“Notyet…Not for a few more weeks.” I shrugged lightly. “However, you know exactly what she signed, the amendments made. We’re having a family reunion. Under the stipulations of the Alverac, she’s under my authority.”
Byron glanced at my aunt, who stood nearby. “Valarie.” There wasn’t one inch of softening. It was a curt demand.
She did not yield.
He briefly closed his eyes and released a weary sigh, his shoulders sagging. Strangely, when he spoke her name softly, “Valarie…” there was a despairing appeal laced within his tone, and some other feeling, heavy with shared memory. It was the closest I’d ever heard him come to begging.
Frowning, my gaze sliced to Aunt Valarie and, for a moment, she faltered, and the woman she used to be showed herself. There was a stumbling kindness and self-doubt.
Byron took a step toward her. “Valerie, let me speak with her.”
My aunt’s gaze slid over Byron’s shoulder, and I realized it had landed on a family photograph. My mother smiled widely, her arm linked through lanky Kenton’s, Ferne beaming with a mouth full of baby teeth as she sat on my father’s shoulders, Caidan pulling a face behind Jett, and me grinning at our aunt as she ruffled my hair.
When she turned her attention to Byron, the subarctic wall of ice had returned, except now she relished his panic and desperation. “That’s not possible.”
His nostrils flared. “I want a moment alone with your son.”
As Head of Great House, he could order us in this way.
My father inclined his head, strode out from behind his desk to stand flush with his twin sister. He bowed, as did my aunt.
My father left the room. My aunt hesitated as she clasped the brass doorknob, wondering perhaps if I would buckle. The message in her steely gaze warned me to hold my ground, to make Byron suffer and twist the blade deeper.
I returned an almost imperceptible raise of my chin.
The door closed behind her with a softsnick.
Here was the defining moment, and I could not fail.
I would not fail.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought of Jett’s short, rasping breath, how stiffly he’d sat with a trembling arm crossed over his ribs. He was in agony. And that meant so too was our mother.
When I pried my eyes open, Byron had smoothed back his hair and buttoned his jacket, tugging once at the shirt cuffs before squaring his shoulders. The man who ruled over all the Houses regained his posture, his authority.
Byron stared at me thoughtfully. “I saw your reaction to Nelle’s death.”
Holy shit.
Every muscle in my body went on lockdown.
I don’t think I was even breathing.
Cradling Nelle’s blood-soaked body in my arms, I’d shattered, and everyone there had seen me fall apart, keening over her corpse.
Caidan was the only member of my family present, and I hoped to hells he’d shared my breakdown with no one.
I shoved a hand carelessly into my jacket pocket and refused to respond.
While Byron witnessed my reaction, I’d seen his too. Watching the raw grief spill from him, I realized he would never end his daughter’s life to save his own neck. Despite the great risk to himself and his family, he’d concealed her secret from the Horned Gods all these years.
He loved his daughter.
A frown creased his forehead, and as he tapped his forefinger upon the desk, he carried on speaking slowly, as if thinking through an earlier thought he hadn’t had time to untangle. “I thought it was a ploy by your family, exchanging Nelle for a changeling and stealing her. But you’d simply take her. You wouldn’t go through all of that to hide her from me. And then I considered that maybe she’d planned this herself and escaped.” He shook his head, glancing away as he cleared his throat. “My daughter is too kind-hearted to let us believe she’d died.”
Nelle does have a big heart.
He regarded me with a measured look. “Who stole my daughter?”
