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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

M ireille Valette was finding it incredibly difficult not to break down as she looked into Ronin’s eyes.

Eye.

Fuck.

It was even more brutal than she’d anticipated, seeing the evidence of her hatred tracking from his black brow, down his cheekbone, and into his soft upper lip. Bless the Creator that the worst of the savage scar was hidden behind that eye patch.

If it wasn’t, Mireille might very quickly lose hold of the control she was clinging to with every shallow breath, every stuttering heartbeat.

Her fury over his role in her father’s death had cooled over the years—there were plenty of other things to be distracted by here in Tartarus—but it hadn’t completely dissipated.

He hadn’t apologized on the day they’d both discovered what he’d done.

Would it have made a difference then? Did it make a difference now?

The centuries-old memory was still crystal clear in her mind: Ronin kneeling in the pine needles, swearing that he didn’t know the soldier he’d killed was her father. She believed him. But somehow, that had only made the betrayal worse. Her human father had been nothing but a nameless, faceless body on that battlefield in Aethalia. So inconsequential that Ronin didn’t even remember him.

Her father hadn’t mattered. Neither to Ronin nor to the Empire.

And if her father hadn’t mattered, due to his humanity, what did that make Mireille with her half-human blood?

Sure, it had given her power for a short blip of time. That fire that flowed through her veins and coated her hide in swirls of crackling red and orange when she shifted. It had even crawled up the length of her sword to ensure that brutal scar remained on Ronin’s otherwise perfect face.

But her fire had snuffed out the second she’d passed through Tartarus’s wards. She’d become just another Beastrunner prisoner—capable of shifting into her wolf, if needed, but nothing more. Over the years, she’d found other ways to survive. She’d had to, in order to ensure she arrived at this specific night to meet the young girl her father had shown her in that vision in the Halfway all those years ago.

Ronin just stood there, stoic and silent.

She’d expected anger, hatred. Retaliation, even.

His indifference cut far deeper.

Her voice trembled on the question she’d been waiting centuries to ask him.

“Why are you here?”

He nodded toward Cassandra’s bedroom. “Her.”

“That the only reason?”

“Yes.”

“You capable of giving me something more than a one-word answer?”

“No.”

Her frustration spilled over. “Look, if she’s going to have any chance of surviving her appeal, you and I need to put our past aside and help her. I knew she wasn’t human anymore, but?—”

“How? How did you know that? And how did you know we would need the veiling potion to get through sentencing?”

The name burned in Mireille’s throat. “Gareth.”

Ronin flinched.

Good .

She wanted Ronin wrecked by guilt at the sound of her father’s name. “He’s been visiting my dreams. Showing me visions of that meeting in the throne room. Helping me ensure all the players were in place.”

“So you knew I was coming?” Ronin said, a bit breathlessly. Some hint of an emotion, finally.

“Yes.” She raised her chin.

“And you know how this plays out?”

“No,” Mireille admitted. “If he even tried to hint about what happens after the castle, I would wake up.”

“Convenient,” Ronin grumbled.

“Is it?” Mireille snapped, rising from the table and stepping into his space. She didn’t dare breathe in, didn’t need the distracting familiarity of his scent. “I think it’s the Goddess who’s waking me up. She doesn’t want me to see how this could go. She wants me to…”

“Wants you to what?” Ronin’s fingers tightened on his impressive arms. She remembered, all too clearly, how they’d felt wrapped around her. How safe and protected she’d been for the only time in her long, miserable life. A tiny blip of warmth in centuries of cold.

“To choose to fight for Cassandra without certainty of the outcome,” she said. “What happened to her?”

“She was Turned.”

Mireille rolled her eyes. “Yes, I had gath?—”

“By Prince Tristan Erabis.”

“ What ? How?”

“You don’t know how Turning works?” A vein fluttered in Ronin’s jaw. “He fell in love with her, they shared blood, and they fucked. Boom. A new Fae female is born on Ethyrios.”

His bitterness shredded through her chest, even as she recognized the envy within it. A love so powerful that it could change a person’s species? Mireille supposed that was the kind of love that would inspire envy.

The kind of love she and Ronin might have shared, before fate yanked it away.

Before they’d ruined each other.

Creator, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t go down this path when she saw him again. A reunion she’d had ages to prepare for. Less than five minutes in and she was already breaking her own rules.

Fucking focus , Mireille.

