gone through something so terrible, still lived with the pain it had caused, allowing it to fester inside him.
Gravel crunched off to her right and she looked there.
The lights from the mansion threw Marek’s bulky figure into silhouette, stealing his features from her until he drew close enough that the slender moonlight revealed them to her.
“Keras wants to talk about potentially closing another gate.” His dark eyes slid to the lingering ribbons of smoke. “Where’s Daimon?”
“He left.” She meant to leave it at that, but then she blurted, “What happened to Daimon’s wife?”
Marek’s dark eyebrows knitted hard. “Wife? Daimon has never been married. There was Penelope. She was killed before Father sent us here. Why?”
She told herself not to say anything more.
Her mouth moved anyway. “I found him making ice sculptures, one of them was of her, I think. She was pregnant, right?”
Shock danced across Marek’s face. “Pregnant?”
She nodded and inwardly cursed. How many times tonight was she going to reveal things that were unknown or clearly a secret in this case? She needed to learn to watch her mouth.
“You never knew,” she said.
Marek shook his head. “None of us did. Daimon never told us. He’s never spoken about what happened. Penelope lived in the mortal world, and I knew he’d been seeing her, but nothing about his behaviour ever led me to believe things were serious between them. He would go and visit her from time to time, leaving weeks between each trip. Normally, it was when he grew bored of the females who regularly visited Father’s estate. I always thought he had just been mixing things up.”
Mixing things up? Was Marek right and Daimon hadn’t been serious about Penelope? Maybe his brother was wrong. Daimon had clearly loved this woman, mourned her still, and Cass had figured out Penelope was the reason he kept guarding his heart, refusing her advances. He had said his heart belonged to another.
“He never seemed serious about her?” Cass couldn’t stop that question from leaving her lips, need to know more about Daimon and this woman pushing her to discover all Marek knew about the two of them.
Marek shrugged. “Perhaps. Towards the end. Maybe in the month or so before her death.”
After Penelope must have told Daimon she was pregnant.
Someone called to Marek.
“I’ll make excuses for Daimon. Keep this between us?” Cass didn’t want the others discovering the things Daimon wanted to keep secret. It was his place to tell his brothers, not hers.
Marek nodded and went back inside.
Cass lingered on the bridge, her gaze lowering to the boulder where Daimon had sat. She replayed what she had seen, how he had looked at her.
This was the reason he took care of the children in Hong Kong. Another secret he kept from his brothers.
A shiver chased through her.
Beneath his frosty exterior, there was a warm heart, and it was broken—shattered just like the ice sculpture.
And all this time she had been pushing him, hadn’t taken his rejections seriously, had kept prodding and poking him and trying to tear down his defences, unable to believe there might be a reason other than the manifestation of his power behind why he didn’t want to get involved with her.
A reason that had been festering inside him all this time.
She straightened as resolve filled her, the need to make amends a driving force behind it.
She was going to help him come to terms with what had happened to the woman he loved and his unborn child, so one day he would finally be able to love again, to live again, without remorse or guilt.
Not for her sake, but for his.
She would be long gone by the time he was finally ready to take the leap and be with another woman. She could only hope that he would be happy at last.
That one of them could be happy.
She looked down at herself, sorrow and sickness washing through her, stirred by a wish that she cast aside before it could fully form, because it was impossible. Allowing herself to feel something for Daimon would only cause her pain in the long run.
Believing Daimon could come to love her would only destroy her.
Happiness was far beyond her reach.
Fate had other plans for her.
Chapter 15
Daimon stepped back to the Tokyo mansion, landing near the porch. Sunlight bathed the building and the grounds, the air still and silent. Just as he had hoped. Everyone would be asleep and he could avoid them all, at least for a few more hours.
He toed his