“You truly love him.”
“Yes.” Jordana’s chin lifted, gaze resolute. “And Nathan loves me every bit as deeply.”
Selene smiled, moved by the depth of her conviction. The power of her certainty. “I’m glad for you, Jordana. I know you may not believe me, but it’s true.”
“What about Darion?” she asked. “Are you letting him go too?”
“No. He will remain here until I have the Order’s crystal.”
Jordana frowned. “They’ll never agree to it. Release Darion along with me and prove you’re not our enemy.”
“All that would prove is that I am unwilling, or unable, to stand against them. I assure you, I am not.”
“Is everything a test to you, Selene? Some fight you’re determined to win?” Jordana shook her head, frustration seeping into her tone. “What are you so determined to prove?”
Selene didn’t have an answer for that. This wasn’t how she wanted her last conversation with her granddaughter to go. She hadn’t been expecting some cathartic washing away of all her sins, but she didn’t want to argue with Jordana, either.
She stared at her, looking at the beautiful woman who faced her now. So fearless and confident. So compassionate and strong.
So like her mother, Soraya.
“You were so small and precious when I saw you for the last time,” she murmured. “You looked exactly like her, Jordana. I see so much resemblance, even now.”
Jordana folded her arms in front of her, standing utterly still, saying nothing. Selene couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.
“I’d never seen Raya happier than when she was holding you in her arms.”
“Then why did you tear my family apart?” Bitter words, her chin trembling as she said them. “Why couldn’t you let my mother and Cass be together?”
“I allowed my own wounds to color my actions,” Selene admitted. “I didn’t trust Cassianus to love her. I didn’t want my daughter to be hurt, to be betrayed.”
“He wouldn’t have done that.”
“How could I know that? He was the captain of my palace legion. He of all people knew Raya was not to be touched. I had made him personally responsible for her protection. He broke realm law and he betrayed his pledge to me.”
“Broke the law?” Jordana scoffed. “They fell in love. You tore them apart.”
Selene nodded, her head heavy with regret. “I believed I was acting out of a mother’s love, a mother’s need to protect. I know how wrong I was now, but at the time . . .” She inhaled a fortifying breath to say the rest. She had never confessed any of it before, but she wanted no secrets between her and Jordana--even if they never saw each other again. “Cassianus and Soraya left the realm before her pregnancy began to show. She gave birth to you somewhere else.”
“A villa on the Amalfi coast in Italy,” Jordana said. “Zael told me everything. How Cass and my mother lived there for a while after I was born, but she missed her homeland. She missed this place. Zael also told me what happened after Cass brought me and my mother back to the realm. He told me what you did the minute they arrived. You called for Cass’s execution.”
Selene closed her eyes for a moment, reliving the awful memories. “Soraya had been innocent until him, untouched. After they fled and returned, when I saw you in her arms I feared he had seduced her, possibly even forced her into bearing his child to satisfy his own ambitions in my court.”
Jordana gaped at her, incredulous. “Even then, you couldn’t see they were deeply in love?”
“I didn’t know what that looked like,” Selene admitted quietly. “Real love. I had never known it myself.”
She still didn’t. She knew what faithless promises looked like. She knew how heated whispers of desire and devotion could dry up in an instant if there was something greater to be gained somewhere else.
She knew how a foolish heart could be led into believing someone truly cared, only to turn around and find it had been cut open and left to bleed out while her enemies moved in to destroy her.
What Soraya and Cassianus had, what Jordana clearly shared with Nathan . . . Selene had gone her entire existence without ever knowing a moment of it herself.
Jordana regarded her with sympathy in her gaze, even pity. “You destroyed everything they had, Selene. You destroyed everything I had at the time too, because I didn’t get to know either one of them. My mother burned herself alive in one of these palace towers, and twenty-five years later Cass was cut down in the streets of Boston on your order.”
“If I could take it all back, Jordana, I would. I’ve regretted this every minute of every waking hour since that awful day I lost my daughter.”
Jordana shook her head. “You can’t take it back. If you were sorry for what you’d done, why did you send your legion soldiers to take Cass’s head all those years later? Was it punishment for the fact that he escaped with me, or the fact that he also stole one of your precious crystals when we fled the realm?”
