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The harder I stared at the horror written all over their faces, the more of them I really saw, like the way London reflexively moved toward Vivienne and the way Nick, Caleb, and Tobias all looked to Ryth to gauge her emotions. It made me feel that desperate longing even more.
They loved my sisters.
To the death and beyond.
And I knew that in some careful way, they felt some loyalty for me too. But it wasn’t love, was it? It wasn’t the facing off with those who hate you the most kind of love. Or falling to your knees with a gun pressed against your head kind of love.
The kind that killed to protect.
And to avenge.
I had that love. I felt it…and saw it. I looked at Riven. That cold, demented stare was fixed on me, begging for me not to turn my back on him…or us, all of us. A flicker of desire surged through all the guilt and the heartache as I faced down London St. James, the Banks boys, and finally, my sisters. My very pissed off sisters.
“I said, I love him.”
Vivienne reeled back on her heels. She looked like she was about to collapse on the spot. But Ryth…Ryth just looked at me with that haunted, fragile stare. I knew that maybe right this moment I was ruining it all.
“Please,” I whispered, leaving Riven behind as I stepped toward her. “Please hear us out. Once you understand why this has happened you can?—”
She turned her head away.
Just like that.
One swivel and she gave me her back.
Agony roared through me. A montage of all the fucking things I’d done for them punched me in the chest. All the men I’d killed to protect them. The lies I’d told. The life I’d stopped living the moment our father told me the cruel goddamn world we’d been born into.
A world of women who were sold and men who were tortured. None of that had hit me. None of that had made any sense to me until that day when I was nine and dad showed me two images. Two little girls, a few years younger than me. One with unruly long hair and a wild gleam in her eye even then, and another of a smaller girl, shyly hiding behind her mother as her father took the snapshot.
Our father.
The same one who’d told me that was why he left me all the time. To return to them. To protect them…and try to find a way into the nest that was The Order. He did leave me. He walked out and I sat there alone. A guard would drop in now and then, a housekeeper would restock the food and cook meals.
But they never spoke to me.
They never cared.
I was utterly, and cruelly, alone.
“I never once asked for anything.” The words left my lips. “Not in all the years I fought for you. I never asked for anything, only for you to know who I was and who our father was. I bled for you. I spilled blood for you. I never wanted anything in return. But I’m asking now. No…I’m demanding. Hear us out. Try to put yourself in my shoes. Try to see things from my?—”
“No” she said. That faint word was barely a whisper. “I won’t. Not ever.”
She took a step, walking away from me.
That hurt me most of all.
How someone I loved could just cut me off like that without ever knowing…
“They raped me.”
She stopped cold.
“There were too many of them. I fought. I fought so hard. But they were stronger than me…so they took what they wanted. And the only ones who came for me were Riven and Kane…and Thomas.”
She slowly turned. Tears shimmered in her eyes.
I took a step, my stomach so heavy it felt like a boulder inside. “And before you say something like I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, I want you to look at me, and at Vivienne, and I want you to ask yourself what would you do to save me? How far would you go? What would you do?” I gave a soft jerk of my head toward our sister. “Go on. If her future was at stake, if there was even a slim chance that you could find a way to stop all of this fucking hell once and for all. I want you to tell me you wouldn’t have put yourself in harm’s way.”
