Текст книги "The poison daughter"

Автор книги: Sheila Masterson

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Текущая страница: 37 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

Henry growls, shoving me onto my back in the dirt. He spreads my legs obscenely wide. I’m mortified as he licks the wetness coating my inner thighs.

He chuckles. “Poor little insatiable wife.”

Then he strikes: his teeth sink into my left inner thigh at the same time he plunges three thick fingers inside me. I scream. The pain and pleasure send me over the edge again and I come in a wet rush.

“You taste so fucking good when you’re mine,” he growls.

He pumps his fingers in and out faster and bites my other thigh. I arch off the ground. He sucks hard, and my blood rushes into his mouth. I run my hands down my aching skin. I need more. I need to be filled with him. It doesn’t matter that I’m sore. I need him to bite me all over and fuck me.

He flips me onto my hands and knees, then shoves my chest down to the ground. The pine needles on the forest floor prick my nipples.

“You look so good like this. Drenched and needy,” he says. He slaps my ass, the sting sharpening my senses.

Shadows move just past the tree line. There are even more people watching now.

Henry yanks both of my hands behind my back. Securing them in one fist, he grips my hip with the other and then pushes his thick cock inside me again.

It hurts. I’m swollen, exhausted, my muscles practically at the point of failure, but I can tell he’s going to fuck me as long as he wants.

He curses, gripping my wrists harder. “Doesn’t that feel right?” he says, his voice full of smug satisfaction. “It looks fantastic. You’re so tight, but you take me so well.”

I can do nothing but breathe, torn between pain and pleasure. I’m groaning—a deep, guttural sound that feels drawn up from the center of me.

“Keep your hands here. I’m going to fuck you like you need to be fucked now.”

He pushes in deeper, and I gasp for air.

“Mine,” Henry growls. He thrusts faster and harder, and I can barely brace against how deeply he’s fucking me now. I feel him everywhere. He releases my wrist and moves that hand around to my stomach to hold me in place as he pumps into me.

The pain finally eases. I’m so slick, and the sensation is taking me higher and higher.

The rough ground scrapes over my nipples and my hands claw at the dirt. I scream as I come harder than I have in my entire life.

Right as I’m at the peak, Henry bends over me and bites my neck. He holds me in place with his teeth as he fucks me. The pain is searing, but I’m still clenching around him, my whole body shaking. It’s brutal, animalistic, but I want more.

He shifts forward, and his weight comes down on top of me, shoving his cock deeper inside me. I’m frenzied, screaming, coming, wanting more as he groans into my skin, his teeth sending a vibrating shiver through my body. Finally, he withdraws his fangs and starts to drink. He growls, sucking harder and harder, taking more blood from me than just a sip.

Suddenly, the danger slams into me.

Henry fucks me savagely. I feel him growing thicker inside me. I sense the life force is rushing out of me and into him, and fear slices through me. He’s going to kill me.

He groans, finally drawing his mouth away from the aching bite. “There it finally is. Fear. This is the perfect cocktail of you. Pleasure, lust, pain, and fear—and mine all at once.”

He bites the other side of my neck, pain lancing me as I start to struggle. He chuckles as he drinks more of my blood. My heart thunders. My ears ring. He sucks hard and fucks me even harder. The more I struggle, the more frenzied he becomes, and the more punishing his thrusts. He bites a bunch of shallow punctures down my neck just because he can, before sinking his teeth deep again.

I explode. I come so hard, my vision whites out and my mouth opens in a silent scream. Henry thrusts twice more, bottoming out as he groans and spills inside me. He takes another pull of my blood. Then he presses a kiss to the bites one by one. The tingling, itchy healing fixes them all.

He eases out of me and leans away. I can feel his heavy gaze admiring the mess he’s made of me.

I’m completely spent. My muscles are at failure. My body is prone in the dirt. My fingers and toes tingle from the lack of oxygen. My feet are cramped. My legs are still trembling.

“You look so good like this,” Henry murmurs.

I want to slap him. I want to run for my life, but I’m too exhausted to even move. Still, desire pulses in my body, a relentless burning ache for him. I want more. I’d quite literally let him fuck me to death. For a moment, I thought I had, but he understands where my line is better than I do.

