Talon snorted. “I haven’t seen her in days.”
“You broke up?” Wraith would be elated. Everyone would be.
“We got into a fight, and she stormed off. Haven’t seen her since.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Talon ran the tip of his finger around the rim of the glass. Typical of glass made in Sheoul, it made a screaming sound instead of a musicalnote. “Probably.”
“What did you fight about?” Mace asked, expecting Talon to tell him to fuck off, so he was shocked as shit when that didn’t happen.
“She’s jealous of Amber. Swears Amber wants me, and that I’m encouraging her. It’s ridiculous.”
“And yet, it’s true.”
Talon’s gaze snapped up. “I don’t encourage her.”
“But she does want you.”
A slinky female walked by, shooting them winks with one of her three eyes. “Has she told you that?” Talon asked after she was gone.
“No, but I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
Talon scoffed. “Bullshit.
“Whatever.” Mace shrugged. “It’s best you don’t mess with her anyway. Thanatos would skin you alive.”
“Me?” Talon laughed. “What’s Ares going to do to you and Blade?” He held up his glass again. “Been nice knowing you.”
Mace reached up and massaged the back of his neck. It was pretty tight. Mainly because of exactly what Talon had just said. “Yeah, Scotty is trying to figure out how to handle that right now.”
“Good luck.”
Mace grinned. “I don’t need luck. I have fate on my side.”
“You sound like Dad. That attitude got him killed once.”
Fuck, that had been a terrible time. Wraith had confronted fallen angels in Underworld General’s parking lot, believing himself to be invincible.
He wasn’t. And he’d died. Mace had been devastated, more for Talon than for himself. Mace still had Lore. The Horsemen had killed two of the fallen angels, and it all worked out in the end, but Talon had never been the same.
“You tell me I sound like him all the time,” Mace pointed out. “Why?”
Talon looked at him like he was a moron. “Because you do. Your mouths and your recklessness get both of you in trouble, and you don’t care. You don’t care what that does to everyone around you.”
That was the first time Talon had ever given Mace a reason for his hostility, and it blew away everything he’d ever believed. He sat back in his chair, stunned.
“Holy shit. That’s why you hate me, isn’t it? I always thought you were jealous of me because Wraith loves me too. But that’s not it. You hate me…because you hatehim.”
Mace used to avoid family gatherings to spare Talon pain, but now…now, he realized that the problem was never about Mace. It was about Wraith.
“I don’t hate him,” Talon said, sounding tired. “We’re just different people. And he loves you more than me.”
“What? That’s not—”
“It’s okay. I accepted that a long time ago.”
Mace scrubbed his hand over his face, feeling like a piece of shit. It must have sucked to grow up believing that your father loved another kid more than you. But it wasn’t true.
