Page 121 of The Hunter

They were both staring hard at the flames again, but Christopher knew Dorian was right. And that he’d just articulated the very reason Christopher had found his gate.

“Brothers, then,” he clipped, moving uncomfortably in his chair. “But if you try to hug me, I’m leaving.”

Dorian chuckled. “Then allow me to give you some brotherly advice.”

“No.”

“I’ll do it anyway.”

Christopher growled. “For the love of—”

“Love,”Dorian said firmly, which produced the effect Christopher suspected the Blackheart of Ben More wanted.

Christopher’s silence.

“Love is exactly to what I’m referring when I tell you that you’re an idiot,” Dorian stated, finally turning in his chair to gaze at Christopher. “Men like you and me, we don’t love like other men do. With patience and poetry and gentle deference. Our sort of love is possessive—obsessive even—and passionate and consuming and… well, fucking terrifying sometimes.”

Christopher gripped his glass so hard he was afraid it would shatter. “Why are you telling me this?” He wanted to run, but was glued to his chair.

“The walls behind which we endured so much, we carry them with us and I don’t think they ever come down. So if we are to love, then that person has to scale those high, solid walls, and once they do, once they go through all of that work… they’re trapped inside with us.”

“Which is precisely why—”

Dorian held up a hand. “The very least we can do is remove a few bricks every so often. Let the daylight in. Make the walls shorter. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“All I see is that you’re beating a poor useless metaphor to death.” Christopher didn’t want to hear any more. And yet…

Undaunted, Dorian continued. “It takes a rare and resilient woman to withstand a life like ours. For most it’s just too much. We’re too… broken. Too brutal. They can’t swim upstream through these rivers of blood we’ve created.”

“Farah did,” Argent said bitterly.

“I still had to compromise. To make concessions.”

“Like what?” Argent asked. “You’re still the Blackheart of Ben More.”

Dorian cleared his throat. “Would you believe me if I told you… half my businesses are actually legitimate?”

“No.”

“It’s probably best you feel that way, I don’t particularly want it getting out.”

Argent gaped at Blackwell. He’d known the man was in love with his wife, that he’d searched for her for an eternity, even when she’d been presumed dead. But… to go legitimate? He was bloody king of the underworld. Second only to Argent, himself, for the amount of people he’d killed with his own hands. Now he had a daughter. A wife. A courtesy title, not unlike that of the queen’s own consort. A life outside of their criminal enterprise that expanded his possibilities.

And he seemed… happy. Contented. The sky wasn’t falling and the streets weren’t burning.

It was beyond conceivable… and yet…

“I don’t know what concessions to make. I can’t clean the blood I’ve already spilled off my hands. And, as I told her, I’m a hunter. I’m a killer. I’m afraid I need to be, that even if I try to stop, I won’t be able to.”

Dorian regarded him for a long time, that enigmatic eye of his processing his own thoughts. “I think it lives inside both of us. This darkness. This need to be a predator, or worse, play at being God.”

Christopher nodded, cursing Blackwell’s talent for identifying the crux of a problem.

“You could take Morley’s proposition, you know,” Dorian suggested.

“Work for the enemy?” Christopher snorted. “Not a chance.”

Turning his drink around and around in his hand, Dorian smiled a bit ruefully. “He’s not so much my enemy now.”