Cassandra’s face paled and her wings drooped.
Clearly, Mireille’s small talk hadn’t improved.
“Well,” Cassandra huffed out, “onthatcheery note, I’m going to try to get some sleep. I’ll leave you two to…” Her gaze bobbed between Ronin and Mireille, who were both pointedly ignoring each other. “I’ll leave you two. Good night.”
Mireille nodded, tucking an escaped strand of copper hair behind her ear. “We’re in this together now. For better or for worse.”
“No pressure,” Cassandra mumbled as she slid down the hallway, throwing a final wave over her shoulder and shutting herself in her bedroom.
Mireille’s gaze remained glued to the table.
He couldn’t believe he was actually standing here in front of her. Occupying the same space. Breathing the same air. This phantom that had stalked him for centuries, taunting him with visions of the life they could have shared. Snatched away with a single flick of her fiery sword.
He had so many questions. So many things he wanted to say to her. Toscreamat her. But he bit them back as she lifted her head, that familiar imperviousness shielding her quicksilver eyes.
“I…” she started, then blew out a long breath.
He crossed his arms over his chest, a protective measure, then planted his feet. He was here, in a physical place. He existed. He wasnotliving some crazy nightmare crafted from his most bittersweet memories.
Mireille peered at him, her face unreadable, as she uttered a single word.
“Hi.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mireille Valette was finding it incredibly difficult not to break down as she looked into Ronin’s eyes.
Eye.
Fuck.
It was even more brutal than she’d anticipated, seeing the evidence of her hatred tracking from his black brow, down his cheekbone, and into his soft upper lip. Bless the Creator that the worst of the savage scar was hidden behind that eye patch.
If it wasn’t, Mireille might very quickly lose hold of the control she was clinging to with every shallow breath, every stuttering heartbeat.
Her fury over his role in her father’s death had cooled over the years—there were plenty of other things to be distracted by here in Tartarus—but it hadn’t completely dissipated.
He hadn’t apologized on the day they’d both discovered what he’d done.
Would it have made a difference then? Did it make a difference now?
The centuries-old memory was still crystal clear in her mind: Ronin kneeling in the pine needles, swearing that he didn’t know the soldier he’d killed was her father. She believed him. Butsomehow, that had only made the betrayal worse. Her human father had been nothing but a nameless, faceless body on that battlefield in Aethalia. So inconsequential that Ronin didn’t even remember him.
Her father hadn’t mattered. Neither to Ronin nor to the Empire.
And if her father hadn’t mattered, due to his humanity, what did that make Mireille with her half-human blood?
Sure, it had given her power for a short blip of time. That fire that flowed through her veins and coated her hide in swirls of crackling red and orange when she shifted. It had even crawled up the length of her sword to ensure that brutal scar remained on Ronin’s otherwise perfect face.
But her fire had snuffed out the second she’d passed through Tartarus’s wards. She’d become just another Beastrunner prisoner—capable of shifting into her wolf, if needed, but nothing more. Over the years, she’d found other ways to survive. She’d had to, in order to ensure she arrived at this specific night to meet the young girl her father had shown her in that vision in the Halfway all those years ago.
Ronin just stood there, stoic and silent.
She’d expected anger, hatred. Retaliation, even.
His indifference cut far deeper.
Her voice trembled on the question she’d been waiting centuries to ask him.
