The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(101)

“He deserved to be beaten to death by his own father?” Sebastian’s voice rose, and the fire in his chest spilled into his veins, chasing the panic into the corner of his mind.

His father’s face was grim. “An example had to be made.”

Sebastian took a small step forward, and his father stopped pacing to frown at him. “Is that the excuse you used when you beat me for not wanting to eat rotten apples when I was four?”

“Ungrateful for the food put in front of you—”

“Or the time you knocked out Parrish’s front teeth because he’d shut the front door too loudly while you were sleeping off another bout of drinking?” Sebastian took another step forward, the words rushing out of him like they’d always been there. “Or when I didn’t fetch you more ale fast enough to suit you? Or when Mother cooked carrots and you were in the mood for beets? What about the time you—”

“Enough!” his father yelled, eyes wild, and the whip snapped toward Sebastian.

Ari cried out a warning, but Sebastian was ready. Lashing out, he grabbed the end of the whip, wrapped it around his wrist twice, and yanked his father off balance.

The whip hung suspended between them as his father braced his feet, met his gaze, and pulled.

Sebastian hung on, the whip digging into his wrist. “You’re done hurting people.”

His father laughed and looked at Ari. “This the kind of man you want, Princess? All talk and no action? He ever show you his back? You ought to see it sometime. Proof that he’s a coward. Proof he’ll never erase.”

Shame, slick and oily, pooled in Sebastian’s stomach, but Ari snapped, “What a pack of lies. Sebastian is one of the bravest people I’ve ever known, and the scars on his back remind me that even though you tried so hard to break him, you failed.”

His father’s lip curled, and he raked his eyes over Ari’s body. “Mouthy and fat. Thought my boy would’ve had better taste in girls.”

“Leave her alone.” Sebastian’s voice was quiet even as the fury within him rose up to choke him with its strength. “Leave me alone. In fact, just leave. Get out of Kosim Thalas and never come back.”

His father jerked on the whip, but Sebastian held it steady.

“You don’t order me around, boy.” His eyes were wild, spittle flying as he yelled. “People tremble when I enter a room. Streets clear when I walk them. This is my town.”

“Actually, it’s Teague’s. You’re just his errand boy.” Ari’s voice was vicious, a first for her. “But that’s all you have, isn’t it? Pride in following a monster’s orders even when it means killing an innocent girl. Even when it means killing your own son. When we stop Teague, and we will, I will personally lock you away in a dungeon so obscure that no one will bother to remember your name.”

His father lunged toward Ari, aiming the butt of the whip at her face.

Fury roared through Sebastian, obliterating the panic and the shame and leaving nothing but a red haze in its wake. Launching himself into the air, he slammed into his father and sent them both skidding across the stone floor of the cage.

His father swore and landed a solid punch to Sebastian’s chest, but he couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t hear the words spewing out of his father’s mouth.

All he felt was the brilliant, hot purity of the rage that had broken free of its cage and filled him like an armor he wore beneath his skin.

Scrambling to his feet as his father rose, Sebastian absorbed the blows that struck him—one to the jaw that snapped his head to the side and sent blood running from his mouth, two to his shoulder, and another two to his chest—like he’d absorbed so many before. Only this time, he wasn’t trying to escape the pain. This time, he wasn’t trying to endure. This time, he was calculating his father’s center of balance, his fighting style, and looking for a weakness.

He found it in the frenetic zeal of the man’s punches—so concerned with breaking his son’s body with his fists that he forgot to pay attention to the weapon they each still held in their hands.

Bracing himself against the strength of his father’s blows, Sebastian snatched the middle of the whip that sagged between them. Pulling the leather taut, he ducked a roundhouse punch, held the section of whip in front of him like a horizontal pole, and lunged.

He thrust the taut leather against his father’s throat, looped a foot behind his leg, and swept him off balance. Jacob stumbled, a tiny error that gave Sebastian everything he needed. Letting the whip slide through one of his hands, he wrapped the section he held around his father’s neck and twisted until the man choked and clawed at the leather for relief.

“On your knees.” Sebastian twisted the leather noose again and shoved his father to the floor.

The man abandoned his attempt to loosen the noose in favor of grabbing for a dagger strapped to his ankle. Sebastian stomped on the hand that was pulling the blade free and ground his father’s fingers beneath his boot.

For one agonizing moment, he stared at the dagger and imagined picking it up. Burying it in his father’s heart and whispering that he’d done it for Parrish. The rage that fueled him begged him to show no mercy.

But he was better than his anger. Better than his need for vengeance.

He was better than his father.

Releasing the noose, he let the man fall to the floor, gasping for air, and reached into Jacob’s pocket for the key to Ari’s chain. Sebastian’s hands shook as he freed Ari’s ankle, and for the first time he noticed blood dripping from his mouth onto his tunic.