She did tell stories of her five human husbands. Elderly and wealthy, but she’d been fond of each one. She’d lived through the Great Plague. I didn’t blame her for wanting to be surrounded by beauty and life after that. I could understand her wanting to feel safe no matter what might arise. And if it took millions for her to feel that way, I didn’t judge. I understood and I trusted—me, who, like Cal so very rarely trusted anyone.
Cherish might have shattered more than a window tonight. I didn’t know. Not yet.
We all had our needs. Promise needed safety. I needed trust. Complete trust. No daughters swept under the rug. No lovers so close that she’d considered them uncle or father to that daughter. She had an entire family and hadn’t told me. Had us work for the vampire who’d once been her mate and hadn’t felt the need to mention it. I had always been honest with her, and it seemed now she had been anything but.
I moved from beneath her and took my sword from the bed. “It’s my watch.”
“Wait.” Regret was still there, stronger than ever, but so was temper. The ivory sheath of a nightgown rippled as she turned over to face me. Waves of hair were twisted into a loose braid for sleep, and a rainbow-chased black pearl choker was fastened around her neck. She slept in pearls. She always slept in pearls . . . even when she slept in nothing else. A slim nude form and pearls—proof that poetry could live and breathe. And keep secrets.
Like Sophia.
She took a handful of my shirt to hold me still. She was strong enough that she might succeed if I put it to the test. “You should’ve told me,” I said without compromise. Because wasn’t that who I was? Niko Leandros, who had his brother and his honor. You fell between the two or you fell outside. It sounded inflexible and it was, but Cal and I had shared that same lying, manipulative mother. We both had survived her in different ways. I doubted I could change my ways now.
“I should have but . . .” She took a deep breath. “You, Niko. You raised a good man. Despite all that he had against him, you did that with Cal. I raised a thief, one who has little care for anyone but herself. I raised a predator who was reluctant to give up drinking when the rest of us did. I raised a liar, who would say anything to get what she wanted.” Her hand released the cloth and flattened on my chest as she went on somberly, “She’s also charming and bright and loves me . . . I hope.” Her eyes clouded. “I didn’t do well. It shames me. I keep hoping she’ll mature. She was loved, and yet right and wrong are only words to her. My failure, and it’s hard to live with, much less tell.”
Cherish wasn’t so different from Goodfellow, then. But that wasn’t true. Robin did have a care. They were few and far between, but he did care for us and stood with us when we needed him. And if we needed him to stand away, he would do that as well. Cherish didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere. She feared the Auphe, but they were legend to her. She’d not ever seen one, and consequently, in her mind, this Oshossi was as much of a threat. Survival—it was pass or fail. She’d thrown herself decisively on what might be the failing side—and was dragging our chances ever further down.
I waited as she looked away and then back, eyes blacker than the night outside. “And Seamus . . . Seamus, Cherish, and me, we lived in the time of blood. We were a family of predators. We took blood wherever we found it. Sometimes we didn’t kill, but sometimes we did. Three take so much more blood to nourish than just one. I endured it. Cherish wasn’t old enough to know it was wrong, and Seamus . . . Seamus enjoyed it. I didn’t see it in him at first, but more and more he showed it. He had a passion for killing, far more than he had for his art or for me. And because of that, I left him, but not as soon as I should have. I was fond of him. Cherish and I were safer with him than alone, so I closed my eyes when I should’ve been running.”
“But you did leave,” I said, “finally.” There was judgment in that last word. There was no denying it.
“Finally.” Her voice hardened slightly. “And I heard he changed. I saw him again, and he seemed to have genuinely altered his ways. I wouldn’t have involved us with him otherwise, never, but tell you about him and my past?” Her lips tightened. “You don’t know the time we lived in. What we had to do to survive. What the humans would’ve done to the three of us if we’d been caught. You have no idea.”
“No, I don’t, because you didn’t tell me.” Not once as we lay there with sheets twisted around our bodies.
“No, I didn’t, did I?” Her temper spiked. “Maybe I didn’t want to see how you would look at me when I told you in detail the killer that I used to be. That my family was no more than a trio of monsters, living no matter the cost to the innocent.” The temper, the regret—it faded, to be replaced with puzzlement. “You’re difficult to live up to, Niko. You are not quite twenty-three years old. You’re a child in comparison to me, but you live this life, this black-and-white life. You have this unbreakable core.” Her hand rose to my cheek, then fell away. “Honor. It’s a wonder. It’s a curse.” The hand went back to my chest and she pushed me away. “You have your watch. Go.”
I didn’t. I needed trust, but I needed Promise as well. She hadn’t lied. I held on to that. She hadn’t actually lied. But neither had she told the truth—and it was a great deal of truth not to tell.
And that was something I couldn’t pretend hadn’t happened. I couldn’t close my eyes and pretend she hadn’t held back a major part of her life, that she had hidden the knowledge of her family from me. And more.
“You met him while Cal and I were fighting on the beach. He smelled him on you.” I stared, unblinking, at her. “A business meeting or reminiscing about that past you don’t want to talk about?”
“Business, although it is honestly none of yours.” The heat was back, but she reined it in and tried again when I didn’t move, saying, “Except for Seamus and Cherish, I’ve been honest with you since we’ve been together, Niko.”
Except for my family, my mate, my life. Except for all that.
“Except” . . . a small word to do so much damage. This time I did go. Silently. Leaving her behind.
And I felt . . . nothing. I walked to the living room, hollowed out—an empty shell called honor. I didn’t believe in ghosts, not even in our world, yet at that moment I was one.
So be it.
If I was a cold ideal, with every bit of compromise stripped away, then that was survival. If I were an abstract, that’s how it had to be. Never mind the things it made me wonder. As in, Had Sophia won? As in, Outside honor, did I truly exist at all?
Then Cal punched me in the nose and, as a starburst of pain flared behind my eyes and I tasted blood, I decided that I did. I wasn’t precisely happy about it at the moment, but I did exist. “Better?” he asked, shaking out the ache in his hand.
I wiped at the trickle of blood on my upper lip and replied honestly, “Actually, yes.”
“I didn’t break it. Hell, I’d need a baseball bat to take out something that big.” He went to the kitchen and returned with a hand towel full of ice. “Here.” He was the one I was relieving. During his watch, he’d finished taping up the window with black plastic. The Vigil, ever efficient, had removed all the blood and glass with the bodies. If not for the missing window and rug, you wouldn’t have known what had taken place. “And since you let me hit you,” he added, “I figured you needed it.”
I had let him and I had needed it. An odd thing to need, pain. A smaller one to set a much larger one free. If it’s not free, you can’t acknowledge it, you can’t see it. And if you can’t see it, you can’t fight it.
I hadn’t known, but Cal had. Cal wasn’t black-and-white like me. Cal was all shades of gray. He knew right from wrong, unlike Cherish, but that didn’t mean the end result was any different. He never let that knowing stop him from making the necessary choice. He had a care for some, and such a ferocious carelessness for others that the contrast was . . . stark. Cal wasn’t the good man Promise labeled him, but he was a man. He struggled every day to be one—to be that and not the monster he suspected was ready to crawl out at any second. Endlessly stubborn, utterly loyal, and could throw a fairly decent punch when needed. Compared to that, good was highly overrated.