Guilt darkened her eyes before she looked away from Xev. “How could we ever trust you? You were suckled by evil incarnate.”
“Actually, my wet nurse was a she-fox warrior demon, who took pity on me when no one else would. Or so I’m told. My mother couldn’t be bothered with my needs or feeding, as she couldn’t have cared less if I lived or died once my father told her I should be left out to the elements, for he, a shining bastion of all-good and light, had no intention of ever claiming me as his son.”
He met Nick’s gaze. “By the way, I lied earlier when I told you why I fought for the side I did. It wasn’t to anger my mother. I truly never cared what she thought of me, one way or another. I betrayed the Malachai and my mother, and fought for the Kalosum, solely to keep faith with my wife. She was the only being I would never in my life disappoint. The only one I would bleed or die for.”
Menyara sneered at him. “You’re lying! You never had a wife.”
But the anguish in his red-tinged, rust-colored eyes said that Xev spoke from his heart. No, that wasn’t a lie. Even though Xev had told Nick himself that he’d never known love, Nick knew that look. Every instinct he possessed told him that Xev was being honest with him, right now. That was the same exact light Caleb had in his eyes whenever he spoke of his Lilliana.
The same expression Kyrian had with Theone. Bubba with Melissa.
That was true love. The kind people wrote sonnets and songs about. The kind that broke your heart and left it shattered for eternity.
“What was her name?” Nick asked.
Xev didn’t pause or hesitate with his answer. And when he spoke, his voice softened with reverence, adding further proof that he was telling the truth. “Myone.”
Menyara shot to her feet. “Liar! Myone would have never had anything to do with one such as you! She was one of the purest souls I’ve ever known.” Her anger made Nick wonder who Myone was, but this wasn’t the time to ask.
Xev met Menyara’s gaze without flinching or backing down. “Do not dishonor her memory by speaking her name with your tainted tongue when you know nothing of her true beauty or character! You’re just as delusional and hypocritical as my father. You think because you are born of light that you’re somehow better and kinder than those who aren’t, but you’re not. It merely makes you more sanctimonious in your cruelty. Makes you feel entitled in your wrongful actions against others. But you’re no better than my mother. If anything, you’re worse, because you think your viciousness is justified against us.”
He drew a ragged breath, and turned back toward Simi, Kody, and Nick. “And that’s why my wife and I had to keep our marriage a secret. Why we had to deny we ever had any kind of relationship at all, and why I had to let her go after only six months, to protect her from my enemies, including my own mother and father, who would have killed her to get back at me. They would never have left us in peace, never allowed her to retain her place of honor. Even though she would have never done anything to betray the Kalosum. None of them would have believed it. I couldn’t afford for anyone to know that she held my heart. That I even had one. Good or bad. Light or dark. It mattered not. Had anyone ever learned the truth, we would have been destroyed. Just as Caleb was for daring to hope for a better life with his Lilliana. Just as Adarian was for loving you and your mother. For hoping Cherise could somehow see something more in him besides the monster he’d been born. Like us, he was a pathetic moth dragged against his will to a sweet, vibrant light he couldn’t resist or understand. But one he knew he needed in order to live and feel warm.”
His gaze dropped to where Nick’s hand was wrapped around Kody’s. “They beguile us so with their precious ways. And for a moment’s worth of warmth in a lifetime of coldness, we are burned and extinguished. Pathetic creatures from our cradles to our graves.” He laughed bitterly. “We are ever helpless against them.”
For a full minute, Nick couldn’t breathe as those bitter, heartfelt words and their implication hit him hard. Could it possibly be true?
Could his mother truly be that innocent orphan who’d been conceived and sent by the Kalosum for no other purpose than to trap his father?
“Mennie? Tell me you didn’t do that to my mom.”
Closing her eyes, she turned her face away from him, letting him know that Xev was telling him the truth.
Shattered by the revelations, Nick stepped away from Kody and Simi to approach the woman who’d helped bring him into this world. A woman he’d thought he could always trust. One who’d always promised him that she would never lie or be dishonest.
Not for anything.
When everyone else had turned their back on him and his mom, Menyara had always been there for them. She’d said it was because taking them in like family and helping them was the right thing to do. That she couldn’t turn her back on them like everyone else and let them suffer. Not when they needed help.