“You have an old friend outside who wants to meet with you, but she won’t give me her name.”
Ember wished she could say that was weird, but since her coronation, old friends had been turning up everywhere. Wanting money, favors …
Souvenirs.
It gave her a whole new respect for how normal Bastien had always been, given the attention he’d been exposed to from birth.
With a heavy sigh, she went to her receiving room, expecting to find an old school chum.
But when the petite blonde turned around, all the air left her lungs.
It was Alura.
“What are you doing here?”
Alura raked her with a snotty glare. “So you won after all.”
Ember screwed her face up. “This wasn’t about winning. My God, Alura! Bastien’s a person. And I’m your zusa!”
“None of you ever treated me like family. You were all so jealous of me. My beauty and the fact that I was sa-sa’s favorite.”
“Is that why you had him killed?”
She hissed at Ember. “I tried to help him. Tried to warn him. He wouldn’t listen!”
Yeah, right. Alura never served anyone but herself. Even now, she was impeccably dressed and it was obvious that she’d suffered no hardship while in hiding.
“Why are you here?”
“Tell Bastien I’m dead. Get him off my back. You owe me that much.”
Was she insane? “I don’t owe you anything!” Other than maybe a severe ass-whipping.
“I’m your zusa!”
“Yeah. And as you said, you never acted like it. You lied and took my husband from me. You knew I was pregnant and you stole even that! And you think I owe you?”
Alura hissed. “You’re such a bitch. Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she headed for the door.
And ran straight into Bastien.
His eyes flared with instant recognition. But before he could reach for her, she turned and ran in the opposite direction with an ear-piercing scream.
Bastien exchanged a fierce frown with Ember as Alura headed for the balcony. There was no place for her to go.
Unless …
They both had the exact bad feeling at the same time.
Running together, they reached the doors just as Alura jumped over the edge and plunged to the street below. Traffic screeched to a halt and horns blared.
When she started to look over the edge, Bastien took her arm and pulled her back. “Don’t.”
Instead, he glanced to the scene below.
“Is she…” Ember couldn’t get the word past the painful knot in her throat.
“Yeah. She’s dead. I’m so sorry, Ember.”
Ember burst into tears.
Bastien held her close and let her cry. He wished he could feel the same, but every time he tried to feel bad for Alura, he saw an image of his mother and sister lying dead and couldn’t. In his mind, she’d deserved a far worse fate.
But he wouldn’t begrudge Ember her grief.
Or her love. Family was family. Even when they hurt you. Even when it was done intentionally. Though he’d never understand why some were born so broken they couldn’t be fixed. Why some people could only find happiness by lashing out at others and ruining their lives.
All he could do was be grateful that he wasn’t counted among their numbers. Life wasn’t about misery. It wasn’t about spreading pain.
His father had always said that life was a balance. Good and bad. The goal was to make sure that when you left the world, you left it with the scales shifted as much to the good column as you could.
And so he made himself remember the times with Alura when she hadn’t sought to hurt them.
Forgiveness was the only way to heal. And the only way to make sure her poison didn’t spread was to forget that she’d ever planted it.
In the end, that was the only way to deal with such creatures. Give them no fertilizer to grow their evil. Let it die with them. Let them pass from the world with no memory that they’d ever walked it.
So he would think no more of their bitter, pain-filled past. Only the future that was Ember and Rian.
And the new life that was growing inside her.
“Bastien?”
Kissing Ember’s head, he looked up at Xander’s call from inside the room. “Yeah?”
“I hate to bother you.”
He rubbed Ember’s arm as sirens began to blare from the streets outside. “We know. We saw her jump.”
Xander winced. “Not that tragedy. Another one. Kyr.”
His stomach tightened as bile rose up in his throat. Please, gods, no. “What about him?”
“He just escaped custody.”
Bastien cursed as he realized that the war wasn’t over. Rather it’d just taken a more sinister bend.
And this time when Kyr returned, he’d be out for all of them.…
BONUS STORY
Jullien couldn’t have been more stunned had his fraternal twin brother demanded a testicle from him. At least that he’d have expected, given the past animosity between them that had resulted in years of the two of them trying to kill each other. He was actually surprised Nykyrian hadn’t gelded him before now with a rusted-out spoon.