I shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”
“I want you to know I was never in favor of information being withheld from you. It was my king’s decision. I must abide by his ruling.”
Touching. Raif was reaching out, albeit a little stiffly. “I appreciate that,” I said. “But I don’t like being played with. I’m not just going to sit here and pretend that it’s all water under the bridge, because it isn’t. I’ve been lied to long enough, and I don’t want to be lied to again.”
“I’ll level with you,” Raif said, “because I believe a soldier must know what he is fighting for if he is to commit to battle. Azriel is Alexander’s son. He’s been in exile for almost a hundred years. That was the last time he tried to rise against his father. Obviously, he didn’t succeed, and his punishment was banishment. He was kept comfortable, as was his due—under guard, of course.”
Sure, of course. Why the hell not?
“A few months ago, he managed to evade the detachment Xander had assigned to watch over him. He came straight to Seattle, so naturally we followed. Curious as to what might have drawn his interest, we came to only one conclusion: He came for you.”
If he’d kicked me to the curb all those years ago, leaving me convinced he’d been killed, I couldn’t imagine he was looking for a lover’s reunion. “Maybe he just missed the city? He always loved it here. Besides, it’s not like he came out of hiding to take me out to dinner or anything, Raif.”
Raif shrugged as if he weren’t interested in my opinion. “Either way, he must be dealt with.”
“So why kill him now?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine a father signing his son’s death warrant, but Xander had done it easily enough. “Why not lock him up, keep him under house arrest like you did before?”
“How do you suppose we do that?” Raif asked. “He managed to escape once. He’d do it again.”
“What about the rope you used on me?” I suggested. “I couldn’t move or transform. We could tie him up with it.”
“Lyhtan hair,” Raif said. “That’s what the rope was made of. He’s become much too dangerous to be simply restrained or imprisoned. No. He’s crafty. Deadly. The best student I ever trained. And you’ll have to be better than him if you want to beat him at his own game.”
I got deadly. In fact, I considered myself a tad deadly. But dangerous is never good. “Dangerous how?” I asked, banishing the image of being bound with Lyhtan hair from my mind.
“Three of my best men were ambushed just before dawn yesterday,” Raif said. “They were torn limb from limb.”
“By Lyhtans?”
Raif nodded. “I assume so. We’re tracking them now, but they’re not so easy to find. Elusive creatures”—he almost spat the word—“and violent to an extreme.”
“And you’re sure Azriel commands them?”
“Yes. He sent an envoy a month ago.”
“What was the message?”
“ ‘Surrender the throne,’ ” Raif said.
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
I had to admit, it sounded like Azriel. He didn’t mince words. “What does he want with Xander’s throne?”
“What does any usurper want?” Raif asked. “Power. Think, Darian: Kingdoms are not often inherited in our world—not when the king might live for millennia. Azriel would be nothing more than Xander’s son for what might as well be an eternity. A crown prince, of course, but an impotent figurehead. Azriel craves that which he might never have: a king’s crown upon his head and the power to command those under his rule. And who better to help him in his endeavors than an army of Lyhtans? Vicious killers”—Raif paused and massaged his temples between his thumb and fingers—“and easy to control.”
“But why would he want me?” I asked. Did he, perhaps, hope to kill me before I could kill him? I wondered what death would be like for a Shaede. Would I wander like a spirit, confined to shadows for all eternity, insubstantial and unrecognized?
“You are his weakness,” Raif said, taking me by surprise. “His Achilles’ heel.”
“What makes you say that?” I said.
“I would have killed you decades ago,” Raif answered with a frankness that told me he wasn’t kidding, even a little.
“Who are the three who made others?” I needed to know, in some perverse way. Who were these Shaedes that had taken human lives and transformed them into something else altogether?
Raif contemplated his answer. I think he wrestled with whether he wanted to tell me or not, but he finally spoke. “Anya, who made Dimitri, her mate. Azriel, who made you.” Raif paused and looked at the floor. “And Alexander, who made Azriel’s mother.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “Who? How? Why?”
“Padma,” Raif said with a harsh laugh. “And I don’t know why. I would never ask. That is my king’s business, and his alone.”
“So what do you want to know, Raif?” I was tired of beating around the bush. “If Azriel is my weakness as well? Do you want to know if I’ll be able to seal the deal?”
“I suppose yes, that is what I want to know.”
“You want to be sure that I’ll kill Azriel before he can kill Xander.”
“Yes, I want to be sure,” Raif said.
Let’s see. In the time I’d known him, Azriel had used me, lied to me, and abandoned me. He’d seduced me, and I’d loved him. And his only gift had been leaving me with just my wits to survive by and a farce of an existence to guide me. And now he’d sent his Lyhtan lackeys to threaten me. “Don’t worry. It’s in the bag.” And I wondered if it could really be that easy.
Delilah wasn’t waiting in front of my building. Strange. She’d become such a permanent fixture that her absence sparked a small amount of concern. I stepped from the lift and found Tyler sitting on my couch. Probably why Delilah wasn’t here.
“What’re you doing here, Ty?” I tried to sound normal, not like a jilted woman, even though I was.
Tyler didn’t make eye contact. His shoulders slumped and his forehead fell to rest in his palms. “Delilah is missing.”
All I could think of was poor, skinny, helpless, and blind Delilah being knocked around, bound and gagged, and dragged away with nothing but her smart mouth for defense. “Who did it? Do you know?”
“I think it was a Lyhtan. There was a pretty foul odor surrounding her house.”
“Why would they want her?”
“Maybe for the same reason we did: to use her as a scout.” Tyler looked lost, guilty, and angry.
“No.” I doubted they needed her for something as trivial as that. It had to be something else, something she hadn’t been used for in a while. “How many other Oracles are there wandering around the world?”
“A couple maybe, including her,” Tyler said. “Oracles are rare in this world. She had a sister, but someone killed her two or three centuries or so ago. I don’t know much about it. Delilah may be the only one. You don’t think—”
“Why not?” I said. Wouldn’t it be handy to know the outcome of a war before you had to shed any blood?
“But why kidnap her? Couldn’t they just hire her to do the job?”
“Tyler, she said no one could afford to pay the price. She said it takes a sacrifice.”
His face snapped into an expression of awareness. “What about you?” he asked.
“Me?”
“Darian, the kind of sacrifice necessary to pay an Oracle is a high price because it’s something you can’t bear to be parted from. What if that sacrifice is supposed to be you?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Azriel is leading the Lyhtans, and if he needs an Oracle, I’d be the last thing he couldn’t bear to be parted from. Trust me—if I meant anything to him, he wouldn’t have abandoned me.”