My heart constricted, imagining Ryker as a youngling, already so attuned to his father’s debauchery that he only believed his drunken words.
But last time I’d been vulnerable and emotionally flagellated myself in front of him, I’d gotten a secret dagger as a reward.
So I grit my teeth and asked, “So they’d need to make eye contact for it to work.”
“Or be close enough. I imagine it’s like any other power, it needs to feed on something. Whether that’s the victim’s thoughts or not, I cannot say.”
Despite the grandeur of the room pressing against me, my feet carried me further inside, aching to rid my body of the growing unrest.
“That means Banu and Valuta want to get rid of Evie,” I said.
“They very much do,” he said after a few beats of stillness. “They fear the pull she has on the Dragon.”
“Then she isnotsafe in that Capital of yours,” I snapped, pacing. “She just got kidnapped, for Xamor’s sake.”
Ryker tilted his head to the side, jaw working, gnawing on words I was keenly curious to hear.
“There is a plan in place to keep her safe, which will take effect on her wedding day,” he said at last, gaze not straying from mine.
“What plan?” I asked, suspicion tinging my voice.
“It’s not mine to reveal,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But I promise everything that happens at that wedding will protect her against Banu and Valuta’s schemes.”
“You Blood Brotherhood and your secrets,” I spit out.
His gaze finally fell from my face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the dagger–”
“And hid the rest of your daggers from me since I came here. I remembered how fast you concealed the one you slashed Orion’s arm with.”
I’d been so consumed with my former ally’s betrayal, I hadn’t noticed my former enemy’s.
Foolish.
Uncle Maksim would have been ashamed of me.
“Allthe daggers, then. Believe me, it was never my intention to hurt you,” he said slowly. Sadly. “On the contrary, I didn’t want to burden you until I was sure it was mine.”
I detected no lie.
But it didn’t change that he’d kept this secret from me.
Myfather had been murdered.
Mylife had been wrecked.
“But–” he went on.
I stopped pacing and whirled to face him fully. “Butwhat?”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same?”
I stood there, chest rising and falling with hurried, hectic breaths.
“I’m serious.” He swallowed thickly. “This isn’t me avoiding blame. From one leader to another, if you suspected one of your arrows would have killed my mother and I’d woken up in Aquila, in enemy territory where I didn’t know anyone, Clan on the verge of destruction, hunted down by gods-know-who, would you have told me? Would you have risked the political implications and devastated me more before you were absolutely sure?”
I kept staring at him, a sudden ghostly weight pulling on my shoulders so hard, I fought the urge to shake it off.
One lone word bubbled up inside of me, past the fury, past the feeling of betrayal, past the danger and grim thoughts and everything this world had decided to throw at me.
