There’s a question in his voice as he says, “Galeia didn’t raise you to hate me.”
Galeia is my mother’s name. It was only a short time ago that I heard it for the first time. Until then, she’d beenMother. And while she was alive, I wasDaughter. Because names, well, they have power and my relationship with her was my whole world.
“She raised me to love you,” I say, making it sound so simple and uncomplicated.
His forehead creases, his eyes widen and then quickly narrow, and his lips press tightly together, a quick sequence of reactions.
I sense my vocal cords healing now that he’s no longer squeezing my neck so tightly. I can’t keep my own confusion—or pain—from my voice. “I came to claim your empire in your name and destroy the one who took your life. I came here to avengeyou.”
Even with that declaration, he doesn’t let me go. His wings dig painfully into my shoulders, his left hand presses against my abdomen, and he doesn’t remove his hand from my neck.
His expression wipes clean. “That means nothing to me.”
My eyes widen at his cold response. I retaliate against the sudden pain in my heart in the only way I know how: with violence.
Ripping my claws out of the wall, I knock his wings wide and strike both of my hands across the space between us.
I snatch at his shoulder with one hand and drive the claws of my other toward his throat.
The deadly tips once again meet his skin, making him freeze.
Now, he’s pinning me to the wall while I’m pulling him toward me, my claws drawing little pinpricks of blood across his throat.
He could snap my neck. I could drive my nails through his neck.
Neither of us moves.
I try once more to reach him through the cold mask he’s wearing. “I didn’t come here to steal your empire,” I say, in case that possibility is the cause of the fear I glimpsed briefly in his eyes. “I’m here because I believed you had been wronged and it was my duty to seek justice on your behalf.”
He remains frozen where he stands, even as his blood trickles to the neckline of his black shirt. “Your need for vengeance is misplaced, Daughter.”
His whisper only adds to the turmoil within my heart—a heart that beats in my chest but isn’t fully whole.
If I’m truly honest, it never has been. There has always been something missing from my heart. But I chose to widen that chasm when I gave away my heart’s power to the keeper of dark magic in exchange for his loyalty.
The keeper is out there somewhere right now, and so are my panthers. Only three of them now that one was killed.
Hot tears fill my eyes because losing that panther—the one I called “Anarchy”—is the hardest loss I’ve experienced since my mother died.
“Stop calling meDaughter,” I whisper back. “Youcan’tbe my father. Because my father wouldn’t say things like that to me.”
I loosen my grip on his shoulder and draw back my claws from his neck. It’s a dangerous move, and I prepare for him to strike me now that I’ve given up any advantage I had.
He surprises me by leaping backward, his shoulders hunched, his wings curved around his body as he lands lightly a few paces away.
“What did your mother tell you about me?” he asks.
She told me he was powerful, commanding, a strong leader. But most importantly…
“She told me that you loved her.” My throat constricts as I lower my hands to my sides. “She said you lovedus.”
His jaw clenches before he takes a shaky breath.
“Once,” he says quietly. “I didn’t think a dark creature like me could feel that sort of love, but I did.” His gaze is suddenly far away. “For a few perfect months.”
In the next moment, his expression hardens. “Then the truth was revealed to me.”
My forehead creases. “What truth?”
