31. Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

S he hadn’t heard that voice in seven years.

Seven years, but it was still singed into her memory—the way it would snake around her, choking her with fear.

Her older brother. Her viciously addled older brother.

Agonizingly slow, hoping against hope that she was imagining that voice, she spun, ignoring the visceral impulse to sprint away, for she needed to know she’d just actually heard what she did.

There. Leaning against a dormant tree, spinning the tip of a dagger against his palm. Taller than she remembered him. Thicker as well. His dark hair long and tied back, his skin tanned from time on ships. They shared the same hair color, but their eyes had always been different. His a dark brown, almost black, that made him look soulless. Eyes like their father’s.

An air of aggrieved boredom hung about him. Like finding his long-lost sister was an everyday occurrence.

He’d always been bored with the world around him. It made killing easier.

The ice in her veins started to crack, turning her limbs into jelly, and she started to sway, barely able to keep her feet under her.

He’d found her.

She hadn’t imagined him in that Edinburgh alleyway.

She’d long ago concluded no one would ever find her—how could they?

Her brother had been apprenticed out long ago when she was only five to their great-uncle who was in command of the Collective—the men that ruled the coastline. Since then, there had only been a handful of times she had seen him, and she’d doubted he even knew she ran away. Much less cared.

But there Valentino stood, staring at her with those vacant eyes, just like he did when she was five and she was terrified of him.

“No greeting for your brother?” His left brow rose slightly with the calm words. He was like that, a veneer of calm until he popped, spewing venom on everything within reach.

She swallowed hard. “Valentino.” His name barely squeaked out. “What are you doing here?”

He flicked the tip of his blade toward her. “Whatever this is you have going on here, this life is no longer yours. I don’t care if he’s your husband or not.”

“What?” Her breath cut out of her chest. “Why? Why did you come here?”

In a blinding flash, he sheathed his dagger at his hip and darted forward, clamping his hand along her neck and slamming her back into the trunk of a tree. “I came here to kill that bastard in that castle, only to find out you’re with him.”

Her body frozen—like she always was as a child—she didn’t even think to fight him. She just stood, her fingers digging into the bark behind her, her mind frantic. Why would he want to kill Thomas? It made no sense.

She managed a slight shake of her head. “Why kill?”

“That rat escaped. And no one escapes.” He fingers squeezed along her neck, just enough pain that she started to panic. “And you’ll pay for helping him.”

“What? Helping him? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play that with me, frettchen.” He pressed in on her neck, making her squirm. “You helped him escape.”

Feeling finally flooded into her arms and she reached up, clutching his arm with both of her hands, trying to ease his grip on her without outright shoving him off of her—for she didn’t see that ending well. “Escape what? Escape those brutes behind the coaching inn in Edinburgh? Those were your men?”

“Yes, they were my men. That the rat even stumbled into that tavern, not but ten feet from us, was a gift from the gods. And then imagine my surprise when the one to come into that alleyway and save that pathetic rat was my long-lost sister. I did not see that coming, and I always see everything coming.”

“That was you? You saw me?”

“I did.”

Shit. She had foolishly convinced herself she hadn’t truly seen him in Edinburgh. She had needed that so badly—for him to be nothing more than brutal imagination—that she fell into the trap of lying to herself on the matter.

But this didn’t make any sense. None of it. Why was her brother even in Edinburgh? Why would he even know Thomas?

“But…but why go after him?”

He leaned in, staring at her for an agonizing second, his breath hot in her face, and then he laughed, jerking backward and releasing her neck. “Oh, this is priceless. You don’t know, do you? You don’t know who he is?”

She leaned over, her hands going to her throat, her own touch like fire on her skin. “What madness are you spewing?”

“That man in the castle, the man I saw you with on the cliffs not but a half hour ago.” He paused, his stare sweeping her up and down, a sneer on his face. “He’s the one that killed our mother.”

“Wh—wh—what? No. No, impossible.” Her head started flinging back and forth.

“Possible.” Bored again, Valentino yanked out his dagger, moving to the left to lean against a tree.

