“When there is something worth saying.”
Before Elin could retort, one of the attendants entered, followed by their newest guest.
“Ah, there he is,” Oliver announced, pushing his chair back to greet his father.
Noble got out of his seat, as did Elin. Delphine plastered on a frosty smile, as frosty as the white-chocolate-and-raspberry-truffle ice cream that would be their dessert.
Nena took her eyes off the son and landed them on Lucien Douglas as he shook Noble’s hand warmly, clapped her father’s back, then ended their handshake greeting with a loud snap of their intertwined fingers. The greeting of the Tribe.
Her vision tunneled. Background noises and sights fell away. The blood rushing in her eardrums was deafening as the room suddenly became unbearably small. Lucien’s eyes connected with hers before his gaze left her, moving on to her mother.
At least the blade was sharp, eh? Clean right through, Attah. Well done.
Paul. Lucien Douglas was Paul?
The sight of him made her gut constrict with a fear she hadn’t known for years. Her stomach roiled, and her mouth slickened, her body rejecting the food she had consumed. She stood up too quickly, causing the tableware to clatter, startling the others. She murmured apologies as she rushed from the room, the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from becoming sick.
She barely made it to the restroom, where she vomited into the toilet in violent heaves. Her body was burning and freezing simultaneously until there was nothing left at all. Her head pounded. The tortured screams of her people, mixed with his men’s laughter at her, visions of Paul poking and prodding at her father’s decapitated head, all a cacophony of hell. All brought on by Paul, who had made her into nothing.
And what was worse was that he hadn’t recognized her. That was clear enough by the way his eyes had moved past her. He hadn’t remembered who she was. After all he’d taken from her, the least he could do was to know her when he fucking saw her!
Her hand moved to her push daggers, their sheaths hidden as part of the design of her belt. She itched to use them on his throat. She thought about the Glock she had stashed in the kitchen that Elin didn’t know she kept for “just in case.”
Kill him now, her mind shrieked. Sweat dotted her brow in the increasingly hot room. She wobbled to her feet, feeling weak. She grasped the sides of the sink, waving a hand under the faucet to activate the sensor’s release of water.
End him, the voice continued to command. Now, while he’s here. And she would. She turned to go, then stopped, the rational side of her pushing past. A summit of intergalactic proportions raged in her mind, her fists clenching and unclenching.
I can’t kill him.
Why not? He won’t see it coming, like we didn’t back then.
He is a Council member. He’s untouchable. I cannot kill him now.
All these years, and he lives and thrives. He is supposed to be dead.
I cannot kill him with his son watching.
Had he the same consideration when he forced Papa to watch his sons murdered or you raped? Had he any concern for you when he commanded that your father lose his head?
Fine. Then I cannot kill him with my family here.
The voice pushing her to kill Paul stopped. Because her rational side was right. She couldn’t kill Paul with her family there. She would not put them in harm’s way, executing a Council member as he dined at the home of the High Council’s daughter. That Elin and Oliver were seeing each other inextricably linked Paul to Noble, and if she killed him now, everyone would think Noble had decreed it as a power grab for Gabon and whatever other power Paul had.
She was no monster, unlike him. She wouldn’t kill him in front of his child as he had slaughtered her father before her eyes, leaving her with a lifetime of memories and nightmares.
She wouldn’t do any of that. At least, not here.
38
BEFORE
The screams in my dreams drive me awake with visions of Monsieur’s bloody body coming for me. The night is wet, with thick drops of water that douse you all the way through. Earlier, I made a nest for myself, burrowed within shrubs at the base of a tree in a small park. Sleeping among the trees reminds me of the openness of home, where we did not have all these tall buildings to blot out the sun.
There is a street near the park, and across from it is an upscale hotel called Le Monantique Hotel. It is busy at all hours of the day and night. The people who bustle in and out look wealthy, hopping into cars that look more like small spaceships.
Based on my calculations, I have been on my own for a week and am growing used to the city’s smells, sounds, and people—both good and bad. No one sees me, which I like. I can walk among people without them giving me a second glance. This makes me witness to many things—both good and bad.