Chance and Dark came in and, as she stood pouring some pink juice into a glass, he touched her waist and said something in her ear that made her smile, sparkling up at him with love and affection. It was sweet, touching and totally the opposite of the way Kett had reacted to him.
And yet, he found himself preferring her that way.
“I’m sorry you missed so much of the ball,” Nuala said to Bael. “But it was so very sweet of you to accompany Verrick like that.”
He smiled back, unsure what to say to someone who was actively trying to approve of him, and was grateful when Eithne came in, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink.
“Nice walk, sweetheart?” Tyrnan asked, and she smiled prettily and nodded.
This time Bael snorted. It sure as hell hadn’t been walking that had put that sparkle into her eyes. “Somebody got some last night,” he said, and immediately both Kett and Beyla snapped their heads up, eyes wide with warning.
Bael was too busy being struck for the first time by how similar they were to actually pay attention to what they were trying to tell him, but when Tane loudly cleared his throat and said, “I don’t think what Giselle and I got up to last night is any of your business,” Bael actually laughed.
Then he realized they were serious.
Tane was sitting there with his arm around Giselle and Bael didn’t need Nasc senses or Mage powers to know they hadn’t been playing tiddlywinks all night. But there was Eithne, looking like a frightened rabbit, and Kett and Beyla were shaking their heads frantically at him, and it made no sense.
He doesn’t want her turning out like Kett.
Kett, who had panic in her eyes as she tried to warn him off. Tried to protect her sister. Brave, beautiful, incredible Kett.
The man was a moron.
“Eithne,” Tyrnan said, warning in his voice. “Where were you last night?”
“Here, Daddy,” she said, smiling in the most unconvincing manner Bael had ever seen.
“Because that soldier boy was hanging around you like flies on honey last night, and I-”
“He’s a garda, Daddy, not a soldier,” Eithne said quietly. “And he’s a good-”
“I don’t care,” Tyrnan said, and he put down the toast he was buttering. “Eithne, we’ve had this conversation before-and this goes for you too, Beyla. You’re too young-”
Bael lost his patience. “Hold on a minute,” he said, and Tyrnan gave him a look he was sure might have incinerated a lesser man. But there was being polite to his prospective father-in-law, and there was letting him get away with being an ass. “You three are triplets, right?”
“Bael,” Kett muttered, her tone pained.
“This don’t concern you,” Tyrnan said, his voice tight.
“Yes, but they are triplets? Tane and Beyla and Eithne? All exactly the same age?”
“You know we are,” Tane said, not looking happy. Beside him, Giselle appeared to be trying to disappear into her chair.
“So how come you’re more than happy to let your son bring his girlfriend to breakfast, but you won’t let your daughter stay the night with her boyfriend? I mean, he’s a garda, a sergeant in fact-fine, upstanding citizen, helped us all out last night when he didn’t have to, and I can vouch he’s a good kid. It’s not like he’s a highwayman or something.”
A sudden intake of breath at the table reminded Bael that Tyrnan of Emreland had made his name infamous by the ignoble trade of highway robbery.
Then someone at the end of the table laughed. She was brunette and looked vaguely familiar, and she said, “He’s right, Prowler. You can’t set one standard for Tane and another for the girls. Besides, you know as well as I do that Kett was screwing around when she was years younger than the triplets, and you never batted an eyelid.”
“Cheers,” Kett said, taking a swig of coffee.
“That’s different,” Tyrnan said, his face like thunder. And before anyone could ask why it was different, he added, “Look, I don’t need parenting advice from someone whose daughter grew up to be a whore and an assassin.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Chance said, and Bael opened his mouth then shut it again, because there was no way the brunette could have been Chance’s mother. They looked alike-which was why she seemed familiar, he guessed-but she couldn’t have been more than ten years Chance’s senior.
“Those were entirely her own choices,” the brunette said, unruffled. “And besides, I reckon she turned out pretty well, considering.”
“If you think I’m going to let my daughter-”
“What the bloody hell is all this noise?” snapped a voice as the door slammed open-and the devil walked in.
The devil, a tall man dressed in black with pale blond hair and eyes like holes in ice. He moved like a predator, sneered at the assembled company, and had an aura of power and death that strangled the breath in Bael’s throat.
This man…
Flashes of red-hot anger and brilliant purple lust shot through the darkness blanketing the man, and the air was full of screams, the scent of charred flesh, rivers of blood and pain and fear.
This man…
The devil stalked up to the brunette, caressed her face, and Bael actually did choke, because he was standing between the brunette and Chance and he was the link between them. Those eyes and that hair and the aura of power, lust and death. There were answering sparks from his queen and he knew-
The devil was Chance’s father.
“Bael?” someone said, a faraway voice, and he scrambled to his feet, knocking over his chair, tripping over the legs and racing from the room, slamming through the door and hiding, sliding down the wall with his hands on his face against the horror.
“Bael?” said that voice again, and there was comfort in it but not enough.
“He killed them,” he said, his voice shaking, his eyes seeing nothing but blood and death. “He slaughtered them, my people, Nasc, he did it for fun, he massacred them-”
“I know,” Kett said, and her hand touched his shoulder.
“He killed so many of them,” Bael said, the awfulness of it burning his eyes. “And he’s her father.”
“I know,” Kett said again, and he felt her sitting beside him on the floor. Her hand moved across his chest tentatively and he turned to her, pressing his face against her neck and holding her to him. Her skin was soft and her body was strong and she was warm, and she was his, and gradually his heart rate and his breathing slowed.
“You knew,” he said, looking up at her, still shaking.
“I thought everyone knew,” she said, concern in her silver eyes. “I thought everyone had heard of Striker.”
“Yes, but I didn’t think he was real,” Bael said. “He’s like a story to scare small children.”
“And why should that mean he’s not real?”
Bael closed his eyes, but mutilated flesh reared in his vision and he snapped them open again, gasping.
“What?” Kett asked, alarmed as he clung to her tighter.
“I can see it,” he said. “What he did, he didn’t just kill them, he-he-”
“Yeah,” Kett said. “He did.”
“No, you don’t understand, he-”
“Bael, I’ve known Striker since I was a teenager. Believe me, I understand.”
He looked back up at her, disbelieving.
“He’s a friend of my father’s,” she said. “He and my dad and Chalia went to school together.”
“Chalia?”
“Chance’s mother-my dad’s sister. Sitting next to Chance in there? She stood up for you. That’s why she called him Prowler, it’s a school nickname.”
Bael nodded numbly. Then he said, “School? Striker was a child?”
“So they tell me. Can’t see it myself, but there you go.”
She held him for a while, not saying anything, just being there, being close, being what he needed. And she doubts she’s my mate, Bael thought, tracing the line of her jaw with his fingers. Her gaze searched his face, her mouth moving in what might have been a reassuring smile on someone who was more used to being kind.