Too sober.
And yet, last Bastien had heard before his own parents had been killed, Jullien had been disinherited by both his mother and father. Thrown out of their empires during a bloody coup on Andaria that preceded the one on Kirovar by only a few months. Jullien’s brother, who’d been presumed dead before Bastien’s birth, had been found alive, and with his return, Jullien had lost everything.
That had been four years ago.
A lot could happen in four years. He ought to know. His life had skidded to absolute hell in a matter of weeks.
Still, it was hard to think that this might be Julie. Bastien raked him with a suspicious glare. “Why would you help me?”
“Because you look like you could use it.”
Yeah, no one else would bother. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. People only helped when they had a reason to.
Bastien narrowed his gaze on those hazel eyes he was now sure belonged to his cousin. “Do I know you?”
“No.”
A peculiar expression came over the Trisani’s face while he glanced to the woman, then the Andarion. They had to be talking telepathically, which unnerved him, as he’d love to know what they were saying.
If they were planning to attack him.
Bastien tensed the minute those silvery-blue eyes focused on him with a great deal of suspicion.
The Trisani arched a disdainful brow. “You’re that Kirovarian prince who slaughtered his whole family?”
Raw unmitigated fury ignited inside Bastien. Before he could catch himself or think better of it, he slammed the pack down and started for the Trisani, only to have the bastard throw him against the wall again with his powers.
“Put him down, Thrāix!”
Aghast, Thrāix glared at the man Bastien was even more convinced was his cousin Jullien. “You would really spare a snake this treacherous?”
“I didn’t do it!” Bastien roared, sick of being accused of something so grisly it gave him nightmares every time he closed his eyes.
Thrāix scoffed. “That’s what they all say.”
Jullien exchanged a glance with the woman, who was remaining oddly stoic and silent through all of this chaos. “I believe him. They never had any real evidence against him, other than the word of his own uncle, who now sits on the throne he inherited after he testified against Bastien. And Bastien’s ex-wife, who inherited everything they took from him.”
Thrāix laughed bitterly. “Oh, okay, ’cause the younger son never murders the older one for a throne.”
The expression on the Andarion’s face would have made a sane man shrink back in unholy terror.
Obviously Thrāix wasn’t sane.
Nor did he value his life or balls.
Jullien curled his lip. “Yeah, and sometimes the second son just makes a ready-made patsy for others to pin their own crimes on. Because everyone but that second son is smart enough to figure out that when the entire family dies, he’s going to be blamed for it. Funny, he’s creative and ambitious enough to remove the direct obstacles to his succession, yet doesn’t ever consider that in the obvious chain of suspicion, he’s suspect number one and that either jail or death is a much more permanent hurdle against his ruling. Yeah, right.… That thought never occurs to him, until it’s too late. Now, put him down.”
Oh yeah, that overly defensive explosion about being a second-born royal son had to be from Jullien. Like Bastien, Jullien had been equally screwed over by his family, because they’d both been misjudged by everyone around them.
Bastien hit the ground with a solid thud that was even more painful than the one before it. Son of a … he was going to feel this for the next few days.
“Really?” Jullien said to Thrāix in the same tone an irate parent would use with a petulant toddler.
Thrāix smirked. “You didn’t specify ‘gentle’ as a condition of his release.”
Sighing, Jullien growled in the back of his throat while Bastien pushed himself to his feet to confront them. With an agitated grimace, he started back for the stairs. “Aksel’s office was on the second floor. What we need, if it’s still intact, should be up there.” He led them away from Bastien.
Yeah, that’s definitely my boy.
And there was one way he knew he could prove that Andarion’s real identity.
As they left the room, Bastien called out to him. “Paktu, mi kyzi.”
“Estra, mi pleti.” No sooner had those words been spoken than the Andarion froze as if silently cursing himself for the automatic response that meant, Anytime, my blood.
It was something Jullien had taught him when they were kids and Bastien had been trying to make Jullien feel welcomed and wanted in a palace and family that had made it abundantly clear they all resented his foreign presence there.
Holding the pack that Jullien had given him to his chest, Bastien stayed back from the group as his cousin turned slowly around to face him.