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“Do I need to explain survival to you, Pen? Kill or be killed. That is the world I have lived in for a long time. Ever since you were taken in by the Flagtons.”
“But...” She paused, her head shaking. “What of your father’s family? When you made it to England, did you never approach them? I had always imagined that you would. That they would take you in.”
He picked up the tankard of ale in front of him and took a long sip. Setting it down onto the table, his fingers sank to the bottom of the tankard and adjusted the turn of it precisely to his satisfaction. “I did approach them. It was ugly.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think? They refused to acknowledge me. Without any proof of who I am, I am nothing. Just a rogue ruffian with wild claims of parentage. I am nothing to the bloody lot of them.”
She blanched.
Proof.
He needed proof to take his birthright.
She recalled his father’s family was powerful—but had only heard hushed murmurs of it from his parents when they didn’t think she or Strider could hear them. Not that she’d ever fully understood what they were talking about when she and Strider were children. She hadn’t realized how important the proof was for him.
She cleared her throat, her look darting away from his face. “What did you do after they denied you?”
“I made my own way in the land. Made my own money. My own empire. And I’ve been doling out to the family exactly what they deserve. I’ve been running them into the ground—in every way I can, since they tossed me into a snowbank seven years ago.” His head shook. “They literally had three footmen grab me and toss me out their back door and into the snow. Not even the front door. They dragged me through the house to make sure I could see everything that I would never have.”
His hand on the table curled into a fist for a mere second before spreading flat and then picking invisible dirt out from the wood. His voice dropped to a deadly rumble. “I won’t rest until everyone in that family is a pauper.”
“How—how could you…” Her voice drifted off as her stomach churned, the quantity of food she’d just stuffed into her mouth expanding as it settled. His voice vicious, she had to take several breaths of air against the sudden fury in the air about him. The hatred in his face.
This wasn’t the person she knew.
Yet she was trying to understand. Understand exactly how Strider’s life had taken such a turn into darkness. Understand so she could find the boy—somewhere within his eyes—that she had once known.
A barmaid approached the table, another plate balanced on her arm. She set the food in front of Pen.
A moment ago Pen had felt like she could eat three more platefuls. Not now.
Not when everything Strider was telling her was threatening to heave the contents of her stomach upward. He was a murderer. Out for destruction. His soul lost to hell.
“She wanted more for you.” She could barely crack her lips open, the words coming out in a whisper.
“Who?”
Her eyes closed. “Your mother.”
“Is dead.”
“Do you remember what she always used to tell you?”
“I try not to.”
“I remember.” Pen opened her eyes to him, watching his face, searching his brown eyes for some spark of salvation—anything that would turn him back into the boy she’d once loved more than anything. “She said you were going to be the best of men. That was one thing I always remembered. That you would be the best of men.”
“She was wrong.” His eyes darkened, all emotion sinking away from his face. “And don’t look at me like you want it to be true, Pen. I am not the best of men. The only thing you’re going to find in me is darkness and demons and, if you look hard enough, the devil himself.”
She chuckled sarcastically. “The Den of Diablo.”
He nodded.
Her arms splayed out across the table, her fingers stretching toward him. “But none of this—what you’ve done—means that you still can’t do her memory justice and be the best of men.”
He scoffed, his left eyebrow lifting. “You’re living in magic and fairy tales if you think that, Pen. Some holes are too dark and deep. Something you wouldn’t know about.”
