Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood 7)

"Nope. So are you coming or not?"

"I'll be there in a half hour. And don't worry, you aren't getting a houseguest overday. Symphaths have no problem with sunlight."

"See you in a few."

As Ehlena hung up, energy drummed through her veins and she raced around to tidy up, gathering together all the ledgers and cases and documents and filling the now impotent safe's belly. After she put the seascape back against the wall, she shut down her computer, told the doggen that she was expecting a visitor, and-

The gong of the front doorbell reverberated through the house, and she was glad she was the one who made it to the door first. Somehow she didn't think the staff would feel comfortable around Xhex.

Swinging the huge panels wide, she stepped back a little. Xhex was just as she remembered, a hard-ass female in black leathers with hair cut short as a man's. Something had changed, though, since she'd seen the security guard last. She seemed...thinner, older. Something.

"You mind doing this in the study?" Ehlena asked, hoping to get them behind closed doors before the butler and the maids came.

"You are brave, aren't you. Considering the last thing I did in that room."

"You had your chance to come after me. Trez knew where I was living before we ended up here. If you were that pissed off about me and Rehv, you'd have come for me then. Shall we?"

As Ehlena extended her arm toward the room in question, Xhex smiled a little and headed in that direction.

Once they had some privacy, Ehlena said, "So how much of it did I get right?"

Xhex prowled around, pausing to look at the paintings and the shelved books and a lamp that was made out of an Oriental vase. "You're right. He did kill his stepfather for what that bastard was doing at home."

"Was that what you meant when you said he put himself in a rough position for his mother and his sister?"

"Partially. His stepfather terrorized that family, especially Madalina. Thing was, she thought she deserved it, and besides, it was less than what had been done to her by Rehv's father. Female of worth, she was. I liked her, even though I only met her once or twice. I wasn't her kind of chick, not by a long shot, but she was nice to me."

"Is Rehvenge up in the colony? Did he fake his own death?"

Xhex stopped in front of the seascape and looked over her shoulder. "He wouldn't want us talking like this."

"So he is alive."

"Yes."

"In the colony."

Xhex shrugged and continued her meandering, her slow, easy strides doing nothing to mask the innate power in her body. "If he had wanted you involved in all of this, he would have done things very differently."

"Did you kill Montrag to keep the affidavit from getting out?"

"No."

"Why did you kill him then?"

"That is none of your business."

"Wrong answer." As Xhex's head whipped around, Ehlena squared her shoulders. "Considering what you are, I could go to the king right now and blow your cover. So I think you need to tell me."

"Threatening a symphath? Careful, I bite."

The lazy smile tacked onto the words made Ehlena's heart flicker with fear, reminding her that what was staring across the room at her was nothing she was used to dealing with, and not because of the whole symphath thing: Those cold gunmetal gray eyes of Xhex's had looked down on a lot of dead people-because she had killed them.

But Ehlena wasn't backing off.

"You won't hurt me," she said with utter conviction.

Xhex bared long white fangs, a hiss coming up and out of her throat. "Won't I."

"No..." Ehlena shook her head, an image of Rehvenge's face as he held her Keds in his hand coming to mind. Knowing what he'd done to keep his mother and his sister safe...made her believe what she had seen in him at that moment. "He would have told you not to touch me. He would have protected me on his way out. That's why he did what he did at ZeroSum."

Rehvenge hadn't been all good. Not by a long shot. But she had looked into his eyes and smelled his bonding scent and felt his kind hands on her body. And at ZeroSum, she had seen the pain in him and heard the strain and desperation in his voice. Whereas before she had assumed all that was either for show or out of disappointment that his cover was blown, now she had a different picture of it.

She knew him, goddamn it. Even after all the shit he had left out, even after the lies of omission, she knew him.

Ehlena lifted her chin and stared across the study at a trained killer. "I want to know everything, and you are going to tell me."

Xhex spoke for a half hour straight, and she was surprised by how good it felt. Surprised also by how much she approved of Rehv's choice of female. The entire time she was rolling out the horrors, Ehlena sat on one of the silk sofas all calm and steady-even though there were a lot of bombs.

"So the female who came to my door," Ehlena said, "that's the one who's blackmailing him?"

"Yes. It's his half sister. She's married to his uncle."

"God, how much money did she take him for over the past twenty years? No wonder he needed to keep the club open."

"It wasn't just money she was after." Xhex looked straight into Ehlena's face. "She made a whore out of him."

Ehlena's cheeks drained of color. "What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean." Xhex cursed and started to pace again, going around the fringes of the gorgeous room for the hundredth time. "Look...twenty-five years ago I f**ked up, and to protect me, Rehv struck a deal with the princess. Every month he went up north and paid her the money...and had sex with her. He hated it and despised her. Plus, she made him sick, literally-she poisoned him when he did what he had to, which was why he needed that antivenin. But, you know...even though it cost him a lot, he kept on making that trip so she wouldn't blow our covers. He's been paying for my mistake month after month, year after year."

Ehlena shook her head slowly. "Good...his half sister..."

"Don't you dare harsh on him for that. There are very few symphaths left anymore, so inbreeding happens a lot, but more than that, he didn't have a choice, because I put him in the position of being trapped. If you think for one second he would have volunteered for that shit you're out of your f**king mind."

Ehlena raised a hand up as if to calm things down. "I understand. I just...I feel badly for you and for him."

"Don't waste that on me."

"Don't tell me how to feel."

Xhex had to laugh. "You know, under different circumstances, I could like you."

"Funny, I feel the same way." The female smiled, but it was the sad kind. "The princess has him, then?"

"Yes." Xhex turned away from the couch, because she wasn't sharing what was no doubt in her eyes. "The princess was the one who blew his cover, not Montrag."

"But Montrag was going to come forward with that affidavit, wasn't he? Which was why you killed him."

"That was only part of what he was going to do. The rest of his plans are not my story to tell, but let's just say Rehv wasn't even the bigger part of it."

Ehlena frowned and leaned back in the cushions. She'd been fiddling with her ponytail, and wisps had come free of the scrunchie she pulled it back in-so that as she sat on the silk couch in front of a lamp, she had a halo around her.

"Must the world always be so harsh, I wonder," she murmured.

"In my experience, yup."

"Why didn't you go after him?" the female asked quietly. "And this is not a criticism-it truly isn't. It just seems out of character for you."

The fact that the question was phrased like that made Xhex slightly less defensive. "He made me take a vow not to. He even put it in writing. If I go back on my word, two of his best friends are going to die-because they're going to come after me." With an awkward shrug, Xhex took the goddamn letter out of the pocket of her leathers. "I have to keep this with me because it's the only thing that helps me stay put. Otherwise, I'd be up at that f**king colony this morning."

Ehlena's eyes clung to the folded envelope. "May...may I please see it?" Her lovely hand shook as she reached out. "Please."

The female's emotional grid was a tangled mess, strips of desolation and fear bound in ropes of sadness. She had been through the wringer these last four weeks, and she was in extremis, stretched beyond her limit and then some...but at the core, at the center, at the heart of her...love burned.