“I know. Seems like yesterday. Not seventy years.”
He nodded. “He’d kick your ass if he knew you helped a Dark-Hunter.”
“Yeah, he would. Stab me himself.”
Davyn snorted. “I should do it for him.”
“I should probably help you. If I had any sense I would.”
“Urian!” his father shouted.
Now there was a tone to make even Ares drop a load.
Davyn turned a shade paler. “Glad I’m not you,” he whispered before he headed off down the hall.
Resigned to whatever ass-crawling was about to manifest, Urian headed back toward his father’s office and opened the door. “You rang, my lord and tormentor?”
“Don’t get cheeky with me,pido,I’m not in the mood. Come in and shut the door behind you.”
Urian obeyed.
“I think we have a traitor in our midst.”
Those words sent a slice of fear down his spine. “Why?”
“I keep running over everything that’s happened. It’s the only explanation for how the heiress keeps eluding us. Someone has to be helping her.”
Urian kept himself completely still as the hair on the back of his neck began to crawl with guilt. “What do you want me to do, Solren?”
“You know what I want! The head of the traitor. I want you find whoever it is and gut them!”
Urian sighed. “Solren, have you ever considered that the words of the oracle could have been a game sent by the gods to make you destroy yourself? Like Oedipus? It was by trying to avert his fate that King Laius caused his own death. And the same for Oedipus. Had either king not tried to stop their fate, they wouldn’t have taken the very actions that caused it.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Sure I am. Solren, think about it. We are our own worst enemies. It’s by our own actions we’re destroyed.”
“And by the sword the knot was undone.”
“Pardon?”
“The Gordian knot? Even the most complex and unsolvable problem can have a simple solution if you apply enough brute force to it.”
“Um, I don’t think that’s what that means, Solren.”
“Of course it is. Don’t you dare argue with me!”
Urian held his hands up in surrender. He wasn’t about to argue philosophy when his father was in a mood this foul and armed. “When was the last time you took a soul, Solren?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Thinking you’re a little peckish. You might want to feed soon. Take the edge off.”
“Fine! Bring me the heiress and I’ll be thrilled to feed on her and her unborn child.”
Urian snapped his fingers. “I will see about that pronto. Anything else I can do for you?”
He growled like a lion.
