Rowe heaved a heavy sigh and his shoulders seemed to slump under a new weight. “I know where you are going with this, and I have to admit that your suspicions are correct. Nerian had gone mad. At first I thought it was just an obsession with the Fire Starter and getting her to do exactly as he commanded. I thought it was just a need to break something that he perceived as weaker than him. But even after our defeat at Machu Picchu and we became more concerned with simple survival, his obsession never waned. In the last years that I knew him, he no longer followed orders; he mumbled constantly to himself and accused others of helping Mira to escape him. I was finally forced to banish him from the rest of the group that remained under my command before he killed someone.”
Pulling my knees up to my chest, I rested my chin on them while wrapping my arms around my legs. “During the brief time that I knew him before the wars, I could see flickers of moments where I knew his thoughts were in a dangerous place. He looked at Aurora with envy and I heard him utter traitorous words about our father. I think if he had remained with the royal family, he would have tried to kill Aurora in an effort to steal the throne.”
“It is a possibility,” Rowe said, slowly scratching his jaw.
“And now I’m only left to wonder,” I sighed, letting my eyes fall shut.
“Wonder what?”
“Has the same madness that struck down my older brother come to claim my sister as well? During the past century, Aurora has come to see conspiracy against her around every corner. People were killed by me in the name of treason, and there are some that I struggle to believe would harbor a single treasonous act against her. And then she turned on Cynnia, who wanted nothing more than to find a peaceful solution instead of pursuing a route that will ultimately lead to our extinction.”
“She also turned against you, her one and only true champion through it all,” Rowe added.
“Is this madness that is eating away at her brain? She was always a cold, distant person, but in the past years I’ve seen her act in the name of sheer cruelty. Has the same madness that afflicted Nerian taken hold of my sister?”
Rowe reached out and ran his hand down my back in a soothing caress, wiping away some of the tension that seemed to be growing in my shoulders. “Aurora is not the woman I remember or the person I agreed to be consort to. She is power hungry and obsessed. While I have no love for the humans, you are right that she will lead our people to extinction if she continues this course of action. She’s not thinking clearly.”
Rowe paused abruptly, and I lifted my head to look over at him. He was staring into the woods but I don’t think he was actually seeing the world around him. Without reading his thoughts, I could feel the pain of him reviewing that night on Machu Picchu when his wife-queen rejected him despite everything he had done for her. I could feel the heavy weight of that rejection and his own self-doubt over his appearance, though he hid both very well from the world around him with a thick veil of confidence and sarcasm.
“I think you’re right,” he whispered, still not looking at me. “I think she has gone mad.”
Reaching up, I placed my hand against his cheek, startling him back to look at me again. “Then we have to stop her. We have to protect what is left of our people before she kills us all.”
A crooked smile crossed his lips and then he turned his face and pressed a kiss into the palm of my hand. “I may not agree with the idea of giving the throne to someone as inexperienced as Cynnia, but she will be better than the madness of Aurora.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Cynnia,” I said with a smile. “She may be young and inexperienced, but she will have us as counsel at her side during her first few years. I feel confident that between the three of us, we will find a way to rejuvenate our people.”
“And what of her new consort Locke?” Rowe asked, arching one brow at me.
“I am hoping that he proves to be more than just eye candy for Cynnia.”
Rowe lunged at me, knocking me on my back while grabbing my wrists with both of his hands so he could properly hold me down. “Eye candy? Where would you learn such a phrase as that?”
A soft giggle escaped me as I stopped struggling against him. “Cynnia has made a friend with a human witch. I overheard them talking and they used the word eye candy when referring to the man Cynnia has chosen to be her consort.”
“Are you . . . disappointed? I mean, I’m not the man you came to care for those centuries so long ago. I’m not . . .” he stammered, his grip loosening on my wrists as he started to straighten.
Pulling my arms free, I sat up and cupped his face so he could not pull away from me as I forced him to look me in the eye. “I would change nothing.” And that statement went for my entire life. There were things I regretted and many things I was sorry had to happen, but somehow that connection of events led me to this moment alone in the woods with Rowe. I would not risk changing anything and miss out on this exact moment. I would change nothing.
Twelve
Danaus softly snickered as he stood by the window looking out of my office in my town house. I glanced up from the financial paperwork that my human assistant Charlotte had recently sent me to find the hunter standing with his hands in his pockets as he shook his head at whatever he was watching outside. A frown started to pull at the corners of my mouth, as a feeling crept over me that said nothing good was arriving on my doorstep. Following the brief chaos caused by the Daylight Coalition and Jabari, everything seemed to settle back into an easygoing quiet, and I was hoping that Danaus and I could spend a little time enjoying that quiet uninterrupted.
“I’m afraid to ask, but what are you looking at?”
“It seems that you’re possibly about to have a visitor, if she can make up her mind,” Danaus replied, his gaze not wavering from the scene outside the window.
I pushed out of my chair and started to walk around my desk, closing the distance between us. Pressing my head between his strong shoulders, I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, holding him tightly against me. “What are you talking about?”
“She approaches the front steps then stops, and paces away talking to herself. She’s done it three or four times now.”
“Who?”
Danaus twisted around to look down at me, a smile growing on his handsome face. “The one person that can make you feel uneasy.”
Ignoring his ominous, teasing comment, I peered around him to look out the window and saw a woman pacing the sidewalk in front of my town house, talking to herself as if trying to give herself a pep talk into ringing my doorbell.
“Shit! It’s Shelly!” I hissed between clenched teeth. I grabbed Danaus’s arm and tried to pull him away from the window, but he wouldn’t budge. “Come on and move. Maybe she hasn’t seen you yet. We can pretend that we’re not here. She’ll go away.”
As if it were a sign that my luck really had run out, the front doorbell rang, echoing through the town house.
“Damn it! We don’t have to answer it,” I said in a hushed voice, as if she could hear me through the thick brick walls.
“Mira, we have to answer the door,” he replied in a firm voice, though the corners of his mouth were twitching with suppressed laughter as he stepped around me and starting walking toward the front hall.
“You don’t have to enjoy this so much. It’s not like you’re all that comfortable around the witch either,” I muttered under my breath, but I had no doubt the hunter with the superior hearing heard the comment.
Reluctantly, I followed him into the hall, but hung back several feet with my arms folded across my chest as Danaus answered the door. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t bother to ask what she wanted; he simply guided her into the house, grinning up at me over Shelly’s head as she glided across the doorstep.