“You’re scaring me.”
“I haven’t asked him or you because…there’s something I need to tell you first.”
I’d walked in the door after spending the afternoon with my mother and found him making dinner in the kitchen, something that ordinary people did every day, but for me, it was a dream come true. It was the one thing I wanted more than anything else, and I felt it slip through my fingers. “Okay.”
His eyes shifted away again as his long fingers moved over his jawline while he prepared himself for whatever he was about to say.
I literally stopped breathing because of the tension in the air, because of the way he paused like it would kill him to tell me whatever he was about to tell me. Like he knew he was about to crush me to dust. “Callum, was there someone else when we were apart?—”
“Never.”
“Has—have your feelings for me changed?—”
“My feelings for you will never change,Xivin.”
“Then…what is it?” If it wasn’t infidelity or a loss of love, then what could it be?
He inhaled another slow breath as he stared at the table. “It happened before we met.”
I couldn’t control my surprised expression, not expecting him to start with that.
“As the god of the underworld, I made deals with lots of people. Granted them gifts in exchange for their souls. I was in the middle of a deal when your ship came to my shores…”
I stared without blinking, unsure where this tale was headed.
“And the person I made the deal with…was Kennt.”
Flashes of images moved across my mind, seeing his golden mask obscuring his face from view, the maroon hood that covered his head and the sides of his face. I pictured him at the top of the castle, accompanied by eleven of his strongest—and I’d defeated them all. The leader of the Barbarians, who had killed my entire crew. The ruler of the enemy who tried to take Riviana Star. The man who threatened to make me his wife and birth his children.
Callum watched my expression change, and the horror I felt slipped into his features. “They lost their kingdom in an ice age. With their home destroyed, they looked to colonize elsewhere. And I suggested the uninhabited lands north of Riviana Star that are only occupied by various colonies of orcs. They asked for an army to help them defeat their foes, so I helped them form an alliance with the Behemoths.”
The enormous seven-foot orcs who’d marched into the forest with torches of fire…and burned the trees to the ground.
“They turned their attention to the forest after that.” He had the courage to look me in the face as he told me all of this, as he shattered my world with context that altered my entire perception. “They were met with the powers that I granted toyou, and Kennt claimed that the deal we made was unfair. When I refused to give them more, Kennt threatened to report me to my superiors, so I obliged.” He didn’t tell me what he had granted them.
But there was no need, because I figured it out. “That was how they became vampires…” I’d faced none in Riviana Star, but then I’d realized half their army was made of powerful monsters my soldiers couldn’t defeat.
Callum’s eyes shifted away before he gave a nod of confirmation.
“You were playing both sides.”
“No.” His eyes immediately lifted to mine. “I was a traitor to them and an ally to you.”
“That was how you knew everything—where they would be, what they were doing.”
He didn’t deny the accusation. “Once Kennt figured out how profoundly I was aiding you, he reported my actions to the Covenant. I believe he chose the time strategically, so I wouldn’t be with you when he attacked.”
I heard every word that came out of his mouth, but I was in such shock…more shock than when I’d seen my father fall to the ground with a large golden sword sticking out of his shoulder. The thought of it made my heart clench into the tightest fist it’d ever made. “My father almost died because of them…was incapacitated for months because of them.”
He wouldn’t look at me now, eyes down in shame. “I know.”
Tears welled in my eyes when I remembered that horrible night, leaning over my father while he looked terrified, not for his own demise, but because I’d made an alliance with a god who was untrustworthy.
And he’d been right.
He’d been right…all along.
I was a woman who always had something to say, who reacted before I thought things through, but I was stunned into silence.
