She’d heard the stories. Everyone had. Sloane and his team were literally the stuff of nightmares — faceless tools Mad Thad had used to inspire fear in his people until his daughter lopped his head off and punted it into the ocean.
She was certain of the answer, but Cecilia still had to ask, “The sovereign— Does he order you to…”
“No,” he grated. “We protect innocents now. We always did, as best we possibly could, but it was never enough. What we refused to do or got caught circumventing, the trainers and other shadow squads would finish for us. And if we disobeyed enough, then…”
Her skin crawled with horror.A man with a moral compass like Sloane would lose a piece of himself every day he had to hurt innocent people.
Maybe he’d been trained to no longer feel guilt. Maybe he’d even been trained out of feeling pain. But she was damn certain both were still there.
Petting his hair with shaking fingers, she forced herself to ask, “What did they control you with?”
“How—”
“There’s no fucking way you would hurt people who didn’t deserve it unless you had no other choice,” she hissed. “So what did they do to you, Sloane, besides kidnap and torture you as a defenseless child?”
“Our families,” he answered. “My parents were the example. They died… badly. Publicly. After that, they used everyone else’s family as collateral and vice versa. Most of us came from prominent, openly rebellious families Thaddeus wanted to keep in line. And when it was finally over, we were so fucked up that they wouldn’t even take us back. They’re terrified of us.”
It’s my duty to protect you,he’d said.
Because if he didn’t, he thought I’d be taken away from him just like his family,she realized.Oh, gods. My poor elf.
“Sloane,” she choked out, digging her fingers into his dense muscle, “I’m so sorry.”
“Cece—”
Pulling back to look him in the eye, she cut him off with a fierce hiss, “I’msorrythat happened to you, Sloane. I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you.”
She could almost feel his gaze searching her expression with disbelief. “You don’t… want to leave?”
“No,” she answered, “I want to kill everyone who hurt you.Allof you.”
The old sovereign was a tyrant. She’d grown up hearing about him and living in a territory scarred by his desire for absolute control.
And yet she’d never truly hated him until then, when she imagined a terrified little boy being ripped from his parents and forced into a life of violence.
What did one say to an admission like that? There were no words to match the enormity of so much grief and pain, or even close to it. Her piddling little apology was nothing compared to what he’d been through.
In the end, she didn’t say anything more. Cecilia draped one leg over his hip and hugged him close, until she could feel his heart beat against hers.
Sloane hunched a little, his much bigger body, curling over hers until the underside of his helmet brushed her hair.
“I’m bad, Cece,” he whispered.
She exhaled slowly. “I don’t think so. I think you’re what you were made to be and what you’ve chosen to be in spite of that, just like everybody else.”
“I am,” he insisted. “I… I’ve done things that would give you nightmares. More things than I can even remember. And—” He cut himself off with a sharp growl.
She couldn’t say she was particularlyshockedto hear he’d done awful things. The man had squashed Duke’s head like a teenager let loose on an over-ripe melon.
“What?” she asked, stroking his back. “And you like to stalk pretty waitresses? I know that already.”
The sound of his swallow was loud in her ear. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because you won’t want me anymore if I do. If I keep telling you horrible things, eventually it will scare you away,” he answered.
A deep, painful lurch in her chest made her stop and take a breath. “Sloane… part of figuring this thing out between us is building trust. We can’t have trust if you’re always afraid I’m going to run.”