He carefully rolls me over, and I stare up at him. His mouth is smeared with blood, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. His eyes are lit with lust still, and his predatory gaze rakes over my naked, bloody body. I hate him for being so handsome, for knowing me so intimately, for understanding my darkness and showing me his own. But mostly, I hate myself for liking it.

He places his hand on my stomach and peers through the trees around us. “This is my wife and my claimed. If anyone so much as looks at her in a way I don’t like, I will kill them slowly.”

I can barely keep my eyes open.

Henry carefully wraps me in his cloak and gathers me into his arms.

My head lolls against his chest. “You’re one of the Drained.”

“I’m not, but I’ll explain in the morning. I took a lot of blood. You need rest.”

I want to fight, but I can’t. My eyelids are too heavy. I fade in and out of consciousness as he carries me toward the manor.

When I wake again, Henry is placing me back on my feet on the plush carpet of our shared bathroom. I swat his hands away, and he retreats to give me a moment to myself.

I stare into the mirror at my face. My eyes are puffy, my cheeks flushed, and my chest marred with scratches from the dirt and branches. I splash cold water on my face and take care of my needs, then look longingly through the open door to my room at my bed. I want to sleep, but I need to clean the filth from my skin first, and the tub is already full of steaming water that would help my sore muscles.

Henry taps on the door behind me and enters.

He’s already naked as he peels his cloak from my body. Then, he helps me into the steaming bathtub and climbs in behind me, ignoring my protests.

“You’re too tired to be in here alone. Now, be quiet and let me clean you up.”

My mind is still hazy with a mixture of lust, anger, and fatigue. Questions bounce around my head, but I don’t know where to start.

Henry washes my hair with surprising gentleness, then scrubs the dirt and crusted blood from my skin. He presses his fingers to my pulse for a quiet moment.

“I didn’t take as much as I thought, but you should still take it easy, Harlow.”

I hate him so much, yet I still want him to touch me. I lean back against him and sigh as his hands travel down my neck and shoulders. He cups my right breast, and I arch back into him.

One caress and I’m awake, lit from within, aching for him again.

“You need rest,” he murmurs in my ear.

But I don’t want rest. I want a place to put all my anger. I want my power back.

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50HENRY

Harlow turns quickly, sending water sloshing over the lip of the bathtub as she straddles me. One hand thrusts into my hair, yanking my head back. Then, she’s kissing me, and all of my good intentions of letting her go to sleep are gone. I should be helping her recover from a very intense experience, but I have been in control too long, and now that I’ve tasted her, it’s all I want to do.

She bites my lip hard and scrapes her fingernails over my scalp.

“I hope you’re ready for what you started, Harlow.”

She presses a hand to my chest and shoves me back. Then, she reaches between us and wraps her hand around my cock, giving it a hard stroke. She repeats the movement a few more times, rubbing her thumb over the tip, studying my reactions.

Then, with almost no warning, she guides my cock inside her and sinks down with a moan.

I have to be careful. This frenzy can get very out of control when she has venom in her system, and I can’t keep her up all night fucking her on every surface in our rooms because I need her to be able to walk tomorrow.

She moves tentatively, rolling her hips and wincing when she sinks down again.

“Sore?”

She must be. I have not fucked someone that hard—ever.

But Harlow bites her lip and arches her back as she starts to ride me in earnest. In this position, her full breasts are thrust forward, bouncing with each movement, and I feel the distinct prickle of anticipation in the air. She wants me to bite her again.

I shouldn’t. I already took a good bit of blood.

But she smells so good, and just because I bite doesn’t mean I have to drink. I suck her right nipple into my mouth, flicking it with my tongue. She gasps, her fingernails digging into my shoulder in encouragement. I wait for her to move again, and as she sinks down, I bite her nipple. Her pussy squeezes my cock, and we both groan.

The gentle teasing is over. The first drop of her blood, combined with the pulsing of her so slick and tight around me, has ruined all of my composure. I lift her hips and force her back down, trying to increase the pace, but the water is slowing us down too much.

“Go get in our bed. On your back.”

She whines as she lifts off of me and climbs out of the tub. As she stumbles toward our room, I admire the marks I’ve left behind on her pale skin.

Watching her crawl onto the bed, lie back, and spread her legs for me is a vision that will be burned in my brain forever. I’m still shocked she let me claim her.

I prowl over her and push into her slowly.

As much as I enjoyed making her submit to me, this is better. The anger in her eyes and the furious way she lifts her hips to meet my thrusts is making me crazy. I want to swallow all her wild rage.

