Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Good call. “So . . . you doing okay?”
“If you’re wondering if I’m struggling with the knowledge that I ended Abel’s life, the answer is no.” Using the tweezers, he let a meaty chunk that might have been brain plop into the trashcan beside the vanity. “I’m not sorry I killed him. I don’t even regret that I’m not sorry. I’m glad he’s dead because he wasn’t worth shit; he would have killed you, and now one more of my jailors is gone. But I’m not internally celebrating either.”
She silently winced as the tweezers tugged at her hair. “You thought you would?”
“I expected to feel more—Shit, you have an actual tooth in your hair.” He dropped it in the trash and then said, “The moment Abel died, I felt a sick satisfaction for sure. A satisfaction that ran deep and cold. A sense that unfinished business was now addressed. But that’s about it. I can’t call up much more emotion about it.”
“Why would you? You mostly shut off from what Abel made you feel when you were just a kid. Plus, you might have craved vengeance and freedom all these years, but you didn’t nurture your bitterness and anger at him. You mentally shoved him aside. You lived your life. You focused on you. It’s what helped keep you emotionally stable while imprisoned. It’s a good thing, and it’s the reason you’re not overflowing with a bloodthirsty satisfaction right now. He cast you into the role of antagonist, but you didn’t do the same to him.”
“No, I didn’t.” Cain dumped yet more gory bits into the trash. “If Abel had killed me, he would have felt like he’d ‘won.’ For him, we’d been in competition all our lives. It was never like that for me.”
“Adam was the one you focused all your loathing on,” she understood.
Cain nodded. “Abel was just his mini-me.”
“And therefore not a good substitute for killing Adam—it’s him you want. So I think we can both agree that it’s little wonder you’re not feeling as smug as your creature is. What have your aides done with Abel’s body?”
“Stashed it in a pit in my dungeon.”
A fitting place. “What do you intend to do with it?”
“Use it to rile Adam, of course.”
In other words, he had something real gory in mind. Fabulous. “Do you think Adam will come here?”
“I know he will. The only son he ever gave a shit about is now dead. That will be hard enough for him to take. Knowing that it was me who killed Abel will only piss Adam off more. The way he’ll see it is that I’ve taken his immediate family from him in one way or another—Seth, Eve, Abel. My sisters died in the first war, so he’ll at least partially blame me for how they lost their lives.”
“Adam won’t see that he set all this in motion when he decided to punish a child for things out of said child’s control. He tormented Eve until he killed all she used to feel for him. He tried turning all your siblings against you. If he’d handled the situation differently, there wouldn’t have been sides or seeds for a war.”
“In his eyes, my birth is what caused all this.”
She sniffed. “Well, it didn’t. You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t ask for your mother to sleep with another man. You have as much right to exist as Adam, whether he likes it or fucking not.”
Cain couldn’t help but smile at her vehemence. “Always so very rigorous in your defense of me.”
“Would you expect anything else?”
“No.” Not from her. Not from this witch who was literally the only person who’d ever so fervently argued his simple right to just be.
“Now that you know Eve and the twins didn’t come here with malicious intentions, do you plan to build a relationship with them?”
Sighing, he plucked another fragment of bone from her hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I even could.”
Bonding with others wasn’t his specialty. Or even something he sought to do. When it came to Wynter, he’d had no real choice—the connection had sprung to life between them. He didn’t believe that same thing would happen with his mother or the twins.
“There’s no harm in trying,” she said.
“They might have no interest in even speaking with me when they learn I killed Abel. For all I know, they held out hope that the Ancients and Aeons would somehow find a way to make peace.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “If they try to make you feel guilty, I’ll go ape-shit on their asses. Just want you to know that upfront.”
He felt his mouth curve again. “I appreciate the warning.”
She frowned when he dipped his head to press a kiss to a blood-free spot on her nose. “I’m all icky.”
“Yes, you are.” And still as appealing as always. “And now that your hair is free of gunk, we can both shower. Though, at the moment, what I most want is to be sure that Demetria’s coven were neither part of nor aware of her little plot to end you. I want any threat to you eliminated.”