Thane couldn’t help himself; he grinned. Humor, from the ever-serious Koldo was as baffling as Zacharel’s new obsession with the girl. And it moved Thane to do something he knew he shouldn’t.
He strode to the kitchen and placed on the counter all the items necessary for making a sandwich. He should be tracking another demon to torture. Unfortunately, the one he’d captured had not given any details, no matter what he’d done, had just stoically borne the pain. He should be alerting the other members of the army to these new developments. But he wanted to ease Koldo somehow, someway.
“You can’t feed me,” Koldo said from the bed.
No, he couldn’t, as much as he wished otherwise. Anyone who did would be forced to bear the very pain they’d hoped to assuage—for the rest of eternity. “I’m hungry and in need of a snack. If you want what I leave behind, that’s up to you.” As he was learning, there was always a way around a rule.
Thane bit into the turkey-and-cheese as he strode back to the bed. He took another bite, and then another, before placing what was left of the sandwich on the nightstand. Then he returned to the kitchen and filled a glass with orange juice. He drained half the contents before the glass, too, found a new home on the nightstand.
Koldo studied the food for a long, silent moment before shifting his gaze to Thane. “I will tell you why I wanted the Water if you swear never to breathe a word of what you hear.”
Vows were sacred among their kind. Thane often felt as if he were a man lacking any sort of honor, that there was nothing he wouldn’t do, no line he wouldn’t cross, but that wasn’t exactly true. He never broke his vows, and he never would. “I so swear.”
A beat of stilted silence, then, “Zacharel was dying. The girl swore to keep him out of the heavens for one month if I healed him. I knew the Water was the only thing that would save him, and so I procured it for him.”
He absorbed the warrior’s words, trying to reason things out, failing. “Why a month?”
“I needed time to heal. Time to search…to act.”
The potency of the warrior’s relish left no doubt that the “act,” whatever it was, would involve bloodshed. “Tell me.”
“Your oath of secrecy extends to this?”
Meaning, he would not mention this discussion even to Bjorn or Xerxes. “It does.”
Koldo gave the slightest of nods. “Everyone thinks a demon removed my wings all those years ago, and I allow them to think this because I do not want to answer any questions about the truth.”
“But the truth is…what?” Thane asked, knowing Koldo would answer him. Not because he had given his vow of silence, but because the truth was a poison inside of him, a poison he was desperate to expunge.
“An angel took my wings, and I plan to kill her.”
Thane had questioned why the stoic Koldo, the unflappable, unbendable warrior anyone and everyone could rely on, had been assigned to this last-chance army. He’d heard rumors about a supposed beating Koldo had rendered, but he’d never seen the male worked into any kind of temper. Now he fit a few puzzle pieces together. Whether the beating had happened or not, Koldo was a part of Zacharel’s army because of the vengeful purpose in his heart.
“If Zacharel so much as suspected, he would try and stop you.”
“Yes.”
“And you do not think I will try and stop you?”
There was no hesitation when Koldo replied with, “No, I do not. You know the value of retaliation.”
Actually, he knew the hopelessness. After his rescue from the dungeon, after his body had healed, Thane, Bjorn and Xerxes had returned. Three days and three nights were spent locked in a vicious battle for rights to that dungeon. Oh, they could have killed the demons inside, torched the place and ended things in an hour, but they hadn’t wanted that. Hadn’t wanted their captors to die quickly or easily.