“Trying to help—”
“Help who?”Dark eyes found mine, and there was bewilderment as well as pain in them.“What is this, some kind of…noblesse oblige… the prince of Arnou stooping to help out a bunch ofvargulfs, look how honorable he is, how brave, howspecial?”
“Cyrus—”
“Is that all this has been?An ego trip?A way of showing how different I am from my brother, the consummate politician?How I actuallycare—”
“You do care!”I grabbed his arm.“You’ve helped so many—”
“Have I?If this all comes crashing down on my head, I haven’t helped anyone.I’ll be fine, welcomed home with open arms, the prodigal son returns, but they—” he broke off and just stared at himself in the dresser mirror for a moment, his expression saying that he didn’t know who he was looking at.
And then he transferred that look to me.“I never considered any of our people for leadership positions.Not that I rejected them, Inever even thought about themto begin with.To me, they were people to be helped, projects to be taken on, charity cases, not—”
“Not clan,” I finished for him softly.
He shook his head.
I didn’t say anything else, as I didn’t know what would help.I’d been born on the outside of the clan hierarchy: Were nobility through my mother’s blood, a legacy that was tainted by my father’s very human contribution.And after I refused the bite, I was largely shunned and ignored, unless the elders were trying to persuade Mother to change my mind.
So I had grown up clan adjacent, but never a true part of it.I couldn’t imagine how mind-wrenching this must be for someone like Cyrus, who had not only been part of a clan, but part oftheclan, the one everyone else looked to for leadership, even before Sebastian’s election.And younger brother or not, he’d been Were royalty since he drew his first breath.
I didn’t know if he could do it, could see the boys he’d rescued, not as projects but people.And ones just as smart, just as capable, and just as worthy as any sons Arnou had ever produced.I didn’t know if he could become the leader Fireborn needed, or if decades of privilege would form a wall too high even for him to scale.
After all, no other High Born had managed it yet.
He’d hung his head, lost in thought, looking more defeated than I’d ever seen him.But after a few moments, he spoke.“I can answer your question,” he said hoarsely.“If Arnou was in serious trouble, they would accept limited help from their allies.But their people would pick up the pieces, their people would rebuild, their people would choose new leaders.Theirpeople, not those of another goddamned clan!”
His head came back up, and his eyes were narrowed and furious.“I have things to do,” he said abruptly, got up, and strode out of the room, leaving me lying on the bed and staring after him.
Well.
I guessed that answered that.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Here,” something hit me.
I was on the chaise in the backyard again, trying to get a little fresh air, and had just closed my eyes for a minute.Or that’s what I’d told myself.But at that, I looked up to see Sophie silhouetted against the sun, and decked out in a red and white striped bikini and some cool sunglasses.
I’d always been told that redheads shouldn’t wear that color, but she loved it in every shade, and it loved her back.But she didn’t seem to feel the same about my wardrobe.I followed her disapproving gaze down to where the dark blue maillot she’d just tossed me lay in my lap.
“You could rock a bikini,” she said.“But that thing… is not cute.”
“I didn’t buy it to be cute,” I said thickly, sitting up some more.
I must have been napping for a while, because I was hot and sticky and my towel was bunched up under my butt.I pulled it free while staring at the water in the pool, glistening under the morning sun.I could really use a swim, but wasn’t sure about logistics.
No way was I hobbling all the way back to the bedroom to change and then back out here again.I’d barely made it the first time, although at least I hadn’t had to be carried today.Progress.
“I bought it for a white-water rafting trip,” I said, “so I didn’t flash everybody whenever a wave hit.”
“Did it work?”
“Don’t know.I never got to go.Work intervened.”
“You work too much,” Jen said, coming up wearing the same yellow swimsuit as yesterday.She’d exited the pool, where the girls had been floating around while Valko, our resident soccer enthusiast, taught the guys how to play on the wide-open spaces behind the house.Although with Were reflexes, it looked more like an enthusiastic pinball game.
Luckily, my house was on the edge of the development and backed up to the desert, with even the street in front petering out just down the road, into pebbles, dirt, and scrub.Even better, my neighbors on one side were snowbirds, who were only in Vegas part of the year, and my neighbor on the other was Mrs.Kovacs, who was eighty-five, hard of hearing, and uninterested in anything but her daily soaps.So the boys could do what they liked.
