He fastened her locket around his neck as he realized that for the first time since he was a boy, his head was quiet. The only voice in it now was his own.
“I’m your man, Acheron. But I warn you now. If I’m ever given a chance to kill Stryker, I will take it. Consequences be damned.”
…
Stryker snarled inoutrage as he found himself in the Destroyer’s throne room. “I was so close to killing them. Why did you stop me? How could you have pulled me back here?”
Still the demon, Sabine, held him back from Apollymi’s throne.
For once Xedrix wasn’t in the room with his mother, but Stryker didn’t have time to ponder the demon’s whereabouts. His thoughts were too consumed by hatred and vexation.
His mother sat on her chaise completely poised, as if she were holding court and hadn’t just destroyed all their years of careful planning.
“Do not raise your voice to me, Strykerius. I will not take your insubordination.”
He forced himself to level his voice even while his blood simmered in fury. “Why did you interfere?”
She pulled her black pillow into her lap and toyed with a corner of it. “You cannot win against the Elekti. I told you that.”
“I could have beaten him,” Stryker insisted. No one could stop him. He was sure of it.
“No, you couldn’t.” She dropped her gaze again and ran her hand elegantly over the black satin. “There is no pain worse than a son who betrays your cause, is there, Strykerius? You give them everything and do they listen? No. Do they respect you? No. Instead they shred your heart and spit on the kindness you would show to them.”
Stryker clenched his eyes shut as she voiced the very thoughts inside his heart. He’d given Urian everything. And how had his son repaid him? With a betrayal so profound that it had taken him days to come to grips with it.
Part of him hated Apollymi for telling him the truth. The other part thanked her. He’d never been the kind of man to welcome a snake to his bosom.
He still couldn’t get over the fact that Urian hadn’t trusted him, his own father. That his son honestly thought, after all these years, he couldn’t tell him the simple truth.
He’d remarried.
And now what had those actions done? Urian’s wife had gone trelos and attacked her own commune. Because she was human and couldn’t handle it. His son’s lies had forced him to commit even bigger ones to protect Urian.
You killed him for his betrayal.That was the lie Stryker would live with. Not the truth. That he’d done it to spare Urian from finding out that Phoebe had gone insane. Because that would kill Urian’s heart. He knew his son too well. And he’d never be able to watch what that would have done to his boy.
The anguish and self-hatred.
Stryker was already hated and loathed. Better he remain the monster they all thought him to be, than watch his son die slowly from his own recriminations.
Urian died for betrayal. Betrayal to the community and to him.
And Stryker would never do that to his mother. “I will listen to you, akra.”
Sighing, she cradled the pillow to her breast. “Good.”
“So what do we do now?”
She gazed at him with a small, beautiful smile. When she spoke, her words were simple, but her tone was purely evil. “We wait.”
Urian really didn’tfeel like being here. In fact,thiswas the absolute last place he wanted to be.
Muppet’s house.
But he had nowhere to go. How pathetic was that? Eleven thousand years old and he was homeless. Friendless.
And the only family he had was this Viking piece of shit.
Glorious. Just glorious.
