Lover Avenged Read online

Chapter 11~12

  Chapter ELEVEN

  At the razor's edge of dawn, just before the light began to gather in the eastern sky, Wrath took form in the dense woods at the northern side of the Brotherhood's mountain. No one had showed back at Hunter-bred, and the day's imminent rays had forced him to leave.

  Small sticks cracked loudly under his shitkickers, the thin pine fingers brittle in the cold. There was not yet snow to muffle the sounds, but he could smell it in the air, feel that frosty bite deep in his sinuses.

  The hidden entrance to the Black Dagger Brotherhood's sanctum sanctorum was at the ass end of a cave, far in the back. His hands located the trigger on the stone door by feel, and the heavy portal slid behind the rock wall. Stepping onto smooth black marble pavers, he followed them forward as the door closed behind him.

  At his will, torches flamed up on either side of him, extending far, far, far into the distance and illuminating the massive iron gates that had been installed in the late eighteenth century, when the Brotherhood had turned this cave into the Tomb.

  As he got closer, the gate's thick slats seemed to his blurry vision to be a lineup of armed sentries, the flickering flames animating what did not in fact move. With his mind, he parted the two halves and continued on, down a long hall fitted from floor to forty-foot ceiling with shelving.

  Lesser jars of all types and kinds were stacked side by side, a display that marked generations of kills made by the Brotherhood. The oldest jars were nothing but crude, hand-thrown vases that had been brought over from the Old Country. With each yard farther, the vessels grew more modern, until you got to the next set of gates and found mass-produced shit made in China and sold at Target.

  There wasn't a lot of space left on the shelves and he was depressed by that. He had helped build with his own hands this repository of the enemy's dead, along with Darius and Tohrment and Vishous, the bunch of them laboring for a month straight, working during the day, sleeping on the marble pavers. He had been the one to decide how far down into the earth to go, and he had extended the shelving corridor yards and yards past what he had thought was needed. When he and his brothers had finished erecting everything, and had stacked the older jars, he'd been convinced that they wouldn't need so much storage space. Surely by the time they had filled even three-quarters of this, the war would be over.

  And here he was, centuries later, trying to find enough room.

  With a dreaded sense of portent, Wrath measured with his bad eyes the last remaining spaces on the original set of shelving. It was hard not to take it as evidence that the war was coming to an end, that the vampire equivalent of the finite Mayan calendar was on these rough-hewn stone walls.

  It was not with victory's glow of success that he envisioned the final jar being set up next to the others.

  They were either going to run out of race to protect or run out of Brothers to do the protecting.

  Wrath took the three jars out of his jacket and placed them together in a little group; then he stepped back.

  He had been responsible for a lot of these jars. Before he'd become king.

  "I already knew that you have been out fighting. "

  Wrath's head shot around at the sound of the Scribe Virgin's commanding voice. Her Holiness was hovering just inside the iron gates, her black robes about a foot off the stone floor, her light shining out from beneath the hems.

  It had once been blindingly bright, that glow of hers. Now it barely cast shadows.

  Wrath turned back to the jars. "So that's what V meant. About pulling the trigger on me. "

  "My son came to me, yes. "

  "But you already knew. And that's not a question, by the way. "

  "Yeah, she hates those. "

  Wrath looked over and watched V step through the gates.

  "Well, check this shit out," Wrath uttered. "The mother and son reunion. . . is only a moment away. " He let the paraphrased lyric drift. "Not. "

  The Scribe Virgin came forward, moving slowly past the jars. Back in the old days-or, hell, as recently as the year before-she would have assumed control of the conversation. Now she just floated along.

  V made a disgusted noise, like he'd waited long enough for his Mommie Dearest to no-more-wire-hanger his king, and wasn't impressed that she hadn't manned up. "Wrath, you didn't let me finish. "

  "And you think I will now?" He reached up and fingered the lip of one of the three jars he'd added to the collection.

