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"I've been out tonight," she says at last. I say nothing, unwilling to interrupt. Whatever she has to say, it's about to come out. "I met with my father and my brother. Nero."
I dead-head a rose with a decisive snip of my shears. "I see."
"My father still refuses to depose my brother in favor of me," she goes on, and then waits for my reaction.
I stand up straight from the bush I've been leaning over and look at her. "But you expected that," I say slowly, reading her face.
She gives a small smile. "Perhaps even hoped for it. It gives me an excuse to escalate, you see. But…" Her face goes grave."Aurora, you need to promise me something. You need to work hard on your self-defense lessons with Lyssa. Because if the unthinkable happens—if I fail, which I won't, but…if I do…" She pauses, as though even admitting the idea of failure is painful to her. "If Nero comes to claim you again, you need to kill him. Because if you don't, very soon after he takes you back, you will wishyouwere dead. He's an animal. There's no trace of humanity left in him. Your innocence won't give him pause like—" She breaks off.
"Like it does you?" I say after a moment.
Hadria is very close to me now, so that I have to look up into her face. She reaches out to brush an errant curl from my cheek. "Yes," she says simply.
"May I ask you something?" I venture finally.
Hadria tenses, her expression shuttering closed. But she nods for me to continue.
"Why do you and Nero hate each other so much?"
For a moment I fear she'll retreat back into silence. But to my surprise, she sinks down on a stone bench, gesturing for me to join her.
"You should know the truth," she says heavily. "Your life has been swallowed up by my feud with my brother. You deserve to understand why."
I sit beside her, breathless with anticipation. Never before has she spoken so openly. As I study her profile, I am struck again by her cruel beauty.
Dangerous, yet difficult to resist.
"From the time we were children, Nero was groomed to lead the Family. As the eldest, it should have beenmybirthright. But..." She trails off, jaw tight.
"But you were born a woman," I finish softly.
Her eyes flash. "No matter what I did, my father saw me as weak, unfit to rule. No matter how I strove to prove myself, it was never enough." She laughs bitterly. "Even now, with an empire of my own, he still believes Nero is the rightful heir—not because he's in any way suited to it, but because he has a worm between his legs."
I do understand her rage, which is unmistakable, though icy. Her relentless pursuit of power, her refusal to bend to any man's will…I get it. In fact, she represents the very same freedom I crave. The freedom to live by my own strength.
To never again be at the mercy of another person's whims.
"I'm sorry," I murmur. Before I can second guess myself, I place my hand over hers where it rests tensely on her knee. She inhales sharply but doesn't pull away. Surprise flickers across her face, followed by another unreadable emotion.
She studies my face, as if trying to make sense of me. We stare at each other as the air seems to hum between us, electric and alive.
And then Hadria clears her throat and glances aside, leaning away a little on the stone bench. The spell is broken.
"When I realized my father wouldn't budge on Nero, I left. I made a new life for myself, living on the streets—that's where I met Lyssa. She taught me how to take care of myself. To fight. Towin. That's why," she adds, fixing me with her gaze again, "I wanted her to teach you, too. Because she's better than me atthat sort of thing. Not saying I'm unskilled in any way," she says with a laugh as she sees my eyebrows go up, "but Lyssa is a born warrior. Me, I'm more of a strategist."
"Like a General," I say. "In the army."
Her smile suggests that she likes that idea. "And so with my gift for strategy and Lyssa's natural talents, the two of us started to become known as…well, as fixers, I suppose. We were the people you came to when you had a problem. In those days, it was small things. Local store owners might ask us to take care of regular shoplifters. Or we'd act as protection at underground lesbian events. But one day, Mrs. Graves came to us. Her daughter had been killed, and she knew exactly who had done it—but the man was in a gang. He had a score of witnesses putting him somewhere else at the time, and so the charges didn't stick. She asked us to give her vengeance."
"And you did," I say, entranced by the story.
Hadria inclines her head. "We did. And Mrs. Graves took us in after that. Housed us. Fed us. Mothered us, I suppose."
"What happened to your own mother?" I ask without thinking.
Hadria stares at the flowers for a long moment before saying, "She died when I was young. She was collateral damage in a hit against my father."
"I—I'm so sorry?—"
