Chapter 58
LUTHER
Iwas going to murder him.
“I’m gonna murder him,” Taran growled.
“Blessed Kindred,” Eleanor gasped, “Diem’s going to murder him.”
Alixe and I grabbed the back of Taran’s jacket and dragged him off his brother, who lay flattened beneath him in the grass.
“Careful with the suit,” Zalaric warned us.
“You’ll snag the fabric.” He watched the melee with indifference, as if the revelation he’d shared to start this whole mess had been as banal as a remark on the weather.
As Taran exploded into a ball of cursing, swinging violence, Zalaric also made no attempt to make it stop.
Taran pointed a quivering finger at Aemonn. “Once wasn’t enough?”
Aemonn rubbed his jaw. “If you were smarter, you would thank me.”
Taran jabbed both palms out, and a throng of shadowy spears flew for his brother. Alixe managed to conjure a burst of light in time to burn them away, but one slipped through, slicing across Aemonn’s cheek and drawing a line of blood.
“What would I thank you for, trying to ruin my life?” Taran shouted. “You tried to bribe the man I love not to mate me—again!”
Gasps rippled through the crowd that had gathered to watch the commotion. Alixe’s eyes cut to me and widened. I gave a dark nod of confirmation.
After Taran’s failed first betrothal, I’d tried to keep it quiet to spare him the embarrassment, but when Baird and his House left without explanation and Taran fell into a destructive, drunken spiral, everyone guessed he’d been rejected.
The real truth of why—that Aemonn had paid Baird a hefty fortune to walk away—had been known only to a tiny few.
Until today.
Scornful stares fell on Aemonn. Though betrayal was a time-honored Descended tradition, a mate bond was sacred, and loyalty to one’s House was valued above all. Interfering with both made Aemonn virtually heretic.
The crowd parted with hurried curtseys and bows as Diem walked forward. Eleanor rushed to her side to explain what had happened, and I braced for her reaction—Diem was at her most unpredictable when her family was at risk.
But Diem barely seemed to hear her. Her face was bloodless, her stare fixed on the horizon.
“You slimy, heartless prick,” Taran yelled. “Every time I find something that makes me happy, you come and ruin it.”
Aemonn sneered. “He turned down the offer. Isn’t that what you want?”
Taran rushed toward him, and Alixe and I jumped forward to block his path. “What I want is to forget you exist,” he shouted over our shoulders.
“You’ve been doing that since the day Luther made you his little pet. And what a good lapdog you are. Look at you right now, sitting because he told you to sit.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Does he take you outside and tell you when to piss, too?”
Angry magic sprang to my palms, my godhood itching to shut him up. “That’s enough, Aemonn,” I warned.
“What did I ever do to you?” Taran asked him, voice trembling. “Why are you trying to hurt me?”
Aemonn stormed toward his brother. “I’m trying to save you.”
“From what . . . love?” Taran shoved Aemonn’s chest, sending him staggering. “No thanks.”
“From having your heart broken, you thick-headed idiot.” Aemonn shoved Taran back with pathetic effect, an ant pushing a tree. “Zalaric doesn’t love you, he’s using you.”
Zalaric adjusted a fold in the elegant swaths of white silk draped over his slim frame, secured by two golden clasps—one a phoenix, the other a jaguar. He didn’t say a word, looking almost bored by the accusation.
Taran shook his head. “You don’t know him.”
“For once, Taran, use your brain. The second he got here, he started filling his pockets with our family’s money.
He won’t do anything unless someone pays him.
I’ve heard him admit he only wants friends who have gold and connections.
You think he would have anything to do with you if you had a different last name? ”
Zalaric scoffed. “I have no interest in being a Corbois.”
“No,” Aemonn agreed. “You want to be a Bellator. That’s what you said at the council meeting, isn’t it? You only agreed to be Taran’s mate once he was family to the Crown.”
I looked at Diem, whose dazed stare now rested on her sword. Though there was no sign of danger, an irrational unease began to rise, an overwhelming feeling that if I didn’t grab my Queen and hold her tight, I might lose her again—for good.
My efforts to convince myself she was safe were harder than usual to believe when I couldn’t feel her aura. Though Taran and I had regained our magic within days of taking the flameroot, Diem’s was still completely suppressed.
“I know exactly who you are, Zalaric Hanoverre,” Aemonn said. “I’ve dealt with people like you my whole life. You’ll use us for your own gain, then when we need you, you’ll disappear.”
“If I didn’t love your brother, why would I agree to mate him?” Zalaric asked. “The magic would reveal my lie.”