  "You will let him finish," the Scribe Virgin said, her tone disinterested.

  Vishous strode forward, his shitkickers solid against the floor he himself had helped lay. "My point was, if you're going to go out, do it with backup. And tell Beth. Otherwise you're a liar. . . and you have a better chance of leaving her a widow. Damn it to hell, ignore my vision, fine. But at least be practical. "

  Wrath paced up and back, thinking that the setting for this convo was too fucking perfect: He was surrounded by evidence of the war.

  Eventually, he stopped in front of the three jars he'd gotten tonight. "Beth thinks that I'm going upstate to meet with Phury. You know, to work with the Chosen. The lying sucks. But the idea we only have four Brothers in the field? Worse. "

  There was a long silence, during which the chattering flicker of the torch flames was the only sound.

  V broke the quiet. "I think you need to have a meeting with the Brother hood, and come clean with Beth. Like I said, if you're going to fight, fight. But do it with full disclosure, true? That way you're not out alone. And neither are any of us. Right now when rotation hits, someone ends up fighting without a partner. Your coming in legit would solve that. "

  Wrath had to smile. "Christ, if I'd thought you would agree with me, I might have said something sooner. " He looked over at the Scribe Virgin. "But what about the laws. Tradition. "

  The mother of the race turned to face him and in a distant voice said, "So much has changed. What is one more. Be well, Wrath, son of Wrath, and Vishous of mine womb. "

  The Scribe Virgin disappeared like breath in the cold night, dissipating into the ether as if she'd never been.

  Wrath leaned back against the shelving, and as his head started to pound, he popped up his sunglasses and rubbed his useless eyes. When he stopped, he shut his lids and grew as still as the stone that surrounded him.

  "You look beat," V murmured.

  Yes, he was, wasn't he. And how sad was that.

  Drug dealing was a very lucrative business.

  In his private office at ZeroSum, Rehvenge went over the night's receipts at his desk, meticulously checking off the amounts to the penny. iAm was doing the same over at Sal's Restaurant, and the first order of business at each nightfall was to meet here and compare results.

  Most of the time they came up with the same total. When they didn't, he defered to iAm.

  Between the alcohol, drugs, and sex, gross receipts were over two hundred and ninety thousand for ZeroSum alone. Twenty-two people worked at the club on salary, including ten bouncers, three bartenders, six prostitutes, Trez, iAm, and Xhex; costs for them all ran about seventy-five grand a night. Bookies and authorized floor dealers, meaning those drug pushers he allowed to sell on his premises, were on commission, and whatever was left after they'd taken their cut was his. Also, every week or so, he or Xhex and the Moors executed major product deals with a select number of distributors who had their own drug networks either in Caldwell or in Manhattan.

  All told, and after personnel costs, he had roughly two hundred thousand a night to pay the cost of the drugs and alcohol that he sold, cover heat and electricity and capital improvements, and take care of the cleaning crew of seven that came in at five a. m.

  Every year he cleared about fifty million from his businesses-which sounded obscene, and it was, especially considering he paid taxes on only a fraction of it. The thing was, drugs and sex were risky businesses, but the profit potential was enormous. And he needed
money. Badly. Keeping his mother in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed and well deserving of was a multimillion-dollar proposition. Then he had his own homes, and every year he traded his Bentley in as soon as the new models were available.

  By far, however, the single highest personal expense he had came in small black velvet bags.

  Rehv reached out over his spreadsheets and picked up the one that had been couriered up from the Big Apple's diamond district. The deliveries arrived on Mondays now-used to be the last Friday of the month, but with the Iron Mask opening up, ZeroSum's closed day had switched to Sundays.

  He pulled the satin cord loose and opened the bag's throat, dumping out a glittering palmful of rubies. Quarter of a million dollars in blood stones. He poured them back into the pouch, tied the cording in a tight knot, and looked at his watch. About sixteen hours before he had to go up north.

