Fated Blades (Kinsmen #3)(32)

It was a dangerous fantasy. It swirled in his mind, until he could think of nothing else. Lying a couple of meters away from her was torture, so he got up and moved to the other end of the entrance to put more distance between them. Sitting like this, he could still watch her, confident that he would crush any temptation to touch her before it got the better of him and made him move closer.

And now she wanted to talk. They were sitting too far apart for a conversation.

It had to be a test. Life or fate or the universe was testing him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to pass.

He got up and approached her. Five meters, four, two . . . this would do. He didn’t trust himself to get any closer. He sat on the stone floor of the ramp, outside the fire’s light, letting the night obscure his expression. He wasn’t sure what she would see in his eyes.

“An answer for an answer?”

Ramona sighed. “Must everything be an exchange?”

“Yes. Everything is an exchange. Everything is transactional. You breathe in, you breathe out. You train, you get stronger. You do someone a favor, and they reciprocate. You should know that better than anyone, Lady Spider.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

Everything.

“In your restaurant, when I told you that I had no guarantee that you wouldn’t stab me in the back, you told me that I had no room to talk of betrayal, considering where and who I came from. I want to know what you meant by that.”

She mulled it over. “I suppose you’d find out eventually. You have a deal. History for history. Start with why you left the planet.”

This woman always went for the jugular. He settled into a comfortable position on the floor.

“My father’s death broke my mother. One morning we woke up, and my aunt greeted us at the breakfast table in her place. She served us a hava crumble she’d baked that morning and explained that our mom needed some time away. That she was going to be gone for a while, until she dealt with everything. I remember she kind of waved her hands around when she said ‘everything.’”

“I can actually picture that. Your aunt is quite frightening.” Ramona shivered.

He imagined himself walking over and putting his arms around her. “My aunt is a lovely person.”

“Lovely but frightening.”

He thought about it. “That’s probably fair. I realized two things, one good, one bad. The bad thing was that me and my sister were included in the everything. We were a burden, like the family, the business, and the house. I never saw my mother in person after that.”

It still hurt. Fifteen years later.

“Is she . . . ?”

“She’s alive. I get timely medical reports from her annual checkups, and occasionally the villa where she stays requires renovations or repairs. I pay the bills. She refuses my calls.”

“Your mother ran away from home.” Ramona stared at him, incredulous. “She left you.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I remember when it happened. Our family made a big deal out of it. I was twelve, which means you were fifteen years old, and your sister was seventeen. Your mother abandoned her children. We all thought she simply stepped down as the head of the family. I didn’t know . . .”

“Nobody knows outside of a few close members of the family. Nobody wanted to advertise that she’d suffered an emotional collapse.”

Kinsmen were obsessed with hereditary genetics, and they gossiped.

Ramona grimaced. “We would’ve done the same. I can imagine what would’ve been said if it became public. ‘Ava snapped. What if she passed her mental instability to her children? Will they crack under the pressure if you cut them deep enough?’ It would be like tying up a bleating lamb in the middle of the woods.”

“Exactly. My mother was seen as weak by the family. Nobody said it, but the silent judgment was deafening.”

“Do you think she was weak?” she asked, her voice soft.

“I think she needed help in the worst way. With enough trauma and grief, anyone can be broken.”

Ramona looked away. “Did you help her?”

“My aunt tried. I’ve seen the records. Psychiatrists, psychologists, grief counselors, the abbot of the Blazing Mountain Monastery . . .”

Ramona raised her eyebrows.

“Like you said, my aunt is lovely but frightening. Unfortunately, you can’t help someone against their will. My mother refused all of it, especially the calls from my sister and me. She wanted to be free of anything that reminded her of my father, including her children. In the end, we could only respect her wishes.”

Ramona frowned. “You said you understood two things—one good, one bad. What was the good thing?”

He grinned at her. “I realized I could leave.”

She chuckled.

“Until that moment at the breakfast table, I hadn’t known it was possible. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I could just leave. I could just go somewhere else, where I wasn’t the son, the nephew, the heir. Zero pressure, zero expectations. So, when I turned eighteen, I split.”

“Where did you go?”

“To Calais V. They have a mercenary hub there. One of the crews needed a warm body, so I got hired. They didn’t care where I was from. They didn’t want to know my real name. As long as I did my job and didn’t cause too many problems, they were happy to have me. They liked my reaction time, so they trained me as a pilot. I was with them for five years.”