Page 77 of Night’s Fall (The Four Realms #1)

Broken Glass

I had no chance to move or utter a word before he was in, he’d seized the tablet, and Dad’s holo blinked out because Aleksei hurled the tablet across the room.

It shattered against the wall, falling to the floor in bits.

I shot to my feet, shouting, “ Aleksei !”

“Have you lost your mind?” he asked.

“Aleks—”

His torso spiked toward me, and he raged, “ Have you lost your fucking mind? ”

Keep calm and calm him.

Keep calm and calm him.

“I don’t know any fated mates. I needed to talk to him about having a mate,” I explained.

“You don’t know any fated mates?” he asked acidly.

“If you’re suggesting I should have talked to you, right now, you aren’t really talking to me.”

Drat.

That sounded accusatory.

“I mean, I’m giving you space,” I corrected.

“Fuck space, Laura ,” he bit out. “ That male broke your gods-damned ribs .”

“I know,” I said soothingly.

“When you were nine .”

“I know, honey.”

“You do not comm that motherfucker,” he ordered.

“Listen—”

“Ever.”

“Please, if you’d?—”

“Fucking ever , Laura . Do you gods-damned hear me ?”

Calm went out the window because…

Enough!

“I can’t not hear you since you’re shouting!” I shouted.

“Were you not fucking there when we pulled royal strings to circumvent a reconciliation meeting?” he demanded.

“Please calm down,” I snapped.

“You are no contact with that male.”

“I know.”

“You know? He was just a holo in your gods-damned lounge !” he thundered.

“I know, Aleksei !” I yelled. And then I kept doing it. “ Calm the farg down!”

He didn’t calm down.

“If you need to know something, you talk to me .” He pounded his chest on the “ me ” in a manner, if it was anyone else but Aleksei , it would leave a bruise.

“You’re dealing with things,” I pointed out.

“Fuck yes, I’m dealing with things,” he agreed furiously.

“And I’m letting you deal with them.”

“By comming your motherfucking piece-of-shit father?”

“I think he’s… I think… I might be understanding him a little.”

Wrong thing to say.

Big time.

If his eyes burst dragon fire and incinerated me with the look he was giving me, I would not be surprised.

Instead, he roared, “ You do not understand that weak waste of life! ”

“If you’d?—”

“That’s not going to be us, Laura .”

“I agree. But I have to?—”

“It’s not fucking going to be us.”

“Gods!” I cried. “ How do I get through to you?! I’ve talked to Mr . Truelock . My females. Your mother. I even did two hours of research and talked to your brother . And I still don’t know what to do with you!”

“There’s nothing you need to do with me.”

“We’re not sleeping in the same bed, your highness,” I pointed out snottily.

“Do not fucking call me that,” he clipped.

“Why not?” I clipped back. “ You’re throwing a royal testosterone tantrum just like a gods-damned prince .”

“Errol was the one who discovered you were my mate.”

I stood perfectly still, except I blinked.

“What?” I whispered.

“He’s right now under lock and key, benzoed, in the dungeons at Spikeback .”

“Holy Lilith ,” I breathed.

“ That is what we learned from the assassin when he was given the truth serum.”

I didn’t know what to do with this.

It was impossible to process this.

But my lips still formed the words, “ Oh , Aleksei .”

“Errol has been interrogated. And yes, he was given truth serum, at my command, against his will. Fortunately , my father agreed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t. Dad’s crushed. Destroyed . I don’t know how he’s walking around.”

My heart broke for the king.

And for my mate.

“Can I come to you?” I asked.

“No,” he said curtly.

I didn’t like it, but I stayed where I was.

“It was retaliation,” Aleksei carried on with his tale of treachery. “ Apparently , Tim fucked with him too, but no one knew. Of course, Rol didn’t say dick, so how we’d know, I’ve no fucking clue. But it’s fucked up his head.”

My eyes closed slowly.

I reopened them when he kept talking.

“It was the same shit as with me, what Tim did, but it stopped years ago. Rol got it twisted up, or he twisted it up on purpose, I don’t give a fuck. Bottom line, he’s twisted. Aleece and I , according to him, were Mom’s favorites. Tim was Dad’s . He was cast adrift, his words.”

It had to suck to feel that way.

But for the gods’ sakes.

Aleksei carried on, “ He knew I wasn’t happy with Anna .

He knew I’d end it. He didn’t want me happy with anybody.

Years ago, someone came to him from Arnaud’s camp, but he didn’t know they were from Arnaud’s camp.

Unfortunately , the RIC didn’t know it either.

A sleeper, they say. The male has been in Night’s Fall for nearly a decade with the mission to get close to Rol .

