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His lips pinch together in the beginnings of a sneer. “Believe it or not, I actually advised Jared not to go to my brother. You called him a thug…” His gaze flickers to the window behind me. “… but you’re wrong. He was much, much worse. My brother was a monster.”
“Didn’t you work for him?”
“It was expected of me.”
“So you did what he said? Without question?”
“‘Even in death…’”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he mumbles quickly, picking at his cuticles. That’s when I realize how bloody they are. Torn stumps of nails, barely clinging on. Apparently, these past two weeks haven’t been easy on him, either.
“Why am I here, Cian?” I ask bluntly. “It’s obvious that you don’t know what the hell to do with me. So why keep me?”
He drags his face up from his hands to look at me again. At this angle, the moonlight slotting through the window fills the hollow of one cheek, leaving the other one shrouded dark. His nose looks brutally sharp, his eyes like the faintest pinpricks of light at the far end of tunnels that keep going and going and going.
“Because the powers that be won’t let me release you so easily,” he sighs at last. He shakes his head as though he’s trying to get rid of the voices in there. “My brother made a deal with the devil. And the devil is ready to collect.”
“Your brother is dead. Shouldn’t that release you from whatever deal he made?”
He laughs dryly. “It doesn’t work like that in the underworld. I’m held to Cathal’s promises. I have to pay for his sins.”
Against all odds, I find myself feeling sorry for the sad man sitting opposite me. He used to laugh loudly. He used to smile easily. He told stupid jokes that made Jared laugh and Rose roll her eyes.
I can’t recognize a thing about him anymore. He’s barely human.
“That’s not fair.”
“Since when has life ever been fair?” He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a thin silver flask with his initials etched onto the surface. “The only thing you can do is survive.” Then he tosses back the contents of the flask. As he closes it back up, he throws me a sympathetic glance. “I’d offer you some, but I don’t want to be accused of damaging the heir.”
I flinch. Heir. God, how I loathe that title, that word. It puts so much pressure on this tiny, innocent little being who has no concept of the weight of expectations that his existence has manifested.
“My son is not an ‘heir,’” I hiss. “He’s a baby. And he sure as hell didn’t ask for any of this.”
“None of us did,” he whispers. His breath rattles out of his throat like a dead man’s cough. “I am sorry about everything, Wren. Especially Bee.”
I bury my face in my hands. It’s going to be very hard to keep my cool if he insists on talking about her. “That’s two sisters you’ve taken from me now,” I murmur, dropping my hands. “Two.”
“It was never meant to happen. She was never meant to die. What happened at the wedding…” He trails off and his gaze falls into his lap once more.
“What?” I demand. “Can’t find excuses for your choices anymore, Cian?”
His head bobs on his neck like daisies in the wind. “I was taken off-guard. The men had different orders than the ones I’d given them.”
“Ah,” I croon mockingly. “‘The powers that be had spoken,’ is that right? It’s not your fault, though, is it? Nothing that’s happened has been your fault?”
His eyes glom onto me. That eerie hue of blue might be scary if I didn’t feel so much pity for him. He’s like a corpse that the Grim Reaper forgot to collect. “I was never meant to be don. I was the second son. I was raised to follow orders.”
“So that’s what you’re still doing?”
Anger ripples across his eyes. It’s the first real sign of life he’s shown. He rises to his feet and pulls out a phone, a small, shitty hunk of black plastic riddled with scratches and scars. He flips it open, aims it in my direction, and shoots a photo of me before I even realize what he’s doing.
“What was that for?”
“I just want Dmitri to know that you’re okay. That you’re safe.”
“To know—what? Why?”