She is trying to exorcise this wanting in the same way I am. I’ve never had this kind of intimacy—a battle of wills instead of simply mastering a partner’s pleasure.

Harlow scratches her nails down my back, and I bite her neck. Her pussy clamps around me so tightly, I almost lose it. It’s only the sting of the cuts on my back and her soft groan of my name that ground me.

“I hate you.”

I chuckle and pull out of her. “You’re about to hate me more.”

I lick and nip my way down her stomach and spread her thighs wide, sliding three fingers into her slickness and brushing a kiss to her clit. I pump my fingers in and out, picking up speed as her body starts to tense.

Right as I feel the tension about to break, I sink my fangs into her left inner thigh, and she screams. Her back arches and her heels dig into my back as she spasms around my fingers. I take long pulls of her blood, relishing the sweet taste of her pleasure mixed with bitter anger as she trembles her way through her orgasm.

I gently draw my fingers free as she relaxes into the bed, and I kiss the bite on her thigh to heal it.

“I knew you would like that.”

She fists her hand in my hair, forcing me to look up at her. “You said it’s just the venom. Don’t read into it.”

I chuckle as I rise to my knees, hook her calves over my elbows, and lift her hips as I drive into her. She’s immediately quivering, still oversensitive from all the stimulation, so swollen that I am seconds from losing it and rutting into her like an animal.

My grip on her waist is bruising as I find a fast, steady rhythm, but Harlow takes it all. I look down at her perfect tits and the flush creeping up her neck, blood still seeping from the bite there.

Her hands fist in the sheets, and she cries out, a guttural, needy sound that sends me over the edge. The climax is a jolt of electricity through my blood. I pump into her harder as I ride it out, until her legs are trembling so badly I lose my grip and collapse on top of her.

For a moment, I’m too wrecked by pleasure to move. As my senses return, I smell her blood. The bite on her neck is still seeping. I lick the wound and heal it, savoring what I’m sure will be the last taste of her I’ll have for a while, if ever.

I wish it weren’t so good. All the blood I’ve consumed during hunts tastes better, but it’s true what all the other Returned have said: it really doesn’t compare to claiming someone.

Flopping onto my back, beside Harlow, I lick my lips, trying to get any last hint of blood remaining. She rolls onto her stomach and pulls the blankets up around her.

“Are you well?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is soft and steady.

For the first time, Harlow falls asleep in my bed of her own volition. I let the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing lull me to sleep.

When I wake sometime later, the bed is cold beside me. I jump up and stalk through the closet into her room. She’s tucked under the covers with Kyrin snuggled up beside her. He lifts his head and rests it on her stomach, as if to remind me that while he is always welcome in her bed, I am not.

I may have claimed her body, but I have no chance of claiming her heart.

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51HENRY

Icy is an understatement for Harlow’s demeanor in the morning. Whatever heat was between us last night has given way to her frigid contempt. It’s the first time I have ever seen even a hint of her parents in her.

She’s been primping in front of the vanity in her room for more than an hour. I’m pretty sure it’s just an excuse to avoid looking at me. She studies her eyebrows with hawk-like focus and ignores me standing behind her in the mirror’s reflection.

Kyrin is curled up at her feet. He blinks one sleepy eye open to look at me as I set a small glass of liquid beside Harlow and back away.

“What is it?” she asks.

“It’s a blood builder. There’s a unique mix of herbs and it’s infused with some of Elvodeen’s healing magic to help with recovery.”

She lifts the glass and sips it. “This is the same thing they serve with breakfast in the morning. Have you been planning to do that to me since I got here?”

“No, I—” I run a hand over my face. “I like you.”

I have never sounded more idiotic in my life.

She scoffs, takes a long sip of the juice, and rifles through the makeup laid out on the vanity in front of her.

“I liked you right away, and you smell amazing,” I say.

“So I’m just special.” Her voice is laden with sarcasm, but she doesn’t look away from the delicate work of lining her eyes with kohl.

“I wasn’t supposed to do it.”

She arches a perfectly shaped brow. “Fuck me in front of your people a second time?”

“Claim you. There’s something about the way you challenged me that made me want to. I’m not prone to being possessive. I’ve never had that impulse before.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she takes another sip of the drink. She’s naked except for a pair of dark lace underwear that make her ass look spectacular.