  First Tuesday of the month was ransom time, and he paid the princess off in two ways. One was gemstones. The other was his body.

  He made it cost her, though.

  The thought of where he was going and what he was going to have to do made the back of his neck tingle, and he wasn't surprised when his vision began to change, dark pinks and bloodreds replacing the blacks and whites of his office, his visual field bulldozing out into a flat plane.

  Popping open a drawer, he took out one of his lovely new boxes of dopamine and grabbed the syringe he'd used the last couple of times he'd shot up in the office. Rolling up the sleeve of his left arm, he tourniqueted the middle of his biceps out of habit, not necessity. His veins were so swollen it was as if moles had burrowed under his skin, and he felt a stab of satisfaction at the mess they were in.

  There was no cap on the needle's head to take off, and he filled the syringe's belly with the practice of a habitual user. It took him a while to find a vein that was viable, pushing the tiny steel shaft into himself again and again without feeling a thing. He knew he finally hit the right spot when he drew back on the plunger and saw blood mix with the clear solution of the drug.

  As he freed the tourni and started to push his thumb home, he stared at the rot in his arm and thought of Ehlena. Even though she didn't trust him and didn't want to be attracted to him and would clearly move heaven and earth not to go out with him, she still wanted to be a savior. She still wanted what was best for him and his health.

  That was what you called a female of worth.

  He was halfway through the injection when his cell phone went off. A quick glance at the screen showed that the number wasn't one he recognized, so he let the call go. The only people who had his digits were ones he wanted to talk with, and that was a damn short list: his sister, his mother, Xhex, Trez, and iAm. And the Brother Zsadist, his sister's hellren.

  That was it.

  As he pulled the needle out of his vascular cesspool, he cursed as a beep indicated that voice mail had been left. He got those every once in a while, people leaving bits and pieces of their lives in his little corner of technospace, thinking it was someone else's. He never called them back, never texted them with a, This is not who you think it is. They'd figure it out when whoever they thought they were calling didn't return the favor.

  Closing his eyes and easing back in his chair, he tossed the syringe onto the spreadsheets and couldn't care less if the drug worked.

  Sitting alone in his den of iniquity, in the quiet hour after everyone had left and before the cleaning staff came in, he just didn't give a shit whether the flat plane of his vision returned to three dimensions. Didn't care if the full-color spectrum reappeared. Didn't wonder with each passing second whether or not he was going to get back to "normal. "

  This was a change, he realized. Up until now he'd always been desperate for the drug to work.

  What had turned the tide?

  He let the question hang as he picked up his cell phone and palmed his cane. With a groan, he stood up carefully and walked into his private bedroom. The numbness was coming back fast in his feet and legs, quicker than during the ride in from Connecticut, but then, that was par for the course. The less his symphath urges were triggered, the better the drug worked. And gee, funny, getting tapped to cap the king had riled him up.

  Whereas sitting by himself in a home, of sorts, didn't.

  The security system was already on in the office, and he triggered a second one for his private quarters, then shut himself in the windowless bedroom he crashed in from time to time. The bathroom was across the way and he dumped his sable duster on the bed before going in and turning the shower on. As he moved around, bone-deep cold settled into his body, emanating from the inside out, as if he'd injected himself with Freon.

  This he did dread. He hated always being cold. Shit, maybe he should have just let himself go. It wasn't like he was going to be interacting with anyone.

  Yeah, but if he got too far behind in his doses, the catch-up was a bitch.

  Steam billowed free from behind the glass shower door, and he stripped naked, leaving his suit and tie and shirt on the marble counter between the two sinks. Stepping under the spray, he shivered hard, his teeth rattling.

  For a moment, he collapsed back against the smooth marble walls, keeping himself in the center of the four showerheads. As hot water he couldn't feel cascaded down his chest and abs, he tried not to think about what the following night was bringing and failed.

