Richard could only stare at him.
“You didn’t hear the silenced gunshot or notice the commotion behind you in an almost empty street.”
Richard shook his head, dazed. “You saved my life.”
Numair gave a curt nod. “And since you saved mine when you reconnected me with Jenan, this repays my debt.”
Unable to stand anymore, Richard sagged on the nearest horizontal surface, dropping his head in his hands.
Numair came down beside him. “What the hell is going on with you, Cobra?”
He slanted him a glance without raising the head that felt as if it weighed half a ton. “Don’t tell me you care.”
“To borrow what you said—when you helped me resolve Zafrana’s debts, saving Jenan’s kingdom and its king, her father—if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have intervened on your behalf.”
“You didn’t do it for me. You were just discharging your debt. You’re terminally honorable that way.”
“That notwithstanding, and though I might have seriously considered killing you before, I wouldn’t want your life to end at the hands of such a worthless scumbag.”
“You think I deserve a more significant end, eh?”
“Definitely a spectacular one.” Numair’s expression suddenly grew thunderous. “Will you tell me what the hell is wrong with you? Are you...sick?”
Richard’s breath left him in a mirthless huff. “You can say that.” Before Numair could probe, Richard sat forward, deciding to end this meeting. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. And for saving my life. I’m in your debt now. You know the drill. You can ask for anything and it’s yours.”
“Again, to echo what you said to me before, I’ll collect right now. Answer my questions.”
“Why? Really, Phantom, what do you care?”
“Let’s say now I’ve found this hugely undeserved bliss with Jenan, and you do have a hand in it, I can no longer hang on to my hatred of you. I don’t want to. I want to wipe the slate clean, don’t want to let old animosities taint the new life where our child will be born. Especially since you turned out to be human after all, apparently wanting a woman so much you’ve been putting up with her family and friends for weeks on end. Not to mention slipping up like mortals do. So just tell me the truth, dammit.”
Richard had long thought it pointless to tell Numair why he’d betrayed him, causing him to be punished within an inch of his life for two months straight. But he wanted to stop hiding from him, as he’d stopped hiding from Rose, and from himself. He needed to resolve the issues between them, once and for all.
So he told him the truth. About everything.
To say Numair was stunned would be an understatement.
Suddenly heaving up, Numair dragged him with him by his lapels, his teeth bared, his shout like thunder. “All these years...you crazy bastard...you let me think you betrayed me, made us live as enemies...all these years.”
This wasn’t among the possible reactions he’d expected. Numair was enraged...but not as he’d thought he would be.
Richard swallowed the thorns that had sprouted in his throat. “I did betray you. I almost had you maimed. I did get you scarred. And it didn’t matter why I did.”
Shock expanding in his eyes, Numair shook him, hard. “Are you mad? Nothing else mattered. You had no other choice. Your family had to come first. You did the only thing to be done, sacrificing the one who could take the punishment for those who couldn’t. I’m only damned sorry it didn’t save your family. I would have taken far more damage if it had ultimately spared their lives.”
Richard tore himself from Numair’s furious grip, sagged again to escape the contact, the crashing guilt, the crushing futility. Numair’s hands descended heavily on his shoulders.
“Look at me.” He did, letting Numair see the upheaval filling his eyes. Numair winced. “I went mad all these years, hated you as fiercely as I once loved you for never giving me an explanation, not for the betrayal itself. You were the first person who ever gave me a reason to cling to my humanity, the one I looked up to, the one who gave me hope there’d one day be more for me than being The Organization’s slave. Because there was more with you, a friendship that I thought would last as long as we both lived. I hated you, not because I got scarred, but because I thought you took all that, my belief in you, in our bond, the strength and stability it brought me, away from me.”
Moved beyond words, Richard stared up at Numair, the stinging behind his eyes blurring his vision.
Numair sat, fervor replacing the fury on his face. “But I have my friend back now. And you have me, too. It’s twenty-six freaking years too late, but better late than never. You damn self-sacrificing jackass.”
Richard coughed. “That was no self-sacrifice. I just believed there was no forgiving my crimes. I only hoped you’d consider, after all I did over the past ten years, that I atoned for them, at least in part. But you’re as unforgiving as your homeland’s camels.”
Numair arched a teasing eyebrow. “What, pray tell, did you do to atone? It was I who deigned to put my hand in that of my betrayer to build Black Castle Enterprises for us all.”
“You deigned nothing. You couldn’t do it without me.”