“He went in assuming he would win, and easily at that.”
The silence between us coiled tight with everything he didn’t say.
“He was captured.” Ryker’s gaze met mine, unflinching. “By your father.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. The mention of my father was an unwelcome reminder of all that I was still hiding from him.
“How do you know it was my father?”
“I didn’t. Not then, anyway.”
“What changed?”
“I only made the connection recently when I realized that the woman I’d killed was your mother.”
Pain lanced my chest as tears filled my eyes. I knew there was more to it, but my grief was no easier to swallow.
Ryker shifted beneath me, sitting upright so he could lean against the headboard. He raised his hand to my face, his thumb swiping at the tears I hadn’t meant to let fall.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I may not have known you then, but I still regret that what I did caused you so much pain.”
My eyes lifted to meet his, and I saw the truth of his words reflected there. Yet, behind his remorse, his resolve did not waver.
He hated that he’d hurt me, but he harbored no guilt for taking my mother’s life.
“Tell me how she died.”
Sorrow twisted his features as though the memory haunted him.
“My mother died when Riordan and I were young, and we lost our father soon after.”
I recalled Riordan’s somber admission: that the death of his mate had burned away whatever humanity the King once had.
“He was all I had left. I promised I’d do anything to protect him, keep him safe.”
Ryker’s gaze drifted, growing distant, caught in the shadows of his childhood. He drew in a ragged breath. “When your father’s hands closed around his throat, I knew all it would take was one burst of magic to tear my brother from this world. It was then that I realized I had failed him.”
Wraith Borne power was decisive. Had my father willed it, Riordan would have been dead before Ryker could raise a single finger in his defense.
“He played with him for what felt like hours. Though it could only have been minutes. He would pull on his life force, yanking his soul from his body inch by inch, then release it, only to begin the torment again. And all I could do was watch.”
A mixture of anger and pain laced his words as he relived the torture inflicted on his brother at the hands of the father Ihad once adored. The man who joined the rebellion to free his people from oppression. The one who wanted a safer realm for his daughter.
Or so he would have me believe.
The person Ryker described wasn’t the father I remembered, but he fit the man leading the Crimson Enclave.
“It’s excruciating, you know, wrenching a soul from its body. Riordan still has nightmares, though he would never confess it. But I hear them. The screams, the raw terror.”
He shook his head, as if the motion alone could keep his own terrors at bay.
“I can still recall their laughter, sharp and merciless, as I begged for my brother’s life. The Night Cursed Prince kneeled before them, and they took perverse pleasure in seeing me on my knees.”
A single tear slid down Ryker’s cheek, and he turned away from me.
My palms cupped his jaw, forcing him to look at me. “Don’t hide your pain from me, Ryker,” I said, pressing my lips to his. “If we are to be mates, then share your grief with me.”
His arms wrapped around me, pulling me flush against his chest as he buried his face in the curve of my neck. His shoulders shook, and I could feel him inhaling my scent as he fought to regain his composure.
