Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Ryker

“Bullshit.”

Normally, when dealing with my father, I considered my words carefully before responding. It was best to give him as little ammo as possible, but his revelation Leo wanted me to marry his daughter had wrenched that response from me.

My father quirked an eyebrow as amusement twitched the corners of his mouth. It pleased him that he’d extracted an uncontrolled response from me. I cursed myself and this man’s lies as I composed myself again.

“Is it?” he inquired.

His innocent expression caused my teeth to grind as I bit out my words. “Leo would have spoken to me about this before going to you about it, but this isn’t something he would have suggested. Immortals marry for love.”

My father’s lips curved into a sneer. “I see you’re still that na?ve, foolish boy I tried to rid myself of. You are my biggest failure.”

“And nothing makes me happier.”

When our gazes locked, I believed he’d turn away, but he held the ball of yarn, and I was the cat eager to bat it away. He was enjoying playing with me. Neither of us could stand near each other, yet we wouldn’t walk away.

“No one marries for love,” my father finally said. “They marry to advance themselves. You’re a fool if you think the married aristocrats in Tempest love each other.”

Perhaps they didn’t, and maybe others out there had only married to advance their standings in society, but most of the married immortals I knew did marry for love. None of them did it for power.

I wasn’t part of the relationships of the nobles in this realm. I had no idea what went on behind closed doors and didn’t care what they did with their lives.

Did some seem miserable with their partners? Yes. Did all of them? No.

My father was a spider weaving a web of lies, manipulations, and schemes. I would not be the fly ensnared in that web.

He was a cynical, evil man who would do whatever it took to one day rule Tempest. I suspected he’d never experienced love; he’d certainly never shown any for me, and I doubted he’d ever find it.

I’d never met his parents, but I did know they’d never married and were dead by the time of my birth. Centuries ago, as the last living members of both their lines, my grandparents got together to consolidate their power and to create one heir—my father—to their combined dukedoms. Afterward, they continued to live apart. My father spent most of his time with his father and occasionally saw his mother.

My grandparents hadn’t loved each other, and given what their child had become, I didn’t think they’d cared for him. He probably did believe the other aristocrats and almost all immortals who married did so only for power because he had no concept of love.

He’d never seen the love between two immortals like I had. And he’d certainly never experienced it like I had.

My mother had shown me love and allowed me to know of its existence before he destroyed her for it. Because of her, I didn’t become a monster like him, and when Ellery entered my life, I could love her.

He may believe others never married for love, but I knew the truth, and one day I would be one of those immortals. And it would be Ellery who I married.

But while my father was a cynical, hateful man, Leo wasn’t. I couldn’t see him going to my father with such a proposition.

“Leo would never come to you with something like this without coming to me first,” I stated.

I wanted to believe this, but doubt crept in. Leo and I had shared so much over the years. We’d laughed, drank, and made our way through countless whore houses together. We’d clashed on battlefields, shed blood, and nearly died together.

I’d followed him into Doomed Valley after the ophidians captured him. I’d endured a lot of torture for him and, in the end, failed to save him, but I would have died for him. He would have come to me with this.

But a niggling doubt tugged at the back of my mind.

“Wouldn’t he? You’re a lightning bearer, but I’m the one who holds the true power in this realm, and everyone in Tempest knows it. He came to me because who would be a better, more powerful option for his daughter than the heir to the last dukedom and the only lightning bearer in the realm? But he knew he would have to get my agreement to the match for it to succeed. Unlike you, Leo wasn’t a fool. But despite that, for some reason, the man liked you. He also saw the writing on the wall.”

I refused to let him goad me into an argument. “And what writing was that?”

“His time was coming to an end.”