he said it, he knew that wasn’t exactly true. But lessers did not count. They weren’t even living, for godsakes.
“Can I ask you something?” she whispered.
“Please.” He tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “What do you want to know?”
“When you came here and I opened that door . . .” Her voice drifted. “You looked worn-out. Is everything okay?”
Boone twisted a lock of her red and blond hair around his finger. “I feel like I should choose my words carefully here.”
“Why?”
“My sire died, as you know. But I’m not . . . I’m not mourning him like you do your sister. He and I didn’t have a good relationship. I was an embarrassment to him, pretty much since birth, because I didn’t look like the proper aristocrat he was. I was always bigger, more muscled, not the whip-thin body type the glymera prefers.” He hesitated to share that he might have been the product of an affair. “Then, after my blood mahmen passed unto the Fade, he just moved another female in without talking about it. Like she was a sofa replacing a couch that had been stained. I couldn’t take all his superficial bullcrap anymore after that. I had tried to live up to his expectations, but you can only take so much of that kind of censure before you either separate yourself or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Kill yourself.” He shrugged as if it was no big deal. Even though it had been. “My final straw with him was the stepmahmen thing. His final straw with me was a broken arrangement that brought shame on the bloodline. And then me joining the Brotherhood’s training program, of course. So, anyway, when he died . . . it was a relief for me on many levels.”
“I am so sorry you had such a difficult time with your sire.”
“It happens. Particularly in the glymera, I think.”
“I’m not sure what is worse. Missing someone who I loved as much as I loved Isobel . . . or suffering through the relationship you had with your father.”
“Sad toss-up.” And probably one of the roots of their connection. “Suffering has many vocabulary words, doesn’t it.”
There was a period of silence. “You were arranged?” she asked. “I was. She ended it, and the truth was, I was more than fine with it.
I was prepared to go through with things to save face for her and everyone else in my family. But the true love wasn’t there for me, and it wasn’t there for her, either.”
Helania took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I asked about the mating thing. And just so you know, I’ve never been even remotely close to something like that.”
Boone smiled slowly. “You can ask me anything. And if I’d known that you’d had a broken arrangement, that would have been something I’d focus on, too.”
“Your father must have hurt you very deeply over the years.”
“It’s okay. It’s just the way things were.”
Helania tucked her arm under her head and played with his hand.
“Tell me more about what it was like for you growing up. And the training program. And . . . what happened with your father when he went unto the Fade.”
Instead of feeling burdened or obligated, it was a relief to open up to someone. To her, specifically. “Where do you want me to start?”
Helania’s smile was full of compassion, and so were her beautiful yellow eyes. “Wherever you want. We have all day long.”
Yes, he thought to himself. We do.
And wasn’t that a great thing.
Butch silenced the recording that was playing out of his cell phone’s little speaker and turned his head on his pillow toward his shellan. Marissa was curled up under the covers beside him, her blond hair fanned over her naked shoulders, her pale blue eyes somber.
“He did a great job,” Butch murmured. “Boone’s a natural at interrogation. I was prepared to have to talk to her again, but he covered everything I would have asked.”
“That poor female.” Marissa shook her head. “I wonder if you should ask her if she’d like to talk to Mary? That’s a lot of trauma to go through right there. Her sister first and then finding that body.”
Butch put the phone down on the comforter between them. “I will suggest that.”
“But . . . what.”
Glancing at his female, he shrugged. “Nothing.” When Marissa just kept staring at him, he cursed and looked at the ceiling of their bedroom. “God, you know me so well.”