She had hardly been inside her quarters long enough to catch her breath when the air stirred behind her with dark energy. She spun, astonished to find Darion standing there.
Alarm rang through her. “How did you-- What did you do to my men?”
“Relax, Selene.” That low voice of his seemed even deeper with his sharp fangs gleaming behind his lips. “Yurec and the others are fine, aside from the headaches they’ll have when they come to.”
“Get out, or I’ll call more of my guards.”
“Go ahead.” He had the audacity to grin. “I’m running on all cylinders now, and fuck knows I need to work off some serious aggression right now.”
She swallowed, refusing to shrink away from him as he strode farther into her personal space. Her hands came up out of reflex, palms warm with the waking of her power. After holding the light outside the palace and on the east tower cell door these past several days, she didn’t know if she would have enough reserves left to do him any harm now. She had never intended for him to remain in the realm all this time. How long she could hope to continue holding him prisoner, she wasn’t sure.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t use whatever she had to protect herself now.
He glanced at her closed fists and raised a dark brow. “Thinking about lighting me up again? Be careful. You said yourself I’m worth more to you alive than dead.”
“I’m beginning to have my doubts.”
He smiled. A real smile, one that reached those amber-flecked, brown eyes. Some of the fire in them was banked now, but the embers continued to smolder as he stared at her. “We started off on the wrong foot, Selene. I don’t see the need for us to be enemies.”
Was he serious? With a narrowed glare, she scoffed. “That’s all we can ever be. You and your kind embody everything I despise. You’re brutal, and you have a complete lack of honor. You’re cold-blooded killers who thrive on war and bloodshed.”
He paced forward as if testing her mettle. “I am brutal, Selene. That much I’ll grant you. But only to my enemies.”
She lifted a brow. “Is that intended to coerce my cooperation?”
“I don’t need to coerce you,” he said, taking another step. “You asserted that I and my kind are brutal killers. I’m simply agreeing with you on that. But only when it’s to stop worse brutality and suffering.”
“I’m supposed to believe that when your word means nothing?”
He tilted his head. “Ah, right. Now, we arrive at my complete lack of honor.”
“You proved it yourself when I demanded to negotiate with Lucan Thorne and instead you showed up.”
“No, Selene.” He slowly shook his head. “Your demand was the Order’s leader. Here I am.”
She frowned, not only at the way he had used her words against her, but also at the confusing implication he was making. “You have taken his place? Why?”
“Only for the time being,” he replied, his expression openly grave. “My father was . . . injured recently in an attack by Opus Nostrum. You’d better pray you had nothing to do with it,Your Grace.”
She drew back in genuine shock. Even a small note of sympathy for the obvious pain the assault had caused him. “No, I don’t have anything to do with that organization. One of my people, an exile who fled to the mortal world decades ago and went by the name Reginald Crowe, tried to involve me in his schemes with Opus Nostrum, but I had no interest. Their battles are their own, not mine.”
Before she was tempted to soften any further to his or the Order’s conflicts or tribulations, she reminded herself that Darion had still deceived her. “So, you twisted my words to suit your purposes. There’s little honor in that . . . or in the fact that you came here without the crystal we agreed to.”
Far from contrite, he gave her a knowing look. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
He was right, of course. She would never surrender her own crystal. She couldn’t, or everyone who depended on her to protect them as their queen would be put in jeopardy of attack.
Another step closer carried him within inches of her now. “I’m not without honor. Neither are any of my brethren in the Order. We’re not cold-blooded killers, Selene.”
“Tell that to the fisherman whose throat you just ravaged before my eyes.”
His wicked mouth curved with dark amusement. “The man is alive and his throat is intact. I tranced him while I drank from him. After I finished, I scrubbed his memory of this entire day. He’s resting downstairs with Yurec and the others. You can feel free to toss him back wherever you found him.”
“You didn’t kill him?”
“That would seem awfully rude, considering his tired old red cells probably saved my life.”
Selene suppressed her sigh of relief. She did not want to warm to Darion. It would take far more than some meager kindness shown to a random mortal to convince her he was anything but what she knew the Breed to be. “So, you have a little mercy in you. Is that supposed to make me forget where you come from?”