I study the scarred skin on her lower back. I was aware of it last night when I was fucking her and felt it beneath my palms, but it’s different in daylight. When I first saw it, I was so incensed by the fact that she had been branded that I didn’t take a good look. But the intricacy of the delicate design is impressive. Someone must have held a brand there for a long time to get something that detailed.

When I look up, she’s watching my reflection. “It’s not polite to stare.”

“I didn’t get to look before. Why stars?”

She pauses with the brush halfway down her hair. “Aidia used to say that stars were a nightly reminder to wish for better. Stellaria refused to be humbled, even by her father. I think Aidia related to that.”

“Is that why he branded you with them? To take that from her and you?”

I’m pushing too hard. I wait for her to remind me I’m not entitled to her past, but she sighs and sets the hairbrush down on the vanity.

“My father didn’t brand me. Aidia did.” She is so deathly calm when she says it that it takes a moment for her words to register.

I stare at her in mute shock. “But I thought⁠—”

I wait for her to say more, but she only offers me the silence to realize I’ve put my foot in my mouth, and there’s no way out of the awkwardness.

Harrick didn’t brand her. Ever since I first saw the scar, I’ve been constructing a specific narrative in my head about it. It’s humbling to see how wrong I’ve been.

“I can’t imagine subjecting myself to that kind of pain,” I say softly.

She turns and gives me a look that burns right through me. “Can’t you?”

I feel her picking me apart, death scar by death scar. I expected her to rage at me. To throw things. To try to escape as soon as she woke up. But she’s dressed and so eerily calm, and that is somehow worse.

“If I’ve satisfied your curiosity, I have some questions of my own,” she says.

I’m tempted to tell her she hasn’t satisfied my curiosity at all. She’s actually piqued it once again. Every answer I get breeds even more questions. I wave a hand to encourage her to continue because I am completely at a loss for words.

“How does this work now that I’m claimed?” she asks.

“Nothing changes. Most men of the fort will probably steer clear of you. It’s really meant to be protection.”

“From you? Because you’re a Drained?”

I sigh. “I’m not a Drained. When I died the first time, my mother prayed to Asher. Both he and Stellaria answered. But I am not the same as the beasts in the wood. I am⁠—”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Deathless. Like the story.”

“Yes,” I say. “You weren’t supposed to hear that particular story. That’s why I was going to pick a night to take you to the storytelling bars and curate your experience.”

She ignores me. “So you crave blood, but you’re not mindlessly driven to it.”

“And my diet is primarily normal food. I have a full serving of blood once or twice a week, depending on how active I am and if I’ve been injured. With you, it might be a little different, though.”

Her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Why?”

“Because I claimed you and you’re mine.”

She bristles. “I belong to no man.”

“I know that, Harlow. I’m answering your question. Because I claimed you as someone I want to belong to me, no one else will be appealing now. It’s not that I couldn’t feed from someone in the recovery room. It’s not as if I don’t have plenty of offers.” I relish the hint of jealousy in the glare she levels at me. “But I wouldn’t enjoy it. It would be like wanting a gourmet dinner and only ever having stale bread and jerky. Technically, I would survive, but it wouldn’t be enjoyable.”

She purses her lips.

I can’t help the impulse to taunt her just to try to get back the dynamic we had before. “What’s the most frightening part? That you enjoyed it, or that you want to do it again?”

Harlow shivers, and it’s a relief to know the memory of last night is as potent for her as it is for me. It’s taking an enormous amount of self-control to not bend her over the vanity and fuck her right now.

“What happens if I don’t let you drink?”

I lick my lips, thinking about how my wife tastes like iron and wine and cherries. “I had quite a lot last night, so I’ll be fine for a while. But eventually I would need to find someone else willing.”

“Would you also fuck them while you do it?”

“No. I’ll only fuck you.”

“Oh, I think you’ve already done a pretty thorough job in every sense of the word,” she says, her voice laden with sarcasm.

There’s no way she’s going to be amenable to this plan now. “I know you’re angry,” I say.

She holds up a hand to stop me. “You pulled one over on me. I knew your aura was different. It made sense after you explained that your mother used Asher’s magic to bring you back, but I never imagined you were Deathless. Truth be told, I’d never even heard of the term Deathless until story time the other night.”

I cock my head to the side. “But they’re in the story of Stellaria.”

