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“No one was closer to Albert. He was a necessary ally.”
“That’s how they escaped the explosion.” I finally understood how they had known the precise moment to flee. “You tipped off Bjorn, and he got them out of there.”
“All it took was Bjorn telling Albert your father had come for his head. Then he becameverycooperative and more than willing to let Bjorn shepherd him out of harm’s way. He trusted Bjorn fully. That was his mistake. In thinking anyone bound into service against their will can ever be loyal. Time hadn’t dulled the edges of Bjorn’s hatred. It honed it to a razor’s edge. One all too willing to cut Albert’s throat given half a chance.”
“Let me guess. You gave him that.”
“Bjorn was a frost giant. A soldier. A conqueror. Your grandfather reduced him to a dancing monkey.”
“I, for one, never saw him dance. But it seems like you were pulling his strings just as hard.”
“All I had to do was set him free. The rest? He viewed it as a debt of honor I was happy to collect.”
“If Bjorn was working with you, why didn’t you snatch the director up in Florida?”
The frost giant had hidden the director away in a cabin on Lake Okeechobee, but we hadn’t seen signs of Luca.
“Albert was no use to me half dead. For what I have in mind, I wanted him hale and hearty.”
“You don’t think you’re going atadoverboard with your vendetta?” I kept a wary eye on the director, whose soulless gaze was giving me heebie-jeebies. “Why not kill him and be done with it?”
“Death is too quick, too easy. To destroy a person, you start at the top and work your way down. To the roots. You rip them out, burn them to ash, then salt the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again.”
“How thorough of you.”
“You came barreling after me to save your father,” she mused, “but not your grandfather.”
“You’re a smart woman.” I returned her earlier shrug. “You know the director’s not worth my tears.”
“He wasn’t always like this.” She swept her gaze over him. “He was kind, once. He loved me.”
“He loved what you could give him,” I corrected her, “right up until you couldn’t.”
Fae fertility rates were abysmal, and children were rare, but Luca had been born a Guardian of Ish’ran. Her god—also known as Earl—granted each of his guardians one female child in exchange for a single coupling with their counterpart, a Brother of E’rin’t. But the director had seduced Luca into bearing his children, and her god wasn’t happy about it. He refused to bless their union, and none of their children survived more than a handful of days. When it became clear she couldn’t give him the heirs he craved, he left her without looking back to pursue Calixta in the hopes of producing a daemon/black witch child.
“You spoke with Mother, I see.” She curled her upper lip. “I should have let the compound crush you.”
“Probably,” I agreed, checking on Blay from the corner of my eye. “Why didn’t you?”
“Your father bound me.” She looked puzzled. “He didn’t tell you?” She cocked her head. “I can’t lay a hand on you. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” She chuckled then. “Perhaps he can’t recall. His mind was a twisted spiral when I found him. All he did was weep for his wife and his daughter. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed with him. I was certain I had to be wrong. That he couldn’t have been the one child strong enough to have survived while my babies died in their cradles.”
“Love isn’t a weakness.”
“You didn’t used to believe that.” She flicked Blay a glance. “You might disbelieve it again in the future.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“I thought about adopting you.”
“What?” The abrupt change of topic made my head spin. “I didnothear you right.”
“You were a beautiful child. Talented. Malleable.” A gleam lit her eyes. “Desperate for love.”
Culture shock had been leaving a home with parents who lavished me with affection for the sterile manor and a grandfather I didn’t know, whose sole objective was to hammer me into a shape that pleased him.
“What stopped you? The story I killed my own parents with reckless juvenile magic?”
“I let myself imagine what it might be like, to raise you in my image.” Her smile turned cruel. “Then to show Albert the girl who had been meant as a reflection of him had turned into a mirror of me.” She exhaled. “But then I saw in you the same core of determination that had begun to wither in your father, and I accepted that you would become a casualty, the same as my children had been.”
