Blackbird Broken (The Witch King's Crown #2) - Keri Arthur Page 0,52

couldn’t think, could only feel. And what I felt was pain. Deep, utter, soul-shattering pain.

Even so, one refrain echoed—why, why, why?

It was a question that could only be answered by the man himself, and one we dared not ask. Not yet.

I blinked back the tears threatening to stream down my cheeks and sucked in a deep breath in an effort to gather the shattered remnants of control. We might have defeated the men in the vans, but the three of us were far from safe, and until we were, I couldn’t afford to dwell on the enormity of Max’s duplicity.

“No doubt meaning he paid you extremely well to be a broodmare and nursemaid.” I stopped several meters away from her, which put me at a slight disadvantage if she decided to attack. I doubted she would, though—not until she’d retrieved her son, anyway.

“He did—and there’s no law against that, you know.”

“So why did you run?”

She sucked in a breath and released it slowly. “I got a call from Max. He said he was sending his people over to collect Reign.”

“That’s not unusual, is it? According to Riona—”

“She’s okay?” Gianna cut in quickly. Desperately.

“Yeah, no thanks to you.”

“You don’t understand—”

“You’re right. I don’t. Leaving one child to save another? Utterly unforgivable.”

“But they wouldn’t have hurt her or Naya—”

“Really? Because by the time I got there, Naya had been beaten to a bloody pulp.”

Her face went white and a soft ‘oh no’ escaped. Her knees buckled, and she staggered back several steps until she hit the wall separating the slope from the road.

I moved further up the slope, but she didn’t seem to notice. She thrust a shaking hand through her tangled hair and said, “No, it can’t be true. I won’t believe it.”

“I can give you the phone number of the detective in charge of the investigation, if you’d like.” My voice was harsh but I didn’t care. She’d left her daughter behind to save her son. There was no excuse for that. No forgiveness.

“Where’s Riona?”

“Do you care?”

Her gaze shot up. Despite the wash of tears, anger burned deep. “She’s my daughter—of course I care.”

“And yet you made her a sacrificial lamb in order to save your son.”

“Because I believed they wouldn’t hurt her—they have plans for her, just as they have plans for Reign.”

“Do you have any idea what those plans are?”

My voice was grim and she frowned. “Of course—Max intends to resurrect Witch King rule, and Reign will secure the line of succession.”

Hearing our suspicions confirmed in such a matter-of-fact manner somehow made it all that much harder to take. When it was just conjecture on Mo’s part, I could keep pretending he wasn’t the brains behind this hideous plot. But now? Now I had no choice but to accept my twin was a traitor. A killer. A betrayer.

What probably hurt the most was the fact that he’d obviously been planning all this for well over six years—and neither Mo nor I had had even the faintest idea.

How could we have missed it? Surely there must have been some sign of what was happening—of the dark path he was being led down. Or had we grown so used to his secretive manner that we ignored all the clues?

I didn’t know—and probably never would. Not now.

I shook my head in a vague effort to get rid of the agony that burned within and the tears that still threatened to burst free. “And you didn’t think him crazy?”

“Of course not. He had the coronation ring—he showed it to me.”

Was it the one stolen from the museum, or the one the Blackbirds supposedly had in safekeeping? “And how do you know it was the real thing?”

“Because I’ve seen it before—or rather, seen the replica—at the British Museum.”

Which didn’t clarify which one he’d possessed. I’d have to ask Luc to check whether they were still in possession of the real one when I saw him again.

“You surely didn’t agree to bear his children on the sighting of one old ring. Or was it the money that convinced you?”

She hesitated. “He did—and does—pay very well, but there was also the bible—”

My gut clenched. “What bible?”

She gave me a strange look. “The De Montfort bible, of course. It wasn’t in great condition—had some fire damage, from the look of it—but it showed a clear line of succession to the current crop of De Montforts.”

Where the hell had he found that? How had he managed to find it, when it had supposedly been destroyed in a