“No. Impossible.” Her words squeaked out. “Thomas? Thomas was the one? No.”

“He has a name? Huh.” Valentino flicked something out from under his fingernail with the tip of his dagger. Curiosity lined his face, like having a name was a novel thought to him. “We always called him KotRatte.”

Feces rat.

Bile slipped up her throat. “You are utterly mad.”

His look snapped up to her. “And you are an imbecile if you think you can talk to me like that.”

No…she didn’t want to entertain the possibility of the lies her brother was spewing. She’d never even considered it when Thomas had told her what had happened to him. But how many men were strung up for adultery? Women—yes. But men? Men got away with whatever the hell they wanted to.

Her mother had never really been a mother to her. Was never in the house. Never a smile or a hug for her. Never even a simple kind word. Never any word. Never fed her. Never bothered to clothe her properly. Never even looked at her.

Yet still…it was her mother .

And the timelines matched. Thomas had disappeared seven years ago. About the same time that her mother was hung.

But this was Valentino she was dealing with. The wretch lived in a world of lies.

Her look narrowed on him. “How do you know it was Thomas?”

“Think about that man on that stump with a noose around his neck. You were there. You were crying, little squalling mouse that you are. He had a beard, yes, and his eyes and face were bloodied beyond belief, but did you not look at him? Not look at the whole reason our mother’s neck was snapped?”

Shock rolled through her in ravenous waves that swallowed her. Thomas’s eyes, his face from long ago, flashing through her mind.

Flashing again and again as he looked out at the crowd, beaten to hell, but defiant. Like every single person in the crowd was beneath him, nothing but scum under his boot.

Thomas.

Her head started to shake. A shake that snaked down her body, making her arms tremble, then her legs.

It couldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

A snarled smirk curled Valentino’s top lip. “Yes. Exactly. He was the man. The whoremonger in Broders Tavern that made advances on our mother that she willingly accepted. She was a whore, after all, let us not fool ourselves. But to be a whore in that place—in the very place that her husband—and her great-uncle, of all people—conducted business, it was too much. She got what she deserved.”

That he could be so callous about his own mother struck a raw fear deep into her gut. He was madder than he was years ago. Though Valentino had probably never experienced a moment of motherly intent from their mother either. Valentino had watched her die just the same as she had, only with him, her death was an insult to the family name. Nothing more.

Not the slightest modicum of feeling.

She gasped, her stare snapping to him as what this meant filtered into her brain. “You were the one—the one that tortured Thomas, weren’t you?”

“After his rope broke?”

She nodded.

He snarled a laugh. “Now that, I took pride in. We threw him back in a dirty cell and tortured him for years. A pet of sorts, we kept KotRatte as. We assumed the gods must have wanted him alive for something, and that something was for our entertainment.”

Her stomach flipped, bile hitting her tongue.

Her brother and his men had tortured Thomas for years, treated him as nothing more than a sack of meat to beat upon, to make scream.

Her head dropped forward, her hand gripping onto the tree next to her for support. She couldn’t find a way for air to make it into her lungs. A gasp. Another gasp. Another.

This…this was what she had come from. These monsters. These people who were not even people—they were demons sent straight from hell.

And she was their blood.

Thomas would never understand this.

Never.

“For a spell there, I thought you were the one that helped him escape from Domenberge. But that was a ridiculous thought. You haven’t been in Domenberge for years, have you?”

She shook her head, not looking up at her brother.

“I don’t know how or why you’re with KotRatte now, but it doesn’t really matter.” He continued to pick at his fingernails with the tip of his dagger. “What I need at the moment is you. So you can imagine my joy when I spotted my long-lost sister in Edinburgh.”

“You followed me here?”

“I did.”

Fucking hell.

She’d led him directly to Thomas. Her churning stomach doubled its antics. A long exhale did nothing to calm her body. “Why do you need me?”

“You do remember Father sold you to Petrovuo?”

A chunk of bark ripped off the tree under her fingernails. Her gaze crept up to Valentino. “No—that wasn’t real. That was just another threat of Father’s—he had so damn many of them.”

“It’s real, and the time has come to deliver.”

