to death, or been found by an even more ruthless bunch.”
“More ruthless than those who would sell two young girls with no concern for their wellbeing?”
“At least they never harmed us.”
“Can the same be said for those who bought you?”
She glanced away. “We all have a path to follow. Mine has only made me stronger. Through trial and error, I honed my powers more quickly than I would have under the peaceful rule of Evlon. Though I could not always be in control of our situation, I taught myself to read the true desires of others based on their intentions. I learned when to back down from a fight, when to avoid one altogether, and when to issue a challenge. I discovered how to subtly sway someone to do as I wished without them even knowing it, and most importantly, I learned how to protect Caryn from the worst of it all.”
Aidan flinched, as though imagining the horrors she might have endured.
She placed her hand on his cheeks and brought his gaze back to her. “If I had it all to do again, I wouldn’t change a thing, because a single deviation from my path and I might never have met you.”
His eyes grew so fierce and intense, she almost had to look away. He hooked her waist with his thickly muscled arm and pulled her tighter against his chest. “I wish I could have spared you every painful moment you might have suffered on your way to find me, but at the same time, I know it has shaped you into who you are today. And in a way, I am grateful for it, because it has made you into the woman I love.”
She gasped and blinked up at him several times, her vision watering. “I…I love you, too.”
He pushed her back onto the mattress and claimed her lips in a tender, yet searing kiss that instantly stole her breath. Abruptly, he pulled back, studied her for a moment, then pushed off the bed to stand. She was a little dismayed by his sudden exodus…until she read his intention.
Aidan crossed to his desk and paused, feeling that old wound in his chest begin to throb. But Onnika had shared some of her pain with him, and she deserved his honesty in return.
Retrieving the photograph of his deceased wife and son, he returned to stand next to the bed and handed it to her. His lips quirked when she didn’t look surprised to see it. He should have known she’d go snooping through his things. He was surprisingly unbothered by the fact.
She ran her fingers over the child’s image. “This is your son?”
He nodded gravely.
“And this woman? Is she your…wife?”
“She was. This was my family, long ago.”
