“It’s okay.”
He wasn’t so sure of that, so he stayed across the room from her, watching as Nalla registered his presence. And reached out for him.
A month ago, a lifetime ago, he would have gone over and taken the young into his arms. Not now. Probably not ever again.
“She’s so fussy today,” Bella said. “And once again my feet are tired. I can’t walk around with her in my arms for even a minute longer.”
“Yeah.”
There was a long silence as they both focused on the young.
“I never knew about you,” Bella said eventually. “I never would have guessed.”
“I didn’t want you to know. Neither did Mahmen.” As the words left his lips, he said a quick, silent prayer for their mother, hoping that she would forgive him for the fact that the dark, horrible secret was now known. The thing was, though, life had played out as it had, the revelation not his to control.
God knew he’d taken his best shot at keeping the veil of lies in place.
“Was she…How did it happen?” Bella asked in a small voice. “How did…you…happen?”
Rehvenge thought about how to phrase things, tried out some lines in his head, changed words and added new ones. The image of his mother’s face kept intruding, though, and in the end he just looked at his sister and slowly shook his head from side to side. As Bella paled, he knew she had guessed the gist of it all. Symphaths had been known to snatch females from the general population before. Particularly the beautiful, refined ones.
That was part of the reason the sin-eaters ended up in that colony.
“Oh, God…” Bella closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He wanted so badly to go to her. So very badly.
When she opened her lids again, she brushed away tears and then straightened her shoulders as if she were gathering strength.
“My father…” She cleared her throat. “Did he mate her knowing the truth about you?”
“Yes.”
“She never loved him. At least, not that I saw.” When Rehv stayed silent, because he was not going to go into that mating if he could help it, she frowned. “If he knew about you…did he threaten to expose her and you unless she committed to him?”
Rehv’s silence seemed to be enough of an answer, because his sister nodded tightly. “That makes more sense to me. It makes me very angry…but I can see why she stayed with him now.” There was a hard pause. “What else aren’t you telling me, Rehvenge.”
“Listen, what happened in the past-”
“Is my life!” As the young squawked, Bella lowered her voice. “It’s my life, goddamn it. A life that everyone else around me knew more about than I did. So you’d better fucking tell me everything, Rehvenge. If you want us to have any relationship at all, you’d better tell me everything.”
Rehv exhaled hard. “What do you want to know first.”
His sister swallowed hard. “That night my father died…I took Mahmen to the clinic. I took her because she had fallen down.”
“I remember.”
“She didn’t fall down, did she.”
“No.”
“Not once.”
“No.”
Bella eyes shimmered, and as if to distract herself, she tried to capture one of Nalla’s falling fists. “Did you…that night, did you…”
He didn’t want to answer the unfinished question, but he was through with lying to his nearest and dearest. “Yes. Sooner or later he would have killed her. It was him or Mahmen.”
A tear trembled on Bella’s lashes and fell off, landing on Nalla’s cheek. “Oh…God…”
As he watched his sister’s shoulders huddle in, as if she were cold and in need of shelter, he wanted to point out that she still had him to turn to. That he would still be there for her if she wanted him to be. That he remained her Rooster, her brother, her protector. But he wasn’t the same to her and never would be again: Though he hadn’t changed, her perception of him had been completely altered, and that meant he was a different person.
A stranger with a shockingly familiar face.
Bella swiped under both her eyes. “I feel like I don’t know my own life.”
“Can I come a little closer. I won’t hurt you or the young.”
He waited forever.
And still longer.
Bella’s mouth compressed into a tight line, as if she were trying to keep soul-racking sobs in. Then she reached out to him, taking the hand that had wiped away her tears and extending it to him.
Rehv dematerialized across the room. Because running would have taken too long.
Crouching down next to her, he took that palm of hers between both his hands and brought those cold fingers to his cheek.
“I’m so sorry, Bella. I’m so sorry about you and Mahmen. I tried to apologize to her for my birth…I swear to you I did. It’s just…talking about it was too hard for her and me.”
Bella’s luminous blue eyes rose to his, the tears in them magnifying the beauty of her stare. “But why would you apologize? None of this was your fault. You were innocent…utterly innocent. This was not your fault, Rehvenge. Not. Your. Fault.”
His heart stopped as he realized…that was what he had needed to hear. All his life he had blamed himself for being born and wished he could make amends for the crime against his mother that had resulted in…him.
“It wasn’t your doing, Rehvenge. And she loved you. With everything she had, Mahmen loved you.”
He didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly his sister was in his arms, up tightly against his chest, she and her young in the haven of strength and love he offered.
The lullaby left his lips on nothing more than breath-there were no words to the gentle tune because his throat refused to let them through. The only thing that came out of him was the rhythm of the old ancient rhyme.
It was all they needed, though-that which couldn’t be heard was enough to pull the past into the present and unite brother and sister once again.
When Rehvenge could go on no longer, even with as little as he was doing, he rested his head on his sister’s shoulder and hummed to keep it going…
As all the while the next generation slept soundly, surrounded by her family.
SEVENTY-THREE
John Matthew lay in the bed that Xhex had used, his head on pillows and his body on sheets that carried not just her scent but that of the cold, soulless sex they’d had when he’d come to her. In the chaos of the night, the doggen had yet to clean the room, and when the maid finally arrived to do it, he was going to turn her away.
No one was touching this place. Period.
Stretched out where he was, he was fully armed and dressed in the clothes he’d gone up to the colony to fight in. He was cut in a number of places, one of which was still bleeding, judging by the fact that his sleeve was wet, and he had a headache that was either a hangover or another battle wound. Not that it mattered.
His eyes locked on the bureau across the way.
The vicious cilices Xhex had insisted on wearing around her thighs sat on top of the dresser very much in the same way he lay on the bed-they were out of place, having nothing to do with the silver brush set they were next to.
The fact that she’d left them behind gave him hope. He was assuming that she used the pain they caused to control her symphath urges, so if she didn’t have them on, that meant she had another weapon at her disposal to fight with.
And she would be fighting. Wherever she was, she would be in battle, because that was her nature.
Although, man, he wished he had fed from her. That way…maybe he could have sensed where she was. Or known for sure that she was still alive.
To keep himself from getting violent, he reviewed what he’d learned from the various field reports that had come in when everyone had gotten back to the mansion.
Zsadist and V had been with her and Ehlena in the chamber where Rehvenge had been found. The princess had shown up, and so had Lash. Xhex had shot the symphath bitch…right before the entire colony had decided to pull a worshipful routine around Rehv, their new king.