Page 44 of Possess Me at Midnight (Doomsday Brethren #4)

Chapter Thirty-One

Ice

F ury pounds through me as I stare at Sabelle, Lucan’s kiss fresh on her lips. Every breath comes in a harsh rush and exhalation, my chest working furiously.

Speak the words, and I will Bind to you . I hear Sabelle say that to Lucan over and over in my head, stabbing me in the heart with every echoed syllable.

“Were you going to Renounce me before you accepted Lucan’s claim? Do I not warrant at least a refusal now that your brother has painted me a villain? Certainly, you want to put me in my place.”

Sabelle hesitates, looking at me with beseeching blue eyes that nearly implode my chest. She silently begs for understanding. But the sight of her with Lucan, knowing she intends to accept a wizard who doesn’t fucking love her, pushes me past my boiling point.

“Ice, the fact I must Renounce you has nothing to do with your station and everything to do with my role in stopping Mathias. Without me as Lucan’s mate, Bram may not be able to sway the Council to vote against him.

They’re so fearful of their own shadows.

We don’t dare leave magickind’s fate to chance.

Besides, you weren’t honest with me. You vowed to show Bram what it was like to lose a sister and?—”

“Meaningless words spoken in anger, long before your birth.”

“But you two hadn’t spoken since, had you?

When the opportunity to join the Doomsday Brethren arose, you must have seen the chance to link your two favorite causes: defeating Mathias and making Bram pay for not helping you with Gailene.

Your suit was sudden and left me no time to think.

You Called to me nearly as soon as we were alone. ”

Does she really believe I can fake such passion and abiding love?

“Instinct, princess. I knew from the first kiss you were made for me. If I tasted you now, that same lightning bolt of certainty would crash through me, settling deep in my bones where instinct lives. The fact that you’re brave, strong, giving, caring, and bright simply tells me I would have loved you, regardless of instinct. ”

Uncertainty tinged with disbelief tightens her face. Rage crashes through me again, like powerful waves pounding the craggy rocks on the shore outside. “And still, you don’t believe me.”

Sabelle says nothing for long moments, as if she wages some inner battle.

Finally, she lets down her barriers. Agony explodes across her face.

“You said nothing to me about your sister or avenging her death! Not a word of being Bram’s friend, seeking a Council seat.

Stupidly, I believed that you and Bram disliked each other for no more reason than your resentment of his position and his disdain for your behavior.

You had a million chances to tell me all—hell, any—of this.

But you remained silent. The only reason I can conceive is to hide your perfidy. ”

Bloody hell, that she thinks so little of me is like an ax to my soul. I’ve sought to protect her from the ugly truth and the worst skeletons in my family closet. Those truths shame me. I never wanted to taint Sabelle with the nasty history Bram and I share. Or any of the rest of my shameful past.

Now, to have any chance of preventing her mating with that wanker Lucan MacTavish, I must reveal everything.

Fuck. How badly will that hurt?

I heave a rough breath, then tighten my grip on Sabelle’s wrist and drag her closer. Surprise widens her eyes. She stares at me before her gaze cuts to the unmade bed with panic.

“No, I’m not trying to work my way between your pretty thighs, princess.” At least not yet.

God willing, I hope Sabelle will be mine forever, and I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time there absorbing her pleasure and drinking in her cries of completion. First, I have to get through the next half hour.

“Come with me. I want to show you something. I’ll tell you every fucking detail of the terrible reality I tried to keep to myself.”

She digs in her heels, but she’s no match for my strength and anger.

I pull her out of my room, down the cavernous hallway cut from the cave’s grayish, windowless rock. My conscience twinges me, but I ruthlessly squash it. Sabelle wants the truth? She’s about to get every last hideous bit of it.

Nor have I wanted to bring her here before we exchanged vows. She’s used to far finer. But it’s done. Perhaps this humiliation is for the best. She knows I’m Deprived. But does she really know what it means?

“Ice, stop!” she shrieks. “Where are you taking me?”

I say nothing. Almost there …

“Blast it all, Ice. I?—”

“If you want the truth, even the truth Bram doesn’t know, then shut up. You want me to tear off the scars so you can see inside my soul? To determine if I’m a fucking liar you should Renounce immediately? Then come along and listen.”

A hopeless fury grips me, one I haven’t felt in two centuries.

