“I must admit, it was not as disgusting as I thought it would be.”
“Me or the sandwich?” she teased, and her heart fluttered as she chuckled.
She expected him to laugh with her, but his face drew into a look of grave contemplation as he leaned down to meet her eyes.
“I never thought you were disgusting, Elara,” he said, his deep tone earnest. “Never.”
“Hmm,” she hummed. She took a bite of her sandwich and then set it down; suddenly, she was no longer hungry.
“What is on your mind?” Constantine asked, his tone gentle as he moved on from the subject. “Why can you not sleep?”
Elara sighed as she dusted the crumbs from her hands.
“As our investigation progresses, I grow uneasy,” she confessed. “Mr. Preacher’s opinion of Evander weighs on my mind. Not only that, but no one has come out to say anything positiveabout Evander either. I am starting to realize that, despite how I previously felt, I truly know very little about my family. I knew him as an older brother, not as a person. Perhaps he truly was different when he was around others. He must have been, if he went so far as to cause enough trouble for your brother to have him exiled from the country.”
She paused, nibbling at her bottom lip.
“I suppose I can understand now why you disliked him so. And me, for that matter,” she murmured, then drew her bottom lip between her teeth again.
Constantine drew his hand up, pressing his thumb against her lip and forcing her to stop her nibbling. She drew her eyes up to his, and butterflies erupted in her stomach when she saw his green eyes shining with warmth.
“I do not dislike you anymore, Elara,” he said softly, caressing his thumb over her bottom lip. He smirked then, the expression sending sparks through her veins. “I would even go so far as to say that I now find you quite tolerable.”
Elara gently bit at his thumb, making him chuckle, and as she stepped back, she could not help the grin on her face.
“I suppose I find you quite tolerable now as well,” she playfully retorted.
“I do want to understand more, though,” Constantine went on. “About why you so vehemently want to protect your brother. Is it not older siblings that do the protecting, not the other way around?”
Elara’s spirits dampened a little as a long-ago memory sprang into the forefront of her mind.
“I suppose I feel that I owe him,” she confessed.
Constantine frowned a little, the humor of the moment gone.
“Why?” he asked softly.
Elara’s gaze dropped to the floor as her fingers tangled together in front of her.
“When I was younger... About thirteen or so, my brothers would host card games in our home,” she explained.
Constantine nodded. “I remember. I attended quite a few.”
“Well, at one particular game, I was spying from a cabinet as I usually did,” Elara went on. “I was always so mad that I was not included. I wanted to learn how to gamble, just as they were allowed to learn. So I decided to hide every now and then while they hosted their game and listen. Not to eavesdrop on their gossip, but to try to learn the rules of what they were playing. I would always leave the door open just a bit so I could watch.”
Elara’s stomach quivered in discomfort as she recalled the story, but for some reason, she felt as if she needed to complete the tale.
“There was one particular evening where one of my brother’s guests spotted me,” she went on. “The rest of the group had left to do something, leaving us alone. He said he would teach me the game if I kept it a secret. I wanted to learn so much that I agreed and let him lead me to the table. Yet when I went to take a chair, he grabbed me and forced me onto his lap. It seems it was not cards that he wanted to teach me about.”
Elara dared a glance up toward Constantine and found his expression murderous.
“What happened, Elara?” Constantine demanded.
She shook her head, feeling the fear from that long-ago moment spike through her veins as if it had just happened.
“His hands were everywhere,” she whispered, drawing her own hands to her stomach. “My waist, my thighs… they were everywhere. It felt soverywrong, and when I tried to scream for help, he clamped his hand over my mouth.”
A sudden thump startled her, and she realized that Constantine had just struck his fist against the counter.
