"Bridget told me that you want to speak with my mother," Kian finally said.
"I do."
"About what?"
"That's between your mother and me."
"Anything that concerns my mother concerns me."
Navuh laughed, the sound coming out rougher than he intended. His throat was still dry, still healing. "How touching. The devoted son, protecting his mother. Tell me, does she know you're here right now? Or did you sneak in to interrogate me while she's busy with my mate?"
"She knows," Kian said.
"But she didn't send you."
"Of course not."
"To assess the threat before allowing her into the monster's lair." Navuh smiled. "I approve. It's what I would have done."
"I don't need your approval."
"No. But you want my information. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."
Another pause. Navuh could practically hear the gears turning in Kian's head, calculating how to extract what he wanted without giving anything in return.
"You told Areana you have something valuable to offer my mother. Something that will be worth her time."
"I do."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell her when she comes to see me."
"Tell me now," Kian commanded, the tone of a man accustomed to being obeyed. "I won't allow her to come here unless I know what this is about."
Navuh felt his smile widen. This was almost too easy.
"You forget that I know your mother," he said. "I knew her when she was a girl, barely more than a child, yet cunning enough to manipulate her father into dissolving her engagement to my father."
Kian's silence was sharp, attentive.
"I knew her when she found that poor sap Khiann and convinced him that he was her truelove mate. Quite impressive for a girl who wasn't even eighteen yet." Navuh let the words sink in. "Annani single-handedly ended the era of the gods. She's responsible for their demise. Annani is not the kind of female who takes orders from her son or anyone else. You have no power over her."
The gamble was calculated. He didn't know the dynamics between Annani and her son, but he knew Annani, or at least he knew the girl she had been, and he'd known her father, whom she had taken after. She was raised as a queen, not a follower. She was not someone who deferred to others, not even to a son she loved and appreciated.
"You're wrong." Kian's voice had gone cold, the pretense of civility stripped away. "My mother did not cause the fall of the gods. It was your father who dropped the weapon of mass destruction on the assembly."
Navuh had struck a nerve. Good.
"Mortdh didn't go to the assembly intending to kill everyone," Navuh said calmly. "He went to threaten them, so they would drop the murder charges against him. He wanted to rule the gods, and if he killed them all, who would he have to rule over?"
"Then what happened?"
Navuh had never told anyone the full truth of what had happened that day. Not even Areana. He'd sabotaged the plane because he wanted to eliminate his father, and he had done it for Areana. He hadn't known that Mortdh had been carrying a weapon of mass destruction.
"An accident, most likely. But the fact remains that your mother put in motion the chain of events that led to this tragic result."
If Annani hadn't ended her engagement to Mortdh, Areana wouldn't have been given to his father as a consolation prize, and he could have courted her at his leisure when the time was right. He couldn't bear the thought of Mortdh touching Areana, so he'd arranged for his plane to malfunction way before he had reached the assembly. He'd expected Mortdh to die alone without anyone suspecting foul play. Somehow, Mortdh had made it to the assembly first, and when his plane exploded, it also detonated the bomb, killing Mortdh along with the gods and every living thing in the area.