“Maybe you think you do. Baird did. He said no to my offer at first, too. Then he came back. Said he’d do it if I offered him more.” Aemonn’s eyes narrowed. “You said the same thing.”
“I said I would never—”
“You said, ‘It’s not enough.’”
Taran flinched.
Zalaric’s chilly facade finally cracked. He looked nervously at Taran, shaking his head, but Taran wouldn’t meet his eyes, still glaring at his brother.
“So Baird was going to go through with the ceremony,” Taran said. “If you hadn’t bribed him, I would have had a mate.”
“Taran,” I cut in, sighing. Defending Aemonn was the last thing I wanted to do, but I’d long harbored a suspicion that, in this one singular instance, Aemonn had done his brother a kindness.
I wasn’t sure Taran would believe it unless the truth came from me.
“The mating magic only works if the love is unconditional. If Baird was willing to walk away from you for a price, the bond never would have formed, even without Aemonn’s interference. ”
“On Baird’s side,” Aemonn cut in. “But it would have formed on yours. I knew you loved him. You would have ended up a stranded mate.”
Eleanor sucked in a breath. Her eyes went to Diem, and Diem’s eyes rose to mine.
“You’ve wanted a mate since we were children,” Aemonn muttered. “I wasn’t going to let some greedy lower House prick steal that from you.”
Taran gaped, dumbfounded. “Why would you do that? You’ve never tried to protect me.”
Aemonn was not a man given to outbursts. He had no shortage of anger, but it swung like a scythe, not a hammer. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him lose his temper.
That changed today.
“All I’ve ever done is protect you!” Aemonn shouted. “Do you have any idea how many times I stepped in when Father tried to hurt you? How many beatings I offered to take on your behalf? I tried a thousand times to teach you how to keep him calm.”
“It didn’t work,” Taran snarled. “He didn’t stop until the King stepped in. Ulther saved me, not you.”
Aemonn’s magic glittered around him as his eyes blazed a stormy blue. “And who saved me?”
I glanced around at the crowd, disappointed at how gleefully they leaned in to catch every word.
Ever since Diem had abandoned any pretense of being a Corbois, the buzzards of Lumnos City had begun to circle the House, sensing the fall of a once-mighty beast and ravenous for its carrion.
Though I cared nothing for protecting the Corbois name, neither Taran nor Aemonn deserved for their abuse to become fodder for schemes and gossip.
“We should discuss this in private,” I warned.
“Why bother?” Aemon asked acidly. “Let them see our family for who we truly are.” He looked back at Taran.
“Father wasn’t afraid of the King, he was afraid of Luther.
So it stopped for you. It never stopped for me.
Father didn’t think Luther would step in on my behalf.
” Bitterness seethed through every word. “I can’t imagine why.”
My heart hung heavy with guilt. I’d warned Garath that if he ever raised his fists to either son again, he’d learn the strength of mine, but once Taran told me he was safe, I stopped searching for signs that Aemonn wasn’t.
Looking back, it shamed me how many I’d missed—his jealousy of Taran, his resentment toward me, the way he remained carefully obedient to Garath’s every word.
Taran escaped, and Aemonn hated him for it.
And when Aemonn did what he had to do to survive, Taran—and I—had hated him back.
Diem’s hand slipped into mine. She’d broken free of whatever had captured her focus earlier and made her way to my side, looking as tortured as I felt.
She’d always believed that, deep inside of Aemonn, there was a good man trying to break free.
What I hadn’t picked up in a lifetime of knowing him, she’d sensed from the start.
Taran stared at his brother, brows burrowing low, looking as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe what he’d just heard. Aemonn looked as if he’d taken his first breath of air in years.
“I did say that what you offered to pay me wasn’t enough,” Zalaric confessed, “but you misunderstood my meaning. Double your offer, triple it, scrounge up all the wealth of the Descended combined—it still won’t be enough.
” He moved to Taran’s side and took his hand.
“Keep your bribe, Aemonn Corbois. Your brother doesn’t need protecting—not from me.
” He looked at Taran, eyes roaming upward.
“Although, now that I see that hair, perhaps I might reconsider. I could use Aemonn’s gold to buy you a wig. ”
Taran grinned. “You know what, Aemonn? I’m not angry anymore. I feel bad for you. You can’t recognize love when you see it, because no one has ever loved you. No one ever will.”
A shocked murmur flitted through the crowd. Aemonn flinched, and Taran’s smirk faltered as Eleanor shot him a disappointed frown.
The true cruelty of Taran’s words was in their truth.
Taran had friends. He had family. He had a man who loved him.
Aemonn had no one.