“Why? Why would he sell me off like that?”

“Because our father has always been a drunken weasel. Mother was Petrovuo’s grandniece—the only female in that generation, and it was our father that let her die—he was the one to put her head in that noose. He did it to terrify her because he’s a vicious lunatic. He didn’t know that bastard of yours would break his rope?—”

“And fall right into her stump.” Izzie interrupted him, her eyes squinting tightly closed, as that moment in time cut through her mind. The man—Thomas—falling. Landing on the tree stump that held her mother up. Her mother dropping, her body jerking as her neck snapped. Hanging there.

She shook her head. This was too much—all of it. The memories she had buried long ago. The current reality. She had to get out of here. Had to disappear again.

“The only way Father could make it up to Petrovuo was to promise you to his son.” Valentino’s voice cut through the thoughts running madcap in her mind. “A new generation.”

She opened her eyes to him. “But that was years ago.”

“Yes. And Father’s life was on the line. It still is. He got the prison under his control with the deal, and he’s been delaying the wedding for years, had men searching for you, but he never thought to look in England of all places.”

“So then let Father rot—let Petrovuo do whatever he wants to the bastard.”

“It’s not that easy. If you don’t come back, there will be hell to pay from our family—me included.”

There it was. Valentino was trying to save his own hide, as usual.

Her head shook, as if it could ward off all her brother was saying. “No—what’s there to go back for? To be married off and then what—to die like my mother did at the end of the rope? Petrovuo’s son is no different than the rest of you.” She glared at him, trying to force courage she didn’t truly feel. “You need to leave, Valentino. Leave now.”

His gaze shifted toward the castle. “Or how about this—I kill KotRatte now, and then I’ll drag you with broken bones back to Domenberge with me.”

A threat. And threats weren’t always reality. Her father and her brother were the same in that regard.

She folded her arms across her ribcage, trying to straighten her spine into something that looked formidable while her insides were complete jelly. “Or? There is always an ‘or’ with you, Valentino.”

Her brother was a snake straight from the womb and he hadn’t changed.

He pulled to his full height, staring her down for a long moment. When she didn’t look away, he slipped his dagger into its sheath and inclined his head to her. “Or you come with me and do your dutiful job for the family—for the people that let you breathe in the first place—and I will let KotRatte live.”

Her glare cut into him. “You need me alive more than you need him dead, or you wouldn’t be here. Thomas would already be dead and you wouldn’t have a bargaining chip.”

“You’re correct on that.” He shook his head, a wicked smile coming to his face as he set his sights on the castle in the distance. “I asked around, and who would have thought? That rat bastard is an actual earl. Our mother and an earl. You and an earl.” He lifted himself on his toes, sick glee rolling his shoulders back. “It would be fun to kill him.”

If there was one thing she understood about her brother, it was that he was crazy. Always had been. He didn’t operate within the bounds like others—killing was nothing to him. He was the perfect man to take over the family business from their great-uncle, since all of them were mad just the same.

Valentino would kill Thomas without the tiniest pause. Wait until Thomas was alone on the cliffs. Alone in his study. Asleep. Kill him before she could get any other guardians here for safety.

There was no staff here to protect Thomas. Just her and Hal at this point. Not enough to stop the madmen from which she’d come. Maybe she could just run and lead Valentino away from Ravenstone. Keep him running.

Her eyes twitched around, looking for an escape route.

She could run through the forest, but she knew her brother. He never did anything alone. Always a gaggle of brutes around him. Valentino surely had more men nearby and at the ready.

He stepped toward her, towering over her. A silent threat she wasn’t making it one step away from him. “What do you say, sister? You come with me now, or do I kill the bastard?”

It wasn’t even a choice, and there was no hesitation in her answer.

“No. I’ll come with you. I’ll marry him.” Her voice was wooden, not her own as she slipped into the new character she would have to play. “It was always my destiny.” She paused, looking over her shoulder at the castle. “I played as another person for a while, but that was all it ever was—acting.”

With the words, an odd peace settled into her chest.

Protecting Thomas was the most important thing, and she was never going to let her brother hurt him.

Not again.