She raised her chin, crossing her arms and mimicking his protective stance. “When did it happen? And does the Empire know?”

“I’m not sure that I should trust you with that information.”

Mireille finally exploded. “She would be dead right now if it wasn’t for me! Whatever intentions the Creator has for Cassandra, whatever help I’m supposed to provide her, preparing for it was the only thing keeping me going these past two centuries.”

She didn’t tell him how many times she’d wished for True Death. How many times she’d come so close to falling into that dark embrace. How it was only the thought of that young girl’s face in the Halfway, so fragile yet so strong, that had Mireille clinging to some small shred of hope.

Whatever shit Ronin believed about her, she wasn’t going to let it stand in the way of fulfilling her destiny. She couldn’t. If she did, then everything she’d endured would have been for nothing.

“Her Turning happened very recently,” he said, softening slightly at her outburst. “She transformed shortly after she was delivered to her cell in the intake tower. And thanks to the veiling potion you provided, the Vicereine only saw her as human. The Empire doesn’t know what she’s become.”

Mireille jolted. “Varuna Lykan came to deliver the sentences? Not Eamon himself?” That was odd. Went against the protocol that had been established for new prisoners.

Ronin shook his head. “The gears of war are turning out there. The continent is poised to tear itself apart, and if we don’t intervene soon we will all be destroyed. We need her to defeat the Koenig. And then we need to figure out how to get the fuck out of here.”

“You don’t have to keep telling me that. I understand how important it is that she wins.”

“What are you going to do to help her, then?”

“I know the Koenig. I’ve seen him fight. And I know his Brethren. Some of them intimately. I can help her learn their weaknesses, prepare her for the battle.”

“Good,” Ronin said absently. As if still stuck on the word intimately . “She’s going to need it. She’s doesn’t even know how to wield her new Fae strength yet.”

“We’ll prepare her as best we can.”

Devastation flashed across his face, there and gone in an instant, when she’d referred to them as we .

He fidgeted, then spat out a question he couldn’t seem to keep himself from asking. “Is that what you’ve been doing to inspire the Brethren’s generosity? Fucking them?”

His judgmental tone landed a powerful strike, drawing rage instead of blood. “What would that even matter to you? Whatever promises we made to each other died outside that cabin. The choices I’ve made to survive in here are none of your fucking business.”

Ronin snarled, hate simmering in his eye. She was wrong; this was so much worse than his indifference. “So, we’ll be civil to each other to help Cassandra and that’s all, right?”

She nodded stiffly.

He prowled in closer, towering over her, barely an inch of space between them. “Then stay out of my fucking business as well.”

“With pleasure.” She side-stepped as he shoved past her. She shouted over her shoulder as he stalked down the hallway, “I didn’t ask for this, Ronin.” His back stiffened at his name, and it felt like a small victory. “You play your part and I’ll play mine.”

“You were pretty good at that, if I recall,” he said, refusing to look at her as his pounding footsteps faded.

His bedroom door slammed, and she dug her nails into her palms hard enough to break skin.

Well, her wolf purred. That went well. You probably should have ? —

I don’t need your advice on how to handle him.

The beast licked her paw. Are you sure? He seemed rather jealous when you mentioned the Brethren. Quite a strong response. Curious, don’t you think?

Mireille sighed. It’s not important. How we feel about each other doesn’t ? —

He looks just as delicious as I remembered. Maybe even more so with that glorious scar.

Mireille didn’t have the energy to argue. Some small, starved part of her maybe even agreed. But the exchange had exhausted her. She’d been prepared to encounter his hatred.

But she hadn’t expected it to hurt this much.

Ronin slammed his bedroom door, then leaned against it and dipped his head into his hands.

His wolf stirred.

Not one word, furball , Ronin growled. Not one. Fucking. Word.

Cold indifference, huh?

What did I just say?

The creature huffed. You can pretend that you haven’t been pining for that female for the past two hundred years, but I know the truth. And now you have a chance to fix what was broken. Don’t let your anger stand in the way.

Ronin snarled out loud. What I do or do not do about her is none ? —

You’re a child. I thought maybe you’d grown up, but ? —

Stay OUT of it.

His wolf sighed and settled.

Ronin stripped off his shirt, wishing he could’ve taken a shower but too exhausted by this insane day to even consider it. Instead, he folded his massive body into the small, but comfortable bed.

And as he slipped off into a restless, tossing slumber, he couldn’t help but wonder who would break first.

Him or Mireille.