  Oh, God. . . did he have it in him to do it again? Go up there and whore himself out to that bitch?

  Yeah, and the alternative was. . . her reporting him as a symphath to the council and getting his ass deported up to that colony.

  The choice was clear.

  Fuck that; there was no choice. Bella didn't know what he was, and it would kill her to find out the family lie. And she wouldn't be the only casualty. His mother would fall apart. Xhex would be livid and get herself murdered trying to save him. Trez and iAm would do the same.

  The whole house of cards would fall.

  Compulsively, he grabbed a bright gold bar of soap from the ceramic holder mounted on the wall and worked a froth up between his palms. The shit he used on himself wasn't some kind of fancy milled stuff. It was rotgut Dial, a disinfectant that was like a pavement grader over the skin.

  His whores used the same. It was what he stocked in their shower rooms, at their request.

  His rule was three times. Three times he went up and down his arms and his legs, his pecs and his abs, his neck and his shoulders. Three times he dipped between his thighs, soaping up his cock and sac. The ritual was stupid, but such were compulsions. He could have used up three dozen Dial bars and still felt vile.

  Funny, his whores were always surprised at the way they got treated. Each time a new one came on, they expected to have to sex him up as part of their employment, and they were always prepared to be beaten. Instead, they got their own private dressing room with a shower, reliable hours, security that never, ever touched them, and this thing called respect-which meant they chose their johns, and if the fuckers who paid for the privilege of being with them messed up even a hair of theirs, all they had to do was say the word and a mountain of shit fell on the offender.

  More than once, he'd had one of the women show up at his office door and ask to speak with him privately. It usually happened about a month into her tenure, and what she said was always the same and always spoken with a kind of confusion that, had he been a normal, would have broken his heart:

  Thank you.

  He wasn't big on hugging, but he'd been known to pull them into his arms and hold on to them for a short breath. None of them knew that it wasn't because he was a nice guy; it was because he was one of them. The hard reality was that life had put them all where they didn't want to be, namely on their backs for people they didn't want to be fucking. Yes, there were some who didn't mind the job, but like everyone, they didn't always want to be working. And God knew the johns always showed up.

 
Just like his blackmailer.

  Getting out of the shower was pure, undiluted hell, and he put off the deep freeze as long as he could, huddling under the spray while he argued with himself over the evac. As the debate continued, he heard the water tinkling against the marble and chattering down the brass drain, but his numbed-out body felt nothing except a slight easing of his inner Alaska. When the hot water ran out, he knew only because his shivering got worse and the beds of his fingernails went from pale gray to deep blue.

  He toweled off on the way to the bed and shot under the mink duvet as fast as he could.

  Just as he was yanking the covers up to his throat, his phone beeped. Another voice mail.

  Fucking Grand Central with his phone tonight.

  Checking his missed calls, he found the latest was from his mother, and he sat up quickly, even though the vertical shift meant his chest went bare. Lady that she was, she never called, not wanting to "interrupt his work. "

  He hit some buttons, put in his password, and got ready to delete the wrong number's confused message which would come up first.

  "Your call from 518-blah-blah-blah. . . " He hit the pound key to shoot past the ID shit and got ready to punch seven to get rid of the thing.

  His finger was on the way down just as a female voice said, "Hi, I-"

  That voice. . . that voice was. . . Ehlena?

  "Fuck!"

  Voice mail was inexorable, however, and didn't give a shit that a message from her was the last thing he'd choose to erase. As he cursed, the system churned on until he heard his mother's soft voice in the Old Language.

  "Greetings, dearest son, I hope you fare well. Please excuse the intrusion, but I was wondering if you might stop by the house for a moment over the next couple of days? There is a matter about which I must speak to you. I love you. Good-bye, mine blooded firstborn. "

  Rehv frowned. So formal, the verbal equivalent of a thoughtful note written in her beautiful hand, but the request was out of character, and that gave it an urgency. Except he was screwed-bad choice of words. Tomorrow evening was a no-go because of his "date," so it would have to be the night after, assuming he was well enough.

