Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
Dirk
The door to the top of the tyrant’s personal tower opened with a loud creak.
“Go away.” I didn’t bother to look. Whoever it was, Florian, Kolar, they were wasting their time.
“No.”
I sat up from my slouch at the voice, though my feet were still dangling over the edge as I stared out and over the city of Kylma and all of its inhabitants. The view from “The Lookout,” as we coined it, was normally stunning. Today is was dreary and depressing.
“What do you want?” I asked as Caz walked over to the ledge.
“That’s it? A ‘go away’ and ‘what do you want’ the first time we see each other in nearly a week?”
I shrugged but said nothing.
“I heard about the new artwork added to the gate.” Caz stopped right beside me, looking out as the wind buffeted us both. “Care to explain? I thought those days were behind you.”
“So did I,” I rasped.
“Then what happened, brother?” Caz sighed. “It’s been nearly thirty years since you shut that door.”
“I know.”
“We had an agreement.” His voice was harder. “That you wouldn’t open it again.”
“I know.” I slumped forward once more. “I screwed up. I thought this would make it right.”
There was no leniency from Caz. “Explain.”
Chewing on my lip, I sought the words, but they were elusive. I didn’t even want to think about it, let alone say it out loud.
Caz growled impatiently. “My mate is in my quarters, recovering. I would prefer to be there. I left my kingdom in your hands, brother, and I come out to find that you’ve decapitated a Hunter and spiked his head to the wall with a cryptic message in his blood. You will answer me.”
A frustrated slap of alpha power batted at me.
“I let him live,” I whispered. “That last night before I put Cerberus behind me. I let him live, Caz, and he lied to me.”
“How?”
I rose to my feet, staring my brother in the eyes, every bit his equal in height and size. “He swore he would never traffic Clippys again. I took his eye. He took my mate, sterilized her, and sold her to humans.”
Ice was forming around my fists and the corners of my eyes, the air plunging in temperature as my anger swirled all around us, searching for a focus.
“And then I went and claimed her. When I’m the one responsible for her pain.
” I hung my head, the ice flaking apart in the wind, carried away in my defeat.
“How could I have done such a thing to her? Now she will forever have the reminder of who I am. What I am, and what was done to her. Every time she sees my face.”
Caz was quiet as he contemplated my thoughts.
“I don’t deserve her.”
He shocked me by laughing. Short, sharp, somewhat bitter. “No shit.”
I jerked my head up, staring furiously at him, only to recoil when I saw that same self-loathing in my brother’s eyes.
He nodded. “I don’t deserve Anna either. She’s too good.”
“Too pure,” I whispered. “Better than us.”
A half-smile twisted up one side of Caz’s face. “Ironic, isn’t it? That the most powerful dragons in the kingdom aren’t good enough for two Grounded.”
“Yeah. Ironic.”
“Brother, I have some bad news for you.” He took me by the shoulders and stared right into my eyes. “You’re going to keep screwing up.”
“You can go back to your hidey-hole any time now,” I grumbled. “All that sex should have made you happier.”
“We did more than have sex,” Caz said with a snort.
“But my point is, I keep screwing up. You will too. Anna forgives me because I apologize and learn. And that’s the question you need to ask yourself.
Can you apologize? Can you learn from your past, Dirk, or are there going to be more heads stapled to the main gates? ”
I looked away.
“What do you want more, Dirk? Revenge and your twisted version of justice until one of them gets the better of you? Or your mate.”
“You’re assuming I’ll have a mate, once she learns the truth.”
“She doesn’t know?”
I shook my head. “No. Not yet.”
“Ella needs to hear it. From your lips, Dirk. That’s the first step you have to take. Admit what happened. Admit everything. Be the person she wants you to be, that you need to be. Don’t be the Elite she hates. Be Dirk, the mate she wants.”
“I’ve already caused her so much hurt,” I whispered. “I can’t cause her more. How would I be any better than Father at that point?”
Caz’s face turned to stone. “If you so much as harm a hair on her, I will add your head to the gates myself, brother.”
“I would never,” I said quietly. “Though I wish I’d been aware enough back then. We could have stopped him. Maybe Mother would still be alive.”
“You were young, Dirk. You couldn’t have known. I didn’t know he would do that to her.”
“Kill her, you mean,” I said the words out loud. We didn’t talk about our mother much. It hurt too badly, knowing we could have prevented it.
But maybe Ella had been right. Maybe we needed to.
“Yes.” Caz’s fingers curled into a fist.
“I’m sorry.” I laid a hand on his shoulder. “I was off playing super-hunter, not aware of a damn truth of things, and you were here, having to deal with it. I should have been here with you.”
“You have no blame in this, Dirk. Stop trying to take what doesn’t belong to you.”
I smiled. “That’s my older brother. Always trying to take things onto himself, not sharing the burden.”
Caz’s green eyes clouded slightly as he frowned. “What do you mean? What else do I take onto myself, besides being Tyrant?”
I tilted my head slightly, looking at him. “You seriously think you got away with it. Don’t you? That I wouldn’t immediately know?”
“I’m lost.”
“Caz. Brother.” I pulled him into a hug. “I know the truth about Father. You don’t have to protect me anymore. I’ve always known.”
He stiffened in shock but only briefly. “What do you mean? What about Father?”
“I know you killed him,” I said, the words strangely comforting to finally say out loud. “I’ve known since the day you told me. You tried to protect me, but I’m telling you, you don’t need to. I’m here now.”
Caz was silent but did not pull away. I waited. Finally, his hands came up and we hugged.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, stepping away to rub at his face, still processing this news.
“You were trying to protect me. To shield me. At the time, I thought it was better to let you believe you had succeeded, given what had just happened. You had enough on your plate learning to run the kingdom. I didn’t want you thinking if I knew, others might figure it out too.”
Caz nodded slowly. “That was very astute of you.”
I smiled, hooking a thumb at my chest. “Little brother. Not dumb brother.”
Caz’s face showed he didn’t agree. We shared a laugh.
“Damn, I don’t even know what to say. All these years, and you knew all along.”
I shrugged. “It feels pretty good to finally tell you, I have to say.”
“Sharing the truth can be like that,” Caz said softly, a heavy weight in his eyes, all of it directed at me.
I glared. “Did you just mousetrap me into admitting that?”
He winked. “Go to your mate, Dirk. Tell her the truth. Apologize. Be honest. If she’s anything like Anna, which I’m sure she is since they’re friends, she will understand. You two didn’t know one another back then. She can’t blame you for that.”
“Maybe,” I said quietly, but I wasn’t so sure I believed him.
I didn’t have a choice, though. Did I? I had to tell Ella. If nothing else, she deserved to know.
“Good luck, little not-totally-dumb brother,” Caz said. “You can do this.”
“Before I go,” I said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out the object I’d retrieved from one of Ella’s captors, “there’s one more thing we need to talk about.”