All except the one she’d wanted …
Friend.
The men had been even worse. They hadn’t seen her as anything more than a pretty object to be claimed. A token they wanted to ruin and sully, and then cast away once they had their pleasure and were done with her. Because she had no money, she was of no value to them as anything more than a passing curiosity. She’d spent her entire mortal life being treated as if she had no feelings. Put down and belittled as some trifle to be ignored at best and berated for sport at worst.
She’d learned to hate the world. To lash out anytime someone got too close.
Until Nibo.
How ironic that it’d been a spirit of death who’d taught her about life. Who’d given her a reason to live and to love. A reason to want to be a part of the world that had done its best to make her feel unwanted.
He alone had seen past her flesh and not been taken in by her beauty. Rather, it was her heart and soul that beguiled him.
Just as she’d fallen in love with his.
Nibo had given her a cold once-over on the night they’d met …“You’re passing enough, I suppose. For a human.”
Most women would have been insulted. She’d been intrigued. Nibo hadn’t seen her external beauty until they became close. That was his curse. He couldn’t see the physical appearance of anyone. He only saw the truth of their soul. It’d been her inner fire that had attracted him. The fact that she’d called him out for his inappropriate behavior and made him act better whenever he was with her.
She’d demanded he rise above his baser mischievous arrogance and treat people with regard and not the disdain he was famed for.
He was an insufferable ass, but he was her ass.
“Why should I be human, Vala? I’m a death loa. We’ve never been polite. To anyone.”
“Because there are enough assholes in this world, Xuri. Why should you strive to be another?”
A tear ran down her cheek as she remembered the first time Xuri had kissed her. The possessive passion he’d shown. The love and desire. Fired not just by lust, but by real care and something so much deeper. She could still taste his lips. Feel his hesitant arms around her body as he drew her close to his side.
He who knew no fear or doubt had been bashful the first time he’d tasted her lips. And that was a part of him that she would always cherish. The part of him that she alone possessed and held sacred.
For she had seen him vulnerable.
She had seen him human.
“I could never betray him.”
Adarian leaned down to whisper in her ear. “He betrayed you the minute he let another man lay claim to your life and take it while he did nothing to protect you from Benjamin’s madness. Why didn’t he fight for you?”
Pain shattered her heart over something she did her best not to think about. Ever, as the pain of it all was so much more than she could bear. It was true. Xuri should have protested her father’s actions and taken her away from a fate so much worse than death. Why hadn’t he fought when the pastor came and demanded her hand from her father?
Instead, he’d said nothing when she told him her father had arranged her marriage to a stranger.
His dark eyes had held no emotion whatsoever. Neither had his flat and even tone. “It’s for the best.”
How could he ever say such to her? Wish it on her when he was supposed to love her above all others?
Valynda had been outraged. “I don’t love him, Xuri. How can I marry him when I’m married to you?”
“We have a spiritual marriage. It’s not the same, Vala. You know that. What you share with a loa transcends human marriage. It can never be the same.”
Those words had torn her heart out and left it bleeding at his feet, where he’d stepped on it and ground it into the dirt beneath his heel. After everything they’d shared, she’d stupidly deluded herself into thinking that they had something more than a simple tawdry affair. That Xuri had been different than the other men who’d made advances toward her. Surely she hadn’t bought into his lies. Deluded herself into thinking he was better than the others, only to find out that he wasn’t. Yet as they continued to argue, she had come to the horrible realization that he’d been using her as a mindless tool.
In the end, he’d been no better than anyone else.
Another lousy user out for himself, who saw people like her as nothing. Not even human.
He’d wanted her virginity and he’d taken it. What happened to her after that hadn’t mattered to him. The laws of man that would denounce her as a whore were irrelevant. What did it matter to a loa who lived beneath the sea in his happy little kingdom, where the laws of man didn’t apply? He would always be untouched by what they’d done.
