It’d fit over his head like a bell, and sat askew to the point where the poor child had been unable to see. Still, Urian had stumbled his way into Stryker’s bedroom to proclaim himself ready to battle by his side. He’d stood there, completely naked save for that helm and his wooden sword and a towel he’d knotted around his neck.
“I’m ready, Solren! Take me with you to battle the human vermin!”
Another time when Urian had stolen the laces from his armor to make a present for Paris.
“Why, Urian? Why would you do this?”
“I didn’t want you to fight and get hurt, Solren, and I wanted a present for Paris. So it seemed like a good way to accomplish both goals.”
How many times had he been on the brink of strangling the boy only to have Urian turn around with a logic so sweet and loving that it pulled him back from homicide?
Until the day he’d learned the staggering truth.
Trates had been as nervous as always. Flittering about in his study.
“What are you doing?”
“I have news,kyrios.Distressing news.”
“About Acheron or the Dark-Hunters?”
“Neither.”
That had stopped Stryker cold. “What then?”
Trates had swallowed hard and hesitated. “Urian.”
By then, Urian had been his last surviving child. Stryker had lost all of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And two unofficial “spouses” he’d refused to marry lest he give the women some false hope that they might claim a part of him that he was incapable of offering them. Since he knew he’d never love them, it just seemed wrong to marry them under a lie.
So many of his family had fallen that his heart had grown to ice and his blood had turned to pure venom.
He was dead inside and he knew it.
Except for Urian.
His son alone held his love and devotion.
Stryker had thought himself above being hurt until Trates spoke. “Your son has married a daughter of the heiress’s bloodline.”
“What?”
“It’s true,kyrios.” Trates had shown him the pictures. Of Phoebe and Urian. “He’s running interference between our searchers and her sister, Cassandra. He’s been helping to cover her tracks.”
And still a part of Stryker had refused to believe it. In the back of his mind, he’d convinced himself that Urian’s enemies had concocted a lie to put distance in his heart for his son. To spread discord in their house. After all, it was just the sort of thing they would do.
That was easier to believe than his son had betrayed him.
But he hadn’t been able to let it go. And so he’d gone to Elysia and there he’d met Phoebe himself.
The stupid chit had no idea who he was. She’d sat one afternoon and talked to him about the most asinine of topics until he’d wanted to strangle her. Why Urian had wanted to marry her, he couldn’t imagine. While she was pretty enough, she was immature and insipid. Gossipy about Hollywood starlets and soap operas. Things Urian would know nothing about and care even less for.
He’d tried to understand their relationship and had left even more baffled.
Then he’d waited for Urian to tell him the truth.
Stryker had dropped hints that he knew. But Urian had deftly turned the topic to something else.
Until that fateful night …
