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She was always a smart one, but I ignored her, focusing on the threat in the room to my princess.
“You looked better the last time I saw you, Emil,” I said, trying to keep my amusement out of my voice.
“You know them?” Darius bit out, Matilda looking shocked as well.
“I apologize for springing this on you. I was handling an assignment Princess Inez gave me directly, and I have information on that front. I only heard what was going on when I stopped by the setup in New Orleans to check on it.”
Darius sighed and scrubbed his head. “Princess, I suggest we get you caught up on the pressing situations over lunch. Aether has already confirmed that these people aren’t—”
“I don’t care what Aether says,” Josephine seethed. “She is mine!”
Matilda moved her hand and a cut across the woman’s face opened up. “Do not use that vulgar mouth to speak as a mother again. You are not worthy of having a child if that is how you speak of them. You have not asked one thing about the health and safety of your child. It was the first thing I asked of my daughter-in-law and all I cared about. Disgusting.”
Matilda turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.
I winked at Emil. “You might want to tell your mother the truth of what you’ve done. She won’t like it when I tell her.”
“I have never done anything against my mother,” Emil bit out. “I don’t even know you! Bring me Viola this instant!”
I snorted and turned away. I was glad when Inez was in better shape than I had expected, but the place she was in was bad.
Seriously bad. She looked so fragile and beaten up sitting on Kristof’s lap in her private dining room. It was her husbands, Branko, Sebastian, Winston, and Ceawlin, along with Matilda.
And for once I was allowed into that group of people so close to her, even if it wasn’t for the reason I wished it was.
“Before you hate me for keeping this from you, I couldn’t be sure, and some of the pieces seemed off,” I said when Inez finally looked at me to give her answers. “When I thought it might be you and I knew you would trust me enough to hear me, not that it was someone crazy giving you too much to handle, I did decide to tell you. I woke that morning with no voice.”
Kristof flinched. “I remember that. You kept trying to speak and we teased you that it was adjusting to the pollen all over.”
I nodded, relieved he remembered and letting out a deep sigh to try and control my anxiety. “Only when I promised Aether that I would not tell Princess Inez anything before she learned it naturally was I allowed to speak again.”
“I’m sorry, that had to be so scary for you,” Inez whispered, staring down at her lap. “So many people have been messed with and pushed around in this maze because of me.”
“Not because of you,” I argued. “Because Erebus wanted to plunge the world into death and darkness. I don’t even blame Aether for what She has done. It’s all been in response to what Erebus planned or did. There was no reason for Aether to suddenly have a champion unless She knew what Her brother planned to do. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Inez swallowed loudly and nodded, unable to meet my gaze. “I’m still sorry.”
“If you are not angry at me for keeping this from you, that’s all that matters to me. I am not angry, and I understand Aether wanted you protected.” I begged her to look at me again, wanting to see those gorgeous green eyes of hers, but she simply nodded and snuggled closer to Kristof.
It was times like this in which I hated the man. I had envisioned slicing his throat thousands of times so I could take his place.
I never would. He was my friend and I respected him. Plus, Inez would never love me if I took away the man she truly loved down to her soul.
“I met a man about twenty years ago,” I said after I sat down across from Inez. “His name was Marvin Velius, and I believe he was your father.”
“Was? He’s dead?” she checked.
“Yes, Emil killed him. Years later.”
“How did it start?” Kristof asked when I didn’t know what to say. “You met Marvin where?”
“Drunk off his ass at a bar in Italy,” I answered, nodding when Inez flinched. She’d recently learned that she knew Italian fluently like a native. “The man seemed to be grieving and too drunk to be in public with humans all around, so I ordered him to come with me. Instead, he begged me to help him as a noble of our people.”
“And you ignored him?” Moon asked, no judgment in his voice, but knowing how anytime we went in public or found our own kind, someone wanted us to do something for them because we were older and powerful.
Like we owed them that, and it grated on all of us.
“I was going to, but the way he said it, he thought he had to commit the most grave sin ever to do the right thing—I believed him. I worried he was or had killed someone and it could be a mess. So I got him out of there and he told me the craziest story I had heard in all of my years.” I waited until Inez finally looked at me. “That he planned to abandon his daughter to save her.”