After Sabelle hears about the train wreck of my past, instead of convincing her of my sincerity, she’ll likely refuse me on the spot.

And the fact I’m powerless to stop my beloved from leaving me for another crushes me as profoundly as Gailene’s brutal murder.

At the end of the cold hall, I throw open a small door and push Sabelle inside. I know exactly what she sees: a nearly empty wardrobe, a pallet of two ragtag blankets beside a dirty, worn pillow, and a faded red ribbon tied to a spur of the cave’s stone wall.

I swallow, throat tight, as I prepare to hammer the nails into my own coffin. “My father believed all females, unless used for pleasure or to breed sons, were useless. My mother gave birth to me, and much celebration ensued in the Rykard clan. Three years later, my mother gave birth to Gailene.”

Sabelle pales. “Three years?”

Of course she’s shocked by that, when the difference between magical siblings is often decades or centuries. A witch’s fertile time does not come often unless…

“Which should tell you something about the frequency with which my father bedded her.”

“C-constantly?”

Seeing Sabelle react exactly as I knew she would is both gratifying and frustrating. From this, I know precisely how she’ll feel about the rest of my story.

“Five times a day. Every day, yes. When Gailene was born, my father had no use for a girl child. In his eyes, she was but another mouth to feed. She would never add to our wealth or defend our dwelling. She would never advance our family in magical politics or marry well enough to distinguish us in any particular way. So the day she was born, he tried to kill her.”

Sabelle gasps. The horror streaking across her face is unmistakable. But I’m not done.

“My mother convinced him otherwise, and because he had high hopes of getting another son on her quickly, it behooved him to keep her happy. He allowed her to keep the girl child, with the understanding that their every spare moment would be consumed in the conception of another son. But the girl was to be given no comforts. Food was only hers if there were leftovers.”

Hell, she looks at me now with a mixture of pity and horror, and it’s all I can do to keep my fist from finding the nearest wall or breaking down the damned concrete wall I’ve encased my tears in long ago.

“This…was Gailene’s room?”

I nod. “I gave her my blankets. She had none. I often gave her my food. I tried to protect her from my father’s rants and fists.

Though I told him I did those things in order to become a tougher wizard, he knew I lied.

He mocked me and said that no warrior of merit had such a soft heart.

He said it would be my downfall and resolved to cure me of it. ”

“She was a child. You were protecting her. How could he be so cruel to his own flesh and blood?”

I shrug. “My father was not a good man. He and my mother tried for many years to have another son, but after delivering two children so close together, my mother did not become fertile again as quickly as he wanted. Finally, she conceived again when I was twenty, Gailene seventeen. My mother and infant brother died shortly thereafter. Suddenly, my father’s only reason for allowing Gailene to stay in the house was dead. ”

“What did he do?” She blanches. Her face says that she isn’t certain she wants to know, and I hardly blame her.

“My father, who had encouraged my friendship with Bram and others associated with the Council, ordered me away from our house.” I remember clearly the foreboding, the finality in my father’s words. I tried every excuse imaginable to stay with Gailene.

“My father promised me he would allow her to remain as long as I continued to cultivate the friendships that could return us to the glory the Rykards had known before the Social Order stripped us of our titles, wealth, and lands.

For her, I made friends of many involved with the Council, but I genuinely liked your brother.

I saw that his ambition to rule the Council someday was motivated by a very clear vision of leadership and equality for magickind.

I was jealous of his privilege, but I supported him. I believed in him.

“But that day when I came home, Gailene was gone.”

“Your father let Mathias kill her?”

“He sold Gailene to the evil bastard. He told Mathias that he didn’t care what became of her.”

“She was seventeen!” Sabelle’s face turns an even chalkier shade of white, and perverse satisfaction fills me.

“Yes. Mathias told me her screams as he forcibly took her virginity were delectable, but she became regrettably weepy, which forced him to give her to the Anarki, who quickly used her up. Finally, Mathias had one of his minions dump her bloodied and spent corpse on the beach nearby. After days of frantically searching, I found her body.”

I still recall the utter horror of finding the one person I loved so horribly abused and callously murdered. The fury, the desolation, the sense of failure…

“And so you attacked Mathias’s compound and tried to kill as many Anarki as possible in revenge?”

“Yes.”