Born of Fire (53 page)

She waited, but he never responded.

“Nykyrian also told me to tell you he was sick and tired of running a business he barely understood and that he wished you’d get off your butt and tend to it yourself. He gave me a portable and a bunch of logs and invoice chips from your manager. And in case you haven’t heard, Kiara’s father has dropped all charges against you and The Sentella.”

Again silence answered her.

Well, what did you expect? “Ah, gee, Shahara, how nice to see you again. I understand completely why you turned me over to be tortured by someone you knew wanted me dead. Thank you, sweetness.”

She couldn’t blame him for his anger.

What was it her mother had always told her? Love was a fragile flower that took a lot of care and hard work to sustain. And just like a flower, it would wither and die if abused or neglected.

Once gone, nothing could ever bring it back.

Still, she couldn’t believe it was completely dead. He’d been glad to see her, if only for a second.

Surely he wouldn’t have had even that moment of delight if he truly hated her.

She tried again. “The Overseer told me that the judges are ready to release you with amnesty as soon as you testify against Merjack and his son. I guess you’ll be going home in a few days . . .”

She waited, and again he said nothing.

Sighing, she realized the futility of trying. He would never forgive her.

So be it. She wasn’t one to beg.

“Have a nice life,” she said, heading for the door.

With every step that carried her farther and farther from his cell, her heart broke into another piece. It was really over. Syn would never give her another chance. And she couldn’t even blame him for it.

Unable to stand what she’d done to them, she started to cry.

Staring at the chair where Shahara had been, Syn pulled out the tiny ring he’d bought for her and looked at the flashing golden stones. He’d had to bribe the hell out of one of the guards to get it.

He should have said something to her. Thanked her at the very least for getting him released—for bringing him his work.

But he’d been afraid to trust himself. If he spoke, he might have forgiven her.

Oh, to hell with forgiveness, anyway. He had his life back and she had hers. He’d known all along that they were incompatible.

What was the use of trying?

With that thought, he went to the pack she’d left on his table. As he reached in for the portable, his hand brushed a large piece of canvas.

Pulling it out, he froze.

It was an enlargement of his picture of Paden. Absolutely stunned, he stared at his son’s laughing face.

She must have found someone to repair his photograph and transfer it onto a 10 × 13 panel. And beneath that was a wallet-sized picture of him and Talia. He’d assumed it’d been destroyed along with his place.

A crushing pressure seized his chest as he held the photographs. Only Shahara would have known how important those pictures were to him.

She was the only person who had ever known him at all.

And he’d let her go.

Syn lay on the couch in his office, staring out at the stars while he did his best to drain another bottle of Tondarion A-Grade Hellfire. He’d tried everything else to forget Shahara and the pain she’d given him.

Only this helped.

He wanted to see her so badly that it caused a physical ache inside him. But he just couldn’t bring himself to go crawling back.

Not after she’d turned him in.

True, she’d also freed him. And if she’d handed over the right chip to Merjack, he’d now be dead. It still didn’t erase that moment of utter despair when she’d handed him off and had stood over him telling him that she’d used him.

That
was what he couldn’t forgive. Those words were forever carved in his heart.

Besides, she was a seax. She’d have been stripped of her title had she not taken the chip to the Overseer and seen Merjack punished. That had nothing to do with her feelings, or lack thereof, toward him.

The truth of it cut him like a knife. And even in her endeavor to save him, she’d forced him to spend weeks
staring at his mother on a vid screen while he’d been held in a cubicle to testify.

The sight of his mother sitting there so emotionless while she listened to his testimony . . .

Every day had cut him to his soul.

He curled his lip and guzzled more alcohol. That had probably been the worst part of all this—watching his mother sit in judgment of him.

At least she hadn’t condemned him—this time. But her refusal to address him had spoken louder than anything else. He had no family.

He would never have a family.

Like I care.

With a deep sigh, he took another swig. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been home. His days blurred together, marked only by the empty bottles that he’d strewn across the floor.

A knock sounded on his door.

Was it payroll again? Another week gone by?

Shaking his head to clear it, he decided he’d give Criam the authority to sign the pay forms. He no longer wanted to be bothered with it.

“Come in.”

He didn’t look around at the door as it opened. But the hair on the back of his neck stood up when he didn’t hear anyone walking in.

It wasn’t until a shadow fell over him that he knew who it was.

Nykyrian.

The tall blond assassin was dressed all in black, his long hair pulled back into a braid. He leaned heavily against a cane—an injury he’d sustained while saving his wife’s life from his enemy. Likewise, one half of his
face was still scarred from the crash that had almost ended his life.

“You look like hell, buddy.”

Syn saluted him with the bottle. “Funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

One corner of Nykyrian’s lips quirked up into the closest thing to a smile he’d ever seen from his friend.

Syn took another drink. “What are you doing here? Figured you’d be with your wife living the happily-ever-after bullshit that makes me want to puke.”

“You sounded like total shit when I called, so I wanted to see you for myself. I would say I was worried about you, but you might think I’ve gone soft and hell will freeze before that happens . . . By the way, if my wife goes into labor while I’m here and not at home with her, I will kill you where you lay.”

Syn made an obscene gesture at Nykyrian.

“How’s he doing?”

Syn tilted his head back to see Kasen in the open doorway. Curling his lip, he snarled at her. “In case you haven’t heard, I’m not exactly on good terms with your family right now. So why don’t you take your ass out of here before I find enough energy to beat it.”

