“I invited him.”
Aros scowled. “Why would you?”
Wow… no wonder Jullien was so cynical. But then he’d once had a twin brother who’d died when they were children—some claimed in a fire set in his school at their own grandmother’s orders—as Jullien had stated, his mother’s entire family had murdered themselves down to only her and her sister, with his grandmother serving as the Andarion queen only after slaughtering her own husband. The Andarions were a brutal, bloody race.
Thank the gods, his own family wasn’t like that. And it was why Bastien refused to be a shit to Jullien. The boy needed compassion from someone. He certainly wasn’t getting any from his parents.
“He’s my cousin.”
Aros let out a scoffing laugh. “You heard his parting words about family. He is his grandmother’s child. Treacherous to the core of his brutal Andarion soul. Cares for nothing and no one, except himself. I tried so hard to save him from that when he was a boy, and every time I did, he insulted me and refused to do anything I asked of him.”
Bastien arched a brow at that recitation of facts. Strange, that wasn’t how he remembered their childhood. “All I recall, Uncle Aros, was Jullien trying to keep his head down and getting his ass kicked every time he dared to look up.”
“You weren’t there for his tantrums and lies. Believe me, you can’t trust anything Jullien says. He’s the real snake in the grass.” He paused to shake his head. “You know, I once had an innocent boy arrested because of a lie Jullien told when he was in school. Poor kid would have gone to prison for something he didn’t do had Dancer Hauk—Jullien’s best friend—not had the temerity to come forward and tell me the truth about the matter.”
“Which was?”
“Jullien was jealous because the other student had scored higher on a test. So he said the boy had stolen his signet ring, which Jullien had hidden to get the kid in trouble. I could have killed him when I found it in the exact place Dancer had said it would be. To my eternal shame, I almost did. Then to get back at Dancer, Jullien schemed with his Andarion cousins to have Dancer’s older brother disinherited from their family and Dancer permanently disfigured. When that wasn’t good enough, he had Dancer thrown out of the military. I’m telling you, he’s evil to his core. Has no concept of loyalty whatsoever. You’d do well to stay as far away from him as you can.”
Bastien took a slow drink as he ran that information through his mind. “I never saw that side of him, Uncle. So you’ll have to forgive me if I choose not to believe it until I know all the facts of the situation. Jullien was never anything but nice to me. I only judge people by what I see firsthand. Not what others tell me about them. I refuse to render a verdict against anyone based on partial facts that are hand-fed to me for maximum prejudice.”
“I hope you never live to regret that naïve loyalty.” And with that, Aros wandered off.
Maybe he was naïve. Yet the one thing he’d learned was that people tended to have their own agendas. And that context colored everything. Things seen in daylight looked very different than they did when seen through a shaded windowscreen. It was too easy to misjudge someone’s motivations. Or the facts when you only had a piece of them. To put your own spin on what they were thinking and their reasons for certain actions. He preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Case in point, he could easily call Aros an ass for the way he treated Jullien. And he’d certainly witnessed some stellar acts of parental neglect and abuse when it came to Aros’s interactions with his son. But since Bastien wasn’t around during their private conversations, he wouldn’t hold Aros’s hostility against him. After all, Aros had always been nice to him. A perfect, loving uncle.
In fact, he had a hard time reconciling those two sides of the man. Because the funny and loving uncle he knew was a far cry from the suspicious and cold man Jullien called Father. Just as Jullien wasn’t the cruel, vicious bastard they all labeled him. While he’d gotten into a few noteworthy brawls with Quin over his older brother’s mouthy insults, Jullien had never once taken a swing at either Lil or Bastien—not that Bastien had ever given him a reason to. But Lil had certainly let fly some personal barbs that even Bastien would have been hard-pressed as a boy to let slide without some physical contact between them.
Yet Jullien had never once struck out at her. Because he was so much larger physically than either Lil or Bastien, Jullien always kept his temper leashed around them. The rest of the family…
Well, Bastien understood why some of them might not have a favorable opinion of his cousin.
And Bastien definitely wasn’t the heartless bastard everyone at this reception thought he was for betraying Ember. Last thing he’d ever wanted was to cause her a single tear.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.…
And he’d certainly paved his route with a certain misery named Alura.
God have mercy on my soul.
’Cause nobody in this room was ever going to spare him a single drop.
***
Ember turned her shoulder so that she wouldn’t accidentally glimpse Bastien while she talked to her sisters. Every time he came into her line of sight, it was like a vicious kick to her gut.
She still couldn’t believe he’d slept with Alura. Not after she’d confided in him how angry she’d been after her last boyfriend had cheated on her with her sister.
What had he been thinking?
That he wanted to hurt you.
Yeah, that’d be about right.And she’d give him credit for knowing exactly where and how to strike the lowest blow. Why else had he called before he’d done it?
Even now, she could hear his voice in her ear on that fateful day.
“Hey… your sister just asked me out. Since you’ve been dodging my calls—”