  He called the house, and when one of her doggen picked up, he told the maid he'd be there Wednesday night as soon as the sun went down.

  "Sire, if I may," the servant said. "Verily, I am glad you are coming. "

  "What's going on?" When there was a long pause, his inner chill got worse. "Talk to me. "

  "She is. . . " The voice on the other end grew rough. "She is as lovely as ever, but we are all glad you are coming. If you will excuse me, I shall deliver your message. "

  The line went dead. In the back of his mind, he had a sense as to what it was, but he studiously ignored the conviction. He just couldn't go there. Absolutely couldn't.

  Besides, maybe it was nothing. Paranoia, after all, was a side effect of too much dopamine, and God knew he was doing more than his fair share. He would go to the safe house as soon as he was able, and she would be fine-Wait, the winter solstice. That had to be what it was. No doubt she wanted to plan festivities that included Bella and Z and the young, as it would be Nalla's first solstice ritual, and his mother took that kind of thing very seriously. She might live on this side, but the Chosen traditions she had been born into were still very much a part of her.

  That was totally it.

  Relieved, he put Ehlena's number into his addy book and hit her back.

  All he could think about as the phone rang, aside from, Pick up, pick up, pick up, was that he hoped like hell she was okay. Which was nuts. Like she would ever call him if she were in trouble?

  So why had she-

  "Hello?"

  The sound of her voice in his ear did something the hot shower, the mink throw, and the eighty-degree ambient air temperature couldn't. Warmth spread out from his chest, beating back the numbness and the cold, suffusing him with. . . life.

  He extinguished the lights so he could concentrate all he had on her.

  "Rehvenge?" she said after a moment.

  He eased back down onto his pillows and smiled in the dark. "Hi. "

  Chapter TWELVE

  There's blood on your shirt. . . and-oh, God-your pant leg. Wrath, what happened?"

  Standing in his study at the Brotherhood mansion, facing his beloved shellan, Wrath pulled the two halves of his biker jacket more tightly across his chest, and thought, well, at least he'd washed the lesser blood from his hands.

  Beth's voice dropped. "How much of what I'm looking at is yours. "

  She was as beautiful as she had always been to him, the one female he wanted, the only mate for him. In her jeans and her black turtleneck, with her dark hair down around her shoulders, she was the most attractive thing he'd ever seen. Still.

  "Wrath. "

  "Not all of it. " The cut on his shoulder had no doubt leaked all over his wife-beater, but he'd held the civilian male to his chest as well, so the male's blood had no doubt mixed with his own.

  Unable to keep still, he walked around the study, going from the desk to the windows and back. The rug his shitkickers crossed was blue, gray, and cream, an Aubusson whose colors matched the pale blue walls and whose curvilinear swirls played off the delicate Louis XIV furniture, fixtures, and swirly moldings.

  He'd never really appreciated the decor. And he didn't start now.

  "Wrath. . . how did it get there. " Beth's hard tone told him she knew the answer already, but was hoping there was another explanation.

  Manning up, he turned to face the love of his life across the expanse of the frilly-ass room. "I'm fighting again. "

  "You're what?"

  "I'm fighting. "

  As Beth went silent, he was glad the study door was closed. He saw the math she was doing in her head and knew the sum of what she was pulling together added up to one and only one thing: She was thinking about all those "nights up north" with Phury and the Chosen. All those times he'd worn long-sleeved, bruise-hiding shirts to bed because he had "a chill. " All the "I'm limping because I worked out too hard" excuses.

  "You're fighting. " She plugged her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and even though he couldn't see a hell of a lot, he knew damn well that black turtleneck was a perfect complement to her stare. "Just to clarify. Is this as in, you're going to start fighting. Or have been fighting. "

  That was a rhetorical, but clearly she wanted him to present the full lie. "Have been. For the last couple of months. "

  Anger and hurt rolled off her, spilling toward him, smelling to him of scorched wood and burned plastic.