She shakes her head. “Not in Lunameade.”

I frown. “So, in your version of the story, the man who retrieves Asher just devolves into a Drained?”

She nods. “Because he was divided—neither alive nor dead, and they believe that made him mad enough that he stopped sipping blood from willing people and started drinking them dry—that’s why they call them the Drained.”

That’s an interesting deviation from the original writings and word-of-mouth stories, but I wonder why and how it happened. Oral storytelling comes with variances, but to omit that what really created the Drained was a desire for more power seems an intentional choice. It wasn’t a random adaptation that brought about the strange sickness and reanimation among those the original Deathless fed on. It was drinking well water to try to claim more magic that doomed him. By the time he realized, there were too many Drained and they were too hungry to contain. Their numbers just kept growing.

I wonder when exactly the version of the story changed in Lunameade, and why no one who remembers the old stories challenges it. I think back to the last Dark Star Festival I attended in the city. I’d heard their version of the story and thought it unusual, but I’d assumed that the story changed based on who was playing the part of Stellaria each year.

Harlow sits straighter, her face a mask of indifference. This is somehow worse than if she were raging against me. It makes me wonder how she will react to Gaven’s death.

“You brought me here,” she says, her voice devoid of emotion. “You talked around what you are and you used me for my blood. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed it. But I’m pretty sure you knew how this piece of information would land, or you would have told me sooner.”

I shift, searching for a way to defend myself. “I kept it a secret because I needed you to go through with the marriage so that we can get the resources your family promised. I didn’t bring you here to use you for your blood.”

She glares at me in the mirror. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. I’m not surprised you used me. Truthfully, I’m shocked that I still have the capacity to believe someone would want anything but to use me. Everyone is out for blood. You just happen to be more literal about it.”

I expected her reaction to sting, but I did not imagine that her apathy—that likening me to everyone else in her life—would cut so deep.

I want to argue—to tell her I’m different—that I’m not like her family.

Except I am. I am using her. I did trick her, and I’ll continue to do it as long as I need to. I’m even counting on her sister’s well-being as motivation for her to follow through.

From the first moment my parents hatched this plan, I was fine with any collateral damage to a woman I had never met. I projected my judgment of her family onto her, and I didn’t once consider that a family that would sacrifice the people of the fort wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to their daughters.

For ten years, I have been so singularly focused on my own grief and anger, I didn’t once think about the fact that following through on this plan wouldn’t get rid of it. It would simply pass it on to someone else.

“I thought you would rage more,” I say.

“At you? Why? You’re doing what anyone would do in your situation.” She shakes her head and begins pinning her hair into a twist. “No. I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself for not seeing what was right in front of my face.”

She meets my eye in the vanity mirror. “Are you the one taking women from Lunameade? Or, I suppose—were you and the others like you doing it?” She’s not afraid when she asks, and that’s more unnerving than her lack of anger.

I shake my head. “No. We don’t need to do that. Women here volunteer because it feels⁠—”

She gives me a look that says she knows how it feels. She spreads a dark color over her full lips. I know even without being told that it’s red. It’s always red.

She stands, removes the dress from the hanger beside the vanity, and slips it over her head. I don’t bother to offer to tie it for her. She makes quick work of the string anyway.

The dark silk is so delicate and thin, it may as well not be there at all. The draped neckline dips between her breasts and the thin straps crisscross in the back several times, showing off the delicate muscles of her upper back. It stops just above her scar. For a moment, all I can think about is untying that bow, watching the dress slip away from her pale skin, and spreading her legs wide so I can taste her.

The dress is a punishment, and I have never liked a scolding so much.

She runs her fingers over her collarbone and up her neck, pausing right over the place where I first bit her last night. I’ve healed all of the marks I left on her delicate skin, but I know she’s trying to remind me what I can’t have.

“My intention wasn’t to hurt you.”

She bristles. “I’m not hurt. You had some score to settle, and I will go along with whatever I must, but let me be clear about how this is going to work. I won’t tell my family what you are. When we go back to Lunameade in three days for Dark Star Festival, I’ll ask you to do something, and you won’t question it⁠—”

“I can’t promise that if I don’t know what it is,” I argue.

Harlow holds up a hand. “The entirety of my cooperation is dependent on you helping me get my sister back. If you become yet another thing standing between me and her, I will be forced to manage you the way I’m managing everyone else.”

