Page 152 of The Spider Queen

Hunter didn’t remember me? Didn’t remember pledging that he’d die for me, and not just because he was a Hunter, one of Thane’s chosen, but because he loved me?

I won’t be with you just because Hunter is gone.

I know.

And I won’t be with you just because my body wants us together.

I know that too. Why do you think you’re sleeping alone? If I didn’t care about making you fall in love with me, I’d use your body against you. But that would prove your theory that I have no humanity.

But you aren’t human.

That doesn’t mean I don’t wish to understand humanity, or to posses it. My mother was human. Before she mated with my father.

Your mother was human?

Yes. She retained some of her humanity, even after she chose my father. Very unusual for a human who chooses to become immortal.

Why did your father marry a human?

Not marry. Mate.

Fine. Why did your father mate with a human?

All Guardians of the Bridge mate with humans.

Why?

Because human females, even after they become immortal, can still breed young.

So I’m supposed to be breeding stock. How lovely.The disdain was evident.

You’re more than that, Poppy. I swear it.

I sighed.Tell me more about your parents.

My mother loved my father very much. She died soon after he did. From a broken heart.

But your father was immortal.

He was. And so was my mother when she chose to be with him.

Then how did they die? If they were immortal?

Immortals can still die. Xan killed my father—gutted him with an enchanted sword. Xan had me imprisoned, and then came to tell me when our mother passed.

And Xan didn’t—he didn’t kill your mother, too, did he?

No. Not with a strike of the sword. But my mother loved my father far too much to ever be without him… She just gave up on life.

I felt his anguish like it was my own, yet I offered no words of comfort. They would’ve been meaningless.

A prickle of awareness blew across my skin. Somehow I knew Thane was close by. Maybe he was sitting outside the doors of my room, his head leaning back against an ebony wall while he relived the death of this parents and the betrayal of his brother.

“Open,” I said softly.

The wall slid wide to reveal Thane. He wasn’t sitting but standing. Tall. His hands clenched at his sides. He made no move to come in.

“How long have you been out there?” I asked.