Chapter Twenty-Eight

Another thing about being the youngest of four sisters, you learn pretty quickly how to get what you want.

I take a step toward Rhodes's side of the room, drawn to the serenity it offers. "I'll sleep here," I repeat, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. Rhodes tenses slightly as I do, and I look up at him, trying to read his shadowed expression.

He sits beside me, careful to keep some distance. "I haven't slept in the same bed with anyone in centuries," he admits, his voice barely above a whisper.

I reach out, touching his hand lightly. "I've…I’ve never slept with anyone," I confess, my voice shaking slightly. The weight of my admission hangs in the air, and I see a flash of something in Rhodes’s eyes—pity, understanding, desire.

Kallias plopped down on the other side of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. "Never?" he asks, eyebrows raised. "Not even with your sisters?"

I hesitate, memories of my sisters' cruelty flickering through my mind. I force a smile, giving a vague response. "We weren't very close."

Rhodes, with a wisp of shadow in his hand, turns to me with distant eyes. “They weren’t very nice to you,” he states. Not as a comfort, or an emotion, but as a fact. As a dark spymaster recognizing another’s painful past.

It’s chilling to think that he uses that skill–intuition–against other people. To make them break.

I wonder if he hates himself for it.

I laugh at my pain. “My father died when I was young. He was away during my sister’s childhoods, off fighting wars against the Vampires to protect our lands. He wasn’t around much in my sister’s childhoods, and they, especially the eldest two, Reiyna and Rebecca, were trained in torture and war in preparation for the Midnight King since the day they were born. I think they resented that I was given a childhood with him.”

Rhodes looks to his blades. Kallias gives me a heartbreaking look.

“Go on,” Kal says, looking at my lips, and my jaw.

“In all honesty,” my voice breaks, and suddenly I can’t look anywhere but the stars, too. “I know they hated me for it. They tried to hide it, of course, but when I was little they…they tortured me. They never included me, mocked me, made me feel over and over again like I was powerless, meaningless.”

Sparks fly as the Spymaster sharpens that damn sword. His jaw is clenched, knuckles white and clenched, like he cares what they did to me.

“My father was the only one in that house who truly loved me,” I confess, “and then he passed and I was so fucking alone.”

Fuck. I’m nearly sobbing at this point. And both the twins are just staring somewhere else.

I swallow hard. Why am I telling them this? Did I expect them to comfort me? To care?

I move to rise, and Kallias lets me go, but right as I’m about to pass the bed, Rhodes's hand shoots out, halting me.

I turn to him, my face a mask of fury and humiliation. They were intimate with me, both of them and now they’re just acting like–

“Our father died in the Great War,” Kallias says.

The world falls silent.

“We were seventeen years old, babies in the timeline of our kind, and we were ordered to stay home.”

I swallow. Never have I heard the Warrior's voice so low, so calm. He sounds just like Rhodes.

“We were ordered to stay home,” Kallias repeats, his eyes swirling storms, “but we received word that our Sky Legion had fallen, the troops my father commanded, and in our young and arrogant foolishness, we snuck out in the middle of the night to help him.”

The Warriors gaze darkens. “My brother and I went out into the sky on dragonback, taking the only two beasts left behind to protect the city. We didn’t know of the spies who were in the castle at that time, how we were leaving our siblings weak and undefended.”

Kallias, still, is calm. “When we got to the battle, our father became distracted. He shouted at us to go home, to protect our siblings, but we were fucking fools. Idiots. Our fleet was overwhelmed, enemy troops arrived out of nowhere, and my father died trying to protect us.”

Rhodes suddenly stands and stalks to the balcony. More silent than usual.

He blames himself, I realize. He blames himself for both his decision and Kallias’s.

I know the feeling well.

My voice is a near whisper. “And your mother? And your siblings?”

Rhodes speaks from the door of the balcony. “Vienna was the only one who fought them off.”

Silence falls. I don’t know what to say to that. Neither does Kallias.

“I’m going out,” Rhodes announces from the doorframe, “tell Kieran to go fuck himself.”

I move across the room, drawn to the shadows surrounding Rhodes. The spymaster remains on edge, his reluctance clear. I reach out to him, placing my hand on his. "Stay," I whisper. "Please."

That’s the best way I know how to communicate, I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s not your fault.

Rhodes is intuitive enough to know my meaning. And when he looks back at me, his eyes are sparkling with tears.

“It’s not your fault,” I say to him, and he nods, slowly. “It’s not your fault,” I draw him into a hug.

Rhodes stiffens, then relaxes slightly. “Anyone who treats you with anything but kindness is a fool,” he says to me. “A fucking fool.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Then you are in need of a new world.”

He hesitates, then slowly moves closer, following me to his bed and lying beside me. Kallias mirrors his actions, the bed suddenly feeling smaller with their presence. We lay there, a trio bound by unspoken desires and shared fears.

“Just for tonight,” Rhodes growls from beside me, shifting to get more comfortable.

The room falls silent for a moment, the only sound the crackle of the candles and the distant howl of the wind. I can feel the tension between us, an electric current that makes my heart pound.

We’ve shared things with each other that none of us have ever shared with another before. And that type of intimacy…

Kallias's teasing smile softened, and Rhode’s gaze became more intense. The heat of them together makes my thighs clench, and pretty soon I’m wet, both of the brothers sensing my desire.

“Go to bed, Remi,” Kallias says from beneath a bent arm.

I draw my hand from his tattooed arm to his exposed stomach, running my fingertip over the valleys of his muscles. The warrior moans, his back arching slightly.

“Another round would break you, sweetheart,” he says, and I move to rise from my place in between them and wrap my lips around–

A rough, calloused hand, slaps across my chest and holds me down.

“Go to bed, now,” The Spymaster Commands us both, even more threatening than Keiran.

Kallias wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me close. “Tell me, what were your favorite things about your father,” he prompts.

I’m so comfortable, half asleep in the warrior's strong arms. “The flowers,” I reply, breathing in Kallias’s scent of woodsmoke.

His hand cups my face. "Which ones?"

I snuggle into his chest. “Moonflower and...white roses.”