“Were you going to kill me?” I asked woodenly. Not that I would’ve blamed him. Maybe I’d had reason to fear him after all. “That’s what Kaldur said, didn’t he? You needed my blood. The blood of your enemy.”

His brows drew down. He actually flinched, horror entering his expression at the question. “No.”

I gripped his forearm, squeezing his wrist, as his forehead came to mine.

His voice was ragged as he said, “But I was going to use you. Use your suffering as an offering to Raazos, who might lead Aina’s soul back to us even without her soul gem, her vessel. And when I was done with you, I was going to send you back to your father, turn the black feed over to War Crimes at the High Quadrant Council, and let the collectors flood back in to feast on whatever was left. I wanted your family’s name tarnished. Stripped. Destroyed. I wanted House Hara to suffer as we did, and I was so consumed with my vengeance that I couldn’t see beyond it. I couldn’t even see you.”

His lips pressed to my cheek, kissing away my tears, but it didn’t comfort me. Everything I’d known had been pulled out from right under my feet. I had never imagined this. This horrific tragedy that had befallen House Kaalium at the hands of my father and whatever, or whomever, had driven him to perform such a monstrous act.

It split my very soul, trying to understand.

Tonight, Azur had introduced me as Gemma of House Kaalium, Kylaira of Laras.

I’d felt hope then, mingled with my grief and my pleasure.

Now I just felt numb.

“How can you stand it?” I whispered against him. He pulled back to look at me. “How can you even stand to look at me, to touch me, to be near me, knowing my own father did this to you and your family? To Aina?”

“Gemma,” Azur said quietly, his gaze flickering back and forth between my eyes, frowning at whatever he found there. “It was my own mistake to believe you had knowledge of the crime.”

Horror flooded me. My breath hitched. “I didn’t.”

“I know,” he growled. “But my mind wanted to believe that you knew because it would be easier to hurt you if you did.”

I thought back to our wedding ceremony on Nulaxy. I wondered how in the world Azur hadn’t ripped my father apart right in front of me, tearing him limb from limb.

“Oh gods,” I whispered, suddenly drained. So incredibly tired that I felt sick and dizzy with it. “How you must hate me. How you all must hate me. No wonder…”

I began to cry then. Shuddering, aching sobs that I tried to stifle. But it felt like my heart was breaking. Not just the grief at the destruction of my relationship with Azur but also because of my father.

Even worlds away and he could still shatter my heart so completely.

“I don’t hate you, kyrana,” came my husband’s strained voice, and I felt the strong pull of his hands come to my wrists when I tried to shield my face. I couldn’t even get up and leave. We were on the roof of the keep. “I wanted to. So much. But I couldn’t. I discovered you. I saw you. Your bright, unbending spirit. Your resilience. Your loyalty to your sisters. Your grief. I could never have hated that woman. Just the opposite, in fact.”

His words should’ve comforted me. They’d been meant to. But I couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

I’d begun to fall in love with my Kylorr husband.

And I believed that he’d begun to feel the same.

Only now…

I knew that we could never come back from this.

“I want to see the black feed,” I said quietly. My voice sounded hollow, even to me. “I want to see the video.”

Azur was tense beside me. “I don’t think that’s wise, laraya.”

“I want to see it,” I said, my voice firm. “I need to.”

Azur’s wings unfurled behind us. He debated for a long time.

Finally, I met his eyes—worried and concerned, I saw—and pleaded, “Azur, please.”

He finally relented. “Very well.”

I was tense in his arms when he flew us off the roof. I could still hear the strains and haunting melody from the ball still taking place downstairs. A ball that seemed eons ago in my memory. Time was strange. How could it have happened tonight? When my whole world had changed since I had been within that ballroom? How had I been dancing in my husband’s arms without a care in the world?

We landed on the balcony of his office. At his Halo system, I waited with my heart beating hard against the bones of my chest. Wishing that it wasn’t true. Knowing that it was. Azur had no reason to lie. He wouldn’t about something like this.

Still, I prayed to all the deities in the universe that it wasn’t true. That it wouldn’t be my father on that feed, murdering a peace ambassador in cold blood, long after the final battle of the Pe’ji War, and then covering up the crime. Taking away a beloved member of House Kaalium, whose soul was lost to them.

When the video came up, though it was grainy and dark, I still felt a sinking in my belly. Like I was falling into the ground below, being swallowed up by darkness and soil and roots.

I would recognize my father anywhere. Though he was slimmer in the video, though his hair was less gray and Azur had muted the sound of the horrific scene loaded before me…I would recognize Rye Hara anywhere.

I watched it unfold, just as Azur had said, and I refused to look away even though I felt my heart shriveling up with every single millisecond.

I watched them cut her wings. Hold her down.

Taunt her as she tried to fight back.

I watched as my father killed Aina.

The bright burn of his plasma gun would be imprinted in my memory forever.

Chapter 41

Azur

“Can I join you?” came the voice.

I barely heard the words but my eyes focused on Kaldur nonetheless. I was leaning against the terrace banister, watching the fishing boats dart in and out of the western port, which was hidden beyond the sharp curve of the cliff.

“What do you want?” I asked, no true venom in my voice. I looked over my shoulder, to the stretch of windows of Gemma’s rooms, where she’d retreated the night before. I’d slept without her for the first time since the kyriv attack, and it had left me restless.

It was nearly evening and despite my attempts to see her, she’d been sleeping every time I’d barreled past Ludayn. She hadn’t eaten anything, given the full trays of food still laid out on the table in the sitting room.

I was fucking worried about her. And I didn’t know what I could do to help her through this.

“Everything has changed in the span of moments,” she’d whispered to me last night, once the video feed had cut out. “I—I don’t know what to do, Azur. And I’m so—so incredibly sorry. For Aina. And I don’t know how to make it right. Why?”

The vulnerable hitch in her voice had nearly torn my chest to shreds.

Kaldur took his place next to me. I caught Kythel strolling along the terrace wall, but my twin gave us privacy and space, continuing on his way down toward Mother’s gardens when he noticed us.

I didn’t know what had happened last night after the ballroom. I didn’t know what had happened when Kythel had gone after Kaldur after his outburst.

Truthfully, I didn’t care. What I cared about was that Gemma now knew the truth and she’d hardly been able to look at me since.

“Kalia told me your wife has fallen ill,” Kaldur said.

My shoulders stiffened. “My wife’s name is Gemma,” I said, my tone wooden, though I turned my glare to him in full force. “You would do well to remember it.”

“Gemma,” Kaldur amended quietly. “I didn’t come here to fight with you, despite what you might think.”

“Then why did you come?”