This last year had almost killed him—and that didn’t account for the assassins who were trying to cut his throat. They at least gave him some form of personal interaction. Brief though it was.
And cheap entertainment. The look on their face when he, the lowly Ravin, finished them off was priceless.
No, it was the solitude. The grief that tore him apart. Because here, where there was nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, all he could think about was how different everything would have been had he never met the Wyldestarrins. At all.
How much better off his family would have been had he let Alura die that day, instead of rescuing her. So maybe this fate was justice after all.
I did kill my family.
One act of compassion. Of kindness. By thinking of her life over his, he’d sown the destruction for his own.
No, it shouldn’t be that way. She should have been grateful for everything he’d done for her. Should have been loyal.
But people weren’t like that. In the end, Jullien had been right about everything.Put no one at your back unless you want them to drive a knife through it.
Bastien sank to his knees in the scorching sand. A part of him wanted to lie down and let the hot desert take him and wipe out his existence as easily as the sandstorms did his footsteps. It’d be so much easier. He had nothing to live for. Not really.
That’s not true and you know it.
His family had died a hard, brutal death at the hands of his uncle’s henchmen. With the help of Alura, Barnabas had gotten away with it. And framed him in the process. If he died, Barnabas would never pay for his crime.
“You promised them.”
And a Cabarroneverbroke their oath.
Get on your feet, soldier. Pay that bastard back. Hell. High water.Whatever it took, he wouldn’t rest until he stood over his uncle’s grave.
He’d made a promise to the Overseer, too.
Hell was coming. And Bastien planned to bring it with both fists.
***
“How could she do this to us?”
Ember didn’t comment on Cin’s question as she helped Brand carry their mother’s body into the cave they’d found for shelter. “Kindel?”
“I got it. Me and Ash are setting the perimeter charges and monitors.”
Brand sank to her knees next to Ember and took their mother’s cold hand. Tears welled in her eyes. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Choking on her own tears she didn’t dare shed for fear of it incapacitating her, she pulled her sister into her arms and held her. “How’s your wound?”
“It pales in comparison to the hole in my heart.” Brand had taken three shots as they’d fought their way out of an ambush. An ambush they’d have never survived had their mother not given her life for theirs.
A sob escaped Ember’s lips against her will as she struggled to hold back her tears over the memory of her mother falling beneath the barrage of fire. Char Wyldestarrin had always been the strongest, most capable soldier in the universe.
Now…
Ember choked. “Has anyone called Sa?”
Cin grew eerily quiet as she secured the opening of their cave so that no one would be able to detect their presence inside it.
At her sister’s reluctance to answer, Ember tasted bile in her throat. “What?”
Still she didn’t speak. “We need to inventory supplies. They’ll be probing for us.”
“Cin…”
