"Dear gods." The bastard had a heart. Who knew? "I will love you forever, Phyra. Never doubt that or me."
Her throat tightened as she looked down at the tile of herself that she'd put on the tabletop. Had he really missed her? Pined for her? Don't be ridiculous. He probably planned this for you to find. Planned it? He'd thought her dead. Why would he hang on to her image all these centuries unless she meant something to him? She certainly had kept nothing of his.
"Don't you dare weaken," she snarled at herself. "He's nothing." Determined to stay hard, she put the pictures back, then froze as she saw something she'd missed earlier. It was a small green frayed ribbon.
The same ribbon she'd worn twined through her hair on the tile. And there, tied in the middle of it, was the wedding ring she'd thrown in his face when he'd told her he was leaving.
Her eyes teared as she saw the ancient carving on the band. S'agapo. "I love you" in Greek.
"Damn you," she growled as she weakened even more in the face of his obvious love. He had cared about her. Through all these centuries, he'd kept her as close to him as he could. Unable to stand it, she left his room and went in search of his study. She hadn't gone far when Davyn appeared.
"Can I help you?"
"I want to see Stryker. Now."
"He doesn't like to be disturbed when he's in his study."
"I really don't care." She stepped past him. Davyn sighed heavily before he passed her and then led her to the correct destination. He knocked on the door. "My lord?"
"What!" Stryker barked.
Zephyra stepped around Davyn and threw open the door to find Stryker sitting at his desk, looking into a small round ball. No, not just looking, he was fixated by it.
"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice rife with her agitation that she used to cover the tender feelings inside her.
He glanced up. "Trying to find Gautier. What are you doing here?"
Truthfully, she wasn't sure. She didn't want to be here and yet . . . "I wanted to see you."
"Leave," he ordered Davyn, who obeyed instantly. As soon as they were alone, he looked back at her. "I thought you'd seen more than your fair share of me."
She had and . . . He'd kept a tile of her. How could something so insipidly stupid weaken her? She'd always thought herself above such petty sentimentality. Apparently she was wrong. Before she could stop herself, she moved to his side. "Why didn't you go after Gautier yourself?"
"I tried. The little bastard is fast and extremely resourceful. Not to mention his powers aren't anything to laugh at. I stupidly thought he received most of that from our blood exchange. Now that I know what he is, it makes even more sense why I was having such a hard time controlling him. I should have been feeding from him and taking his powers."
"You couldn't tell?"
"No. Whoever bound his powers did one hell of a job. Case in point, I can't find him anywhere. Even though we're supposed to share sight, he's off my radar completely."
"That's impossible."
He gave her a dry "duh" stare. "I know that. Yet here I am, completely blind to him." She stepped around his desk to look into the sfora. "When was the last time you had a visual?"
He looked aghast at her. "Are you helping me?"
She refused to give him the satisfaction. "Shut up and answer my question."
A slow smile spread over his face and the teasing gleam in his eyes set her ire off. "You are helping me."
"Don't get used to it. I'm a woman of my word, and since I can't kill you it's not in my nature to crochet and do nothing. Why are we going to kill this man anyway?"
"He murdered my sister."
That was a good reason. "Bastard scum."
Stryker nodded in approval. "I had him in my sights a couple of hours ago before War went after him." "Then he's probably in hiding."
"My thoughts exactly. But where?"
"The best place to hide is in plain sight. The bugger is there. We just have to figure it out."
NICK RAKED HIS HANDS THROUGH HIS HAIR AS he stared at the tiny African-American woman before him. She was a woman he'd thought he'd known his entire life and here in the last few minutes he'd learned that he had never really known her at all.
"I don't understand this. My father was a psychotic criminal who beat the hell out of my mom whenever she was dumb enough to let him into our apartment between his unfortunate incarcerations."
Menyara shook her head. "Your father was a demon who preferred prison because it was the last place the people who would kill him would think to look for him. Not to mention it allowed him to feed off their evil energy. He drew power from all their negativity."
Nick refused to believe it. It just wasn't possible. "You're wrong. My father was human." A corrupt, mean, and vicious man, but human through and through.