  "Look, Beth, I have to-"

  "You have to be honest with me," she said sharply. "That's what you have to do. "

  "I didn't expect to be going out for more than a month or two-"

  "A month or two! How the hell long-" She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. "How long have you been doing this?"

  When he told her, she went quiet again. Then, "Since August? August. "

  He wished she would let loose with her temper. Yell at him. Call him a cocksucker. "I'm sorry. I. . . Shit, I'm really sorry. "

  She didn't say anything else, and the scent of her emotions drifted away, dispersed by the hot air blowing up through the heating vents on the floor. Out in the hall, a doggen was vacuuming, the sound of the carpet attachment whirring up and back, up and back. In the silence between them, that normal, everyday sound was something he clung to-the kind of thing you heard all the time and rarely noticed because you were busy dealing with paperwork, or distracted by the fact that you were peckish, or trying to decide whether you wanted to decompress by watching TV or hitting the gym. . . It was a safe sound.

  And during this devastating moment in his mating, he hung on to the Dyson's lullaby with a death grip, wondering if he was ever going to be lucky enough to ignore it again.

  "It never occurred to me. . . " She cleared her
throat once more. "It never occurred to me that there was something you couldn't talk to me about. I've always assumed that you were telling me. . . everything you could. "

  As she stopped talking, he was chilled to the bone. Her voice was now the one she used to answer wrong numbers on the phone: She addressed him as if he were a stranger, without warmth or particular interest.

  "Look, Beth, I have to be out there. I have to-"

  She shook her head and raised her hand to stop him. "This isn't about you fighting. "

  Beth stared up at him for a heartbeat. Then she turned and went for the double doors.

  "Beth. " Was that strangled croak his voice?

  "No, leave me alone. I need some space. "

  "Beth, listen, we don't have enough fighters in the field-"

  "It's not the fighting!" She wheeled around and faced off at him. "You lied to me. Lied. And not just once, but for four months straight. "

  Wrath wanted to argue, to defend himself, to point out that he'd lost track of time, that those 120 nights and days had flown by at the speed of light, that all he'd been doing was putting one foot in front of the other in front of the first, going minute by minute, hour by hour, trying to keep the race afloat, trying to keep the lessers back. He hadn't meant it to go on for so long. He hadn't set out to deceive her for that long.

  "Just answer me one thing," she said. "One thing. And it had better be the truth or, so help me, God, I'm going to. . . " She put her palm to her mouth, catching a soft sob in her gentle hand. "Honestly, Wrath. . . did you honestly think you were going to stop? In your heart, did you truly think you were going to-"

  He swallowed hard as her words choked off.

  Wrath took a deep breath. In the course of his life, he had been wounded many, many times. But nothing, no pain ever inflicted upon him, hurt a fraction of what answering her felt like.

  "No. " He inhaled again. "No, I don't think. . . I was going to stop. "

  "Who talked to you tonight. Who was the one who made you decide to tell me. "

  "Vishous. "

  "I should have known. He's probably the only person other than Tohr who could have. . . " Beth crossed her arms around herself, and he would have given his dagger hand to have him being the one holding her. "Your being out there fighting scares the shit out of me, but you forget something. . . I mated you without knowing that the king isn't supposed to be in the field. I was prepared to stand by you even though it terrified me. . . because fighting in this war is in your nature and in your blood. You fool-" Her voice cracked. "You fool, I would have let you do it. But instead-"

  "Beth-"

  She cut him off. "Remember that night you went out at the beginning of the summer? When you stepped in to save Z and then stayed downtown and fought with the others?"

  He sure as hell did. When he'd come back home, he'd chased her up the stairs and they'd had sex on the rug in the second-floor sitting room. A number of times. He'd kept the cutoffs he'd ripped from her hips as a souvenir.