This is a trap that I have to step into. If I don’t give her something now, she will ruin everything—and she’ll enjoy making me suffer.

“Fine. I agree.”

She holds out her hand, and I shake it.

“Good. Now, is there anything you’d like to tell me?” she asks.

My mind churns through all the things I’d like to say. I killed Gaven. I’m using you to help overthrow your parents as leaders of Lunameade. I can’t stop thinking about the way you sigh after you come.

But this is not a time for confessions. I can’t say any of these things.

“Can I ask you something and you’ll answer honestly?” I ask.

She puts her hands on her hips. “I’ll certainly consider it.”

“Why have you put up with all that your parents have done when you clearly don’t agree with their methods?”

She tips her head back and sighs heavily. “What other option is there, Henry? This isn’t about some destructive affection I have for them. The city needs my father to hold the line. There is no one else in all of Lunameade with holy fire. Who else will light the wall? It’s already almost too much for him and Able to maintain together.”

I think back to Gaven’s confession. “Do you think it’s odd that Vardek has never blessed another person from the city with holy fire?”

“Do you think it’s weird that Vardek hasn’t blessed someone else at the fort with holy fire?” she counters.

“We have a considerably smaller population. It’s improbable that there wouldn’t be a single one in Lunameade.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “You don’t know that. The Divine work in mysterious ways, or so I’m told.”

“I do know.” I was not supposed to tell her that yet, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

She crosses her arms, searching my face, as if trying to spot a lie. “Why should I believe you? All you do is lie. You weren’t trying to hunt down Rochelli for the rebel attack that hurt your mother at the engagement dinner. You’re working with him.”

I run a hand through my hair and try to salvage this. “Technically, I wasn’t aware that we were working with him then, and that attack was orchestrated by a group of rogue rebels—not under his direction. When we were in Lunameade and I stole that note from you and dropped it in the fire, it was because I recognized the handwriting as my father’s.”

She doesn’t react, but I have her full attention, so I press on.

“Until then, I didn’t know for sure that they were working with Rochelli and the rebels. But that confirmed it, and when we got back, I confronted them.”

“Your father is Rochelli?”

I can’t tell her that Gaven told me about the Vardek-blessed children right after I dealt him a death blow. I need to lie and lie believably. “No. He’s in the network but not their leader. Apparently, all correspondence from rebel agents is signed by Rochelli, but with a lowercase r. The correspondence from the leader Rochelli is uppercase. But he has it on good authority from someone in the network who would know for certain that your father had anyone with holy fire killed.”

I wait for her to doubt me, to debate the merits of this information, but she looks resigned to its validity—more disappointed than surprised.

“I never personally witnessed a blessing from Vardek. I should have been more suspicious of the infrequency, but I so rarely attended blessings. My older siblings used to rotate through, but Kellan took over doing most of them a couple years ago. Of course, my family has ways of making people forget things…” She shrugs.

It’s the first hint of any of her siblings’ magic that she’s offered up. I can’t tell if she just means Kellan’s manipulation or if she’s suggesting one of the Carrenwells can erase memories.

Harlow is so calm. “But even if new blessings come in time, it will be years before a teenager can control their holy fire enough to light the whole wall. My father is an unfortunate necessity.”

“Not if you’re using well water. You must notice that we only light the fort wall every other night.”

Harlow’s eyes light up, and she nods.

“We supplement with well water and coat our weapons in it.”

“And that’s enough?” Harlow frowns. “Wait—don’t distract me. Do your parents know who Rochelli is?”

I shake my head. “No, they don’t know. I’m not trying to distract you. I’m just saying that holy fire isn’t the only way to defend the city walls, especially if your father is killing anyone who could have the chance of replacing him.”

She blows out a heavy sigh. “Who would you suggest rule over Lunameade, then? Rafe? If he’s Rochelli, what do you think happens when he takes over? You saw him. He’s much worse than my parents, which is saying something.”

I hold up my hands to brace against her frustration. “I know that. I have no love for the man, but right now I’m focused on this new information about your father.”

“What are you looking for? Permission to hate him?” She laughs bitterly. “Permission granted, Henry! Get in line. You’ll find it’s quite a long one.”

I scrub a hand down my face. “Rest assured I hate him fine, whether you permit me to or not. What I’m asking is that if the opportunity presents itself to find a way around your father, will you stand in my way?”