He accomplished this. He helped this shit to fester.

And they came up with the idea to fuck with me by fucking with you. Killing your beast.”

“Dear Hecate ,” I whispered.

It was like I didn’t speak.

“Rightly, when they paid the witch to find you, and learned you were in Nocturn , your best friend was Catla Truelock , and Mammon and Freya considered you a daughter, they knew there was a good possibility our paths would cross. They wanted to mute our bond by killing your beast. And when that didn’t work, they arranged for the benzobytines to be pumped into your water supply until they could take another shot at her.

For that first attack, the PR60 hadn’t been modified yet.

But , according to Rol , he had no idea how deep the plot went.

He thought he was getting his own back from me for being a favorite.

So he was blindsided when they turned the weapon on me at the gallery, that it had been upgraded, how it had been upgraded, and he was fucking floored when Antheme was killed. ”

I remembered Errol’s face that terrible day in the entry of the Palace .

Shaken.

And now I saw, terrified.

But he was a shifter.

He had to know how devastating it would be to lose your beast, even lose contact with it.

He had to know.

And he did that to me.

“So there it is, my True Bride ,” Aleksei said snidely. “ I can’t even protect you from my own fucking brother.”

“This isn’t on you,” I said carefully, but fervently.

“Your father was right about one thing. You in danger is agony. You don’t get it. It’s not the same for females. I know you feel it, but for males, it’s pure fucking torment.”

“You told me,” I remembered. “ After the first time. How deep this feeling went.”

“I didn’t scratch the surface then, because I thought that was anguish. But seeing Antheme’s body, her face morphed to look like yours, and it fucking broke me.”

Gods, now he was breaking me .

“Please, can I come to you?” I begged.

“No,” he returned.

“Aleksei—”

“Dad’s telling Mom now. I told Aleece this morning. She’s rocked to her core. We had to dype Tim . When he learned, he tore apart the blue salon, tried to get out a window to transform and fly to Rol , and fuck knows what he’d have done if he made it to him.”

Okay.

All right.

Time to listen.

Time for him to let it out.

Time for me to take it.

I nodded.

“His memory is being scrubbed.”

Oh gods .

“He has to go to the Masque . This spy from the Edge will be there. Rol can’t disappear.

We need to set him up to use him. They’re scrubbing his time at Spikeback , the truth serum, but keeping parts intact and implanting things he’ll need so this spy won’t know we know, and we can get what we need to have. ”

Memory implantation was also illegal, unless signed off by a physician, and backed up by government approval, and this was usually in the most extreme cases of trauma.

But I had no issue with this, or Aleksei ordering the truth serum to be used.

Because, to put a fine point on it…

Fuck Errol .

Aleksei kept going.

“Rol will wake up at the Palace , being told he’s caught a flu and was delirious for two days. He’ll be injected with something else to make him weak in order to sell that story.”

Shifters didn’t tend to be brought too low by flus. We got them, but our immune systems were mega.

But a little pipsqueak like Errol ?

Yeah.

I could see that.

“He’ll continue to be benzoed,” Aleksei said.

“ Possibly for the rest of his life. We haven’t decided what to do with him after this is over.

But it’s likely to be swept under the rug.

No digi-docs. Not even redacted. This event will not exist in Starknight Dynasty history.

But Dad knows I can’t let it stand. So we’re going to have to figure that out.

And in the meantime, we’re all going to have to find it in ourselves to act like he isn’t a treacherous fucking jackoff. ”

Gods, this was so farged up .

“I didn’t want to tell you any of this because it’s so fucked up, what my own damned brother did to you, I didn’t want to admit it. But I also didn’t want to tell you in order that you wouldn’t give anything away,” he explained.

“I’ll do my very best not to give anything away,” I promised. “ Anyway , Errol and I aren’t close. We haven’t even exchanged any words, except ‘pass the butter’ and ‘here you go.’ So it won’t be hard. At least for me. But for you…honey, I’d really like to come to you.”

“I was there, when he was given the injection, Laura . I saw how deep this went. His hate for me. His years of manipulation of Dad . Then he’d cry, begging my forgiveness, saying you were lovely.

He didn’t know you. He didn’t think about you.

He didn’t think about what it would do to you.

He didn’t know what your parents had done to you.

He didn’t think about you at all. He just thought about his twisted, fucked-up shit.

When Dad asked why he didn’t talk to him, to Mom , Rol said ‘ I’m your son, you should have just known. ’ What the fuck is that horseshit?”

“I don’t know, baby,” I said gently.

“The night Antheme died, that was when they called Dad and I in to tell us the assassin had indicated Errol .”

Everything was making sense now.