  Jesus. . . come to think of it. . . that was the last time they had been together.

  "You told me only for one night," she said. "One night. Only. You swore to it, and I trusted you. "

  "Shit. . . I'm sorry. "

  "Four months. " She shook her head, her gorgeous dark hair swinging around her shoulders, catching the light so beautifully even his piss-poor eyes registered its glory. "You know what hurts the most? That the Brothers knew and I didn't. I've always accepted this secret-society stuff, understood that there are things I can't know-"

  "They didn't have a clue either. " Okay, Butch had known, but there was no reason to throw him under the bus. "V only found out tonight. "

  She wobbled, steadying herself against the pale blue walls. "You've been going out alone?"

  "Yes. " He reached out for her arm, but she tore it away from him. "Beth-"

  She yanked open the door. "Don't touch me. "

  The thing clapped shut behind her.

  Rage at himself had Wrath spinning toward his desk, and the instant he saw all the papers, all the requests, all the complaints, all the problems, it was like someone hooked jumper cables up to his shoulder blades and hit him with a charge. He shot forward, swept his arms across the top, and sent the shit flying everywhere.

  As papers fluttered down like snow, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, a headache spearing into his frontal lobe. Robbed of breath, he stumbled around, finding his chair by feel and collapsing into the damn thing. With a ragged grunt, he let his head fall back. These stress headaches were becoming a daily occurrence lately, wiping him out and lingering like a flu that refused to be cured.

  Beth. His Beth. . .

  When he heard a knock, he gave the f-word a workout.

  The knock came again.

  "What," he barked.

  Rhage put his head around the jamb, then froze. "Ah. . . "

  "What. "

  "Yeah, well. . . Ah, going by the door slamming-and, wow, the stiff wind that clearly just blew by your desk-do you still want to meet with us?"

  Oh, God. . . how was he going to get through another one of these conversations.

  Then again, maybe he should have thought about that before he'd decided to lie to his nearest and dearest.

  "My lord?" Rhage's voice became gentle. "Do you want to see the Brotherhood?"

  No. "Yes. "

  "You need Phury on speakerphone?"

  "Yeah. Listen, I don't want the boys in this meeting. Blay, John, Qhuinn. . . they're not invited. "

  "Figured. Hey, how about I help you clean up?"

  Wrath looked down at the carpet of paperwork. "I'll deal with it. "

  Hollywood proved he had half a brain by not offering again or pulling an are-you-sure. He just ducked out and shut the door.

  Across the way, the grandfather clock in the corner tolled. It was yet another familiar sound Wrath didn't hear on a regular basis, but now, as he sat alone in the study, the chimes rang out as if they were broadcast over concert speakers.

  He dropped his hands onto the arms of the spindly, fragile chair, and they dwarfed the supports. The piece of furniture was more on the scale of something a female would perch on to take off her stockings at the end of the night.

  It was not a throne. Which was why he used it.

  He hadn't wanted to accept the crown on many levels, having been king by birthright but not inclination or actuality for three hundred years. But then Beth had come along and things had changed and he'd finally gone to the Scribe Virgin.

  That had been two years ago. Two springs and two summers and two autumns and two winters.

  He'd had great plans back then, in the beginning. Great, wonderful plans for bringing the Brotherhood together, getting everyone under one roof, consolidating forces, shoring up against the Lessening Society. Winning.

  Saving.

  Reclaiming.

  Instead, the glymera had been slaughtered. More civilians were dead. And there were even fewer Brothers.

  They hadn't made progress. They'd lost ground.

  Rhage poked his head in again. "We're all still out here. "

  "Goddamn it, I told you I needed some-"

  The grandfather clock chimed again, and as Wrath listened to the number of beats, he realized he'd been sitting by himself for an hour.

  He rubbed his aching eyes. "Give me another minute. "

  "Whatever you need, my lord. Just take your time. "