Born of Fire

“Don’t even try and defend him to me.”


She ground her teeth. “You three are so stubborn. I ought to lock all of you in a room and not let you out until you settle this.”

She sat quietly for a little while before she spoke again. “You need to understand something about my family. Me and Tessa are the screw-ups.”

He gave her an icy, no-duh stare.

She ignored it. “What you don’t know is how it felt to watch your brother and sister drop out of school to support you. Caillen idolizes Shahara. Since the day she got down on her hands and knees and started scrubbing toilets to keep food on the table, he’s worshiped everything about her. We all have. No matter how hard things got, it was always Shahara who was strong. Shahara who never complained or scolded. She did what she had to for us, and suffered in silence.”

“Yeah, she is good at that.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.” Kasen rubbed her hands over her pants legs. “Anyway, Caillen was the one who found her after she’d been raped. You don’t know what it’s like to see someone you love broken like she was that night.”

Syn flinched as he thought about Talia. He knew exactly what it was like to watch someone he loved be broken, day by day, until there was nothing left but a fractured shell.

Unaware of how her words affected him, she continued. “She was never the same after that. She quit laughing and smiling and joking around. All she did for weeks afterward was sit in a chair and cry.”

“Until she killed him.”

She nodded. “That got her out of her chair, but it didn’t restore what she’d lost. She would never talk about what had happened. She was so weakened and scared that she even let Caillen drop out of school and help out. Something she would never have allowed before the attack. And since the day he found her half-dead from Gaelin’s beating, he wasn’t the same, either. He became obsessed with protecting her.”

Kasen gave him a hard stare. “When Caillen saw you two together, it killed him. He’s always been terrified of losing one of us, especially Shahara. She’s the backbone of our entire family. Anytime something goes wrong, it’s always Shahara who finds a solution. When we need someone to listen to us, or help us in any way, it’s Shahara we run to. He was afraid you’d hurt her and you have.”

She rose and looked down at him. “I can understand why you and Shahara feel the way you do about each other, but don’t hold Caillen accountable for what he said. You mean the universe to him. You’re the best friend he’s ever had.”

“Big whoop.”

“Fine.” She held her hands up in defeat. “Whatever. I don’t care what the three of you do anymore. I’m sick of it.” She headed for the door. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

And with that, she was gone.

But Nykyrian remained.

“What?” Syn snapped at him.

“I know what you feel right now.”

“No, Kip, you don’t. You have no idea what it feels like to be betrayed like I was.”

His expression held its usual stoicism. “After Kiara’s father almost killed me and I barely survived, I went to see her. Like you and Shahara, we were both hurting and we both said things we shouldn’t have.”

Syn curled his lip in disgust. “What has marriage done to you? Turned you into a woman? In case you missed it, we don’t share stuff like this. So can I have my surly, nasty assassin friend back?”

Nykyrian grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him up until their gazes were locked.

Well, the nasty assassin was definitely back.

“All right, asshole. You want to wallow, wallow. It’s no sweat off my balls if you crawl inside a bottle and pickle yourself solid. I’ve got other things to think about now. But let me remind you of something a good friend once said to me when I was being eaten alive by feelings I didn’t understand. ‘Even when my marriage was bad, it was good.’ I had no real idea what you meant that night, but now I do and I’m grateful to the gods I can finally believe in that I took a chance on something that almost killed me. The life I have now . . . no, the woman I have now is worth every rotten moment of my worthless existence that led me to her door, and I would relive it all to have one kiss from her lips. You’re the one who told me that the right woman was a shelter from the storm.”

“And I was drunk at the time.”

Nykyrian shoved him back to the couch. “The Syn I know has never been a coward. Don’t tell me you’re going to let some piece of ass—”

“Don’t you dare insult her!”

“Then there’s your answer, boy.” He handed the bottle back to him. “You have two choices. Put yourself out of all our miseries, or get off this damned couch and live. Really, Syn. This is beneath the ruthless man I call friend.”