AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He might’ve hated his father, but at least he’d had a twisted logic in his heinous ways. His younger brothers, apart from Rezal, hadn’t had anything but unearned ambition and malice to recommend them.
They’d killed countless beings. They would’ve killed more if they’d been better at it.
Without a word, Taryn and Rezal each gulped down another glass.
The silence stretched between them.
“Not that I’m judging, but...” Taryn began. “By your talons?”
Rezal sighed. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? It’s insulting to think I’m that lousy of an assassin. If I wanted them dead, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“I had to make sure.” Not because he mourned those three wastes of space, but because he didn’t want Rezal’s Light to be more tarnished than it already was. Taryn tilted his head to the side. “Whydidn’tyou kill them?”
They’d deserved it.
“Because I didn’t want the throne.”
Taryn huffed a sad laugh. “That’s right. I guess congratulations are in order...great ZavorianRohin.”
With their father and brothers dead and Taryn staying as far away from the throne as possible, the responsibility to lead fell on Rezal’s shoulders.
He would become the next Zavorian Rohin, feared in all the Nine galaxies and beyond. It was a fate Taryn didn’t wish on his greatest enemies.
“Don’t,” was all Rezal said. He sounded tired, all of a sudden. “Don’t call me that.”
Taryn understood. The weight. The responsibility. Righting wrongs you didn’t commit–if that’s how Rezal wanted to reign. He couldn’t be sure.
But for this one time, he would let his brother be. “Then how did they die?”
“Guess.”
The ambronin was definitely working its way into Taryn’s system. The Zavorian in him had come out in full force.
“On a dangerous mission?” Taryn asked.
“Come on, you can do better. They ran away from anything resembling an actual job, you know that.”
“Your people revolted?”
“Sadly, no.”
“They...killed each other?”
“Wrong again. Though not for lack of trying. I found one of them at the bottom of a lake once, hands and feet tied to rocks. Had about two minnans of air left in him.”
“You should’ve waited out the clock, as Terrans say.”
Rezal shrugged. Wait...shrugged? That was such a Terran thing to do, how could he–
“No,” Taryn whispered.
Rezal licked his fangs. “Yes.”
Taryn slumped back in his seat, mirroring his younger brother. Everything clicked into place. All those bits and pieces of information that had been floating around in his head for the past mon.
Finally, an answer. “That’s why you wanted information on me and me alone.”
Because he was the closest thing resembling a Zavorian they had on Quillon. The one who’d found a Lightmate. The one who would have succumbed without her.