“Ooo,” she cooed, crinkling her nose as if he’d just given her some sexual pleasure as she neared his couch, “you promise?”

He rolled his eyes at her. “I should have known that’s all you wanted. Well, you’re too late. Your sister effectively killed any sex drive I might have for a long time to come. Personally, I’d rather masturbate.”

“That’s harsh and crude, you pig.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. You know, me and you
were
friends. And friends are
something I don’t have a lot of.” She moved to stand by his side. “I really was worried about you, Syn. You haven’t been exactly seen by anyone since you got out.”

Syn took a deep breath. He didn’t mean to be such a self-absorbed asshole. It was just that the pain was too raw to deal with right now.

Even so, he hadn’t meant to lash out at them.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take my anger for your brother and sister out on you.”

“It’s all right. I’m used to it. I always catch hell because of one of them. Why do you think I’m so surly?”

“Ah, so
that’s
the reason.”

She took a seat by his feet and eyed the half-empty bottle in his hand, then shifted her gaze to the other three empty bottles on the floor. “Are you drunk?”

“
Comfortably Inebriated,
” he said with a dark laugh, thinking of Shahara and her continuous need to know what C.I. stood for.

Nykyrian scoffed. “Well, if you get any more comfortable, buddy, I’ll have to call in a med-tech.”

Kasen lifted one of the bottles and read the label. “This stuff can kill you.”

“Yeah, but obviously not quick enough.” He went to take another swig.

Nykyrian jerked it out of his hand.

“Hey!”

He pulled it away from his grasping hand. “Don’t even make that noise at me.”

Syn curled his lip. “You and Vik. You’re both traitors. You might as well move in with Shahara, too.” Vik had gone to live with her and refused to come back until Syn “got over himself.” Little wormy betraying mecha bastard.

Kasen shook her head. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you drink from a bottle.”

Nykyrian snorted. “Lucky you. I’ve seen him tap a keg and funnel it.”

“Look,” Syn said between clenched teeth, “I don’t really want to chit-chat with you two right now. You’ve seen me, you know I’m alive, now why don’t you both just go on home.”

Kasen slapped at his feet. “You sound just like Shahara.”

His heart stopped at the mention of her name. “So how is old Shahara, anyway? Living high off her million credits she got for having me tortured?”

“No,” she said quietly. “She won’t touch any of it.”

He lifted his brow in surprise.

“She even tried to return it, but the Overseer told her not to. She said Shahara had earned it.”

Oh, yeah, she had definitely earned it by screwing him over. Her acting abilities would be worth a thousand times that in the studios. “I’ll bet she did.”

Kasen clenched her teeth. “Look, I love you like a brother, Syn, and I love Shahara. I can’t just stand around and watch the two of you die because you’re too damned proud to apologize to each other. She’s sorry for what she did. She just mopes around that decrepit hole she calls home, so depressed she hardly moves.”

“Do you think I care?”

“I know you do. Look at you.” She gestured at him lying on the couch. “You have your freedom and you’ve cleared your name. Instead of being happy and going about your life, you’re sitting here half-dead. Shahara has a million credits and she hasn’t even gone shopping for a new pair of shoes. What does that tell you?”

“We’re both idiots.”

She made a sound of supreme disgust. “And then there’s Caillen, who sits around looking like he’s lost his best friend, because he
has
lost his best friend.”

“Don’t even try and defend him to me.”

She ground her teeth. “You three are so stubborn. I ought to lock all of you in a room and not let you out until you settle this.”

She sat quietly for a little while before she spoke again. “You need to understand something about my family. Me and Tessa are the screw-ups.”

He gave her an icy, no-duh stare.

She ignored it. “What you don’t know is how it felt to watch your brother and sister drop out of school to support you. Caillen idolizes Shahara. Since the day she got down on her hands and knees and started scrubbing toilets to keep food on the table, he’s worshiped everything about her. We all have. No matter how hard things got, it was always Shahara who was strong. Shahara who never complained or scolded. She did what she had to for us, and suffered in silence.”

“Yeah, she
is
good at that.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.” Kasen rubbed her hands over her pants legs. “Anyway, Caillen was the one who found her after she’d been raped. You don’t know what it’s like to see someone you love broken like she was that night.”

Syn flinched as he thought about Talia. He knew exactly what it was like to watch someone he loved be broken, day by day, until there was nothing left but a fractured shell.

Unaware of how her words affected him, she continued. “She was never the same after that. She quit laughing and smiling and joking around. All she did for weeks afterward was sit in a chair and cry.”

“Until she killed him.”

She nodded. “That got her out of her chair, but it didn’t restore what she’d lost. She would never talk about what had happened. She was so weakened and scared that she even let Caillen drop out of school and help out. Something she would never have allowed before the attack. And since the day he found her half-dead from Gaelin’s beating, he wasn’t the same, either. He became obsessed with protecting her.”

Kasen gave him a hard stare. “When Caillen saw you two together, it killed him. He’s always been terrified of losing one of us, especially Shahara. She’s the backbone of our entire family. Anytime something goes wrong, it’s always Shahara who finds a solution. When we need someone to listen to us, or help us in any way, it’s Shahara we run to. He was afraid you’d hurt her, and you have.”

She rose and looked down at him. “I can understand why you and Shahara feel the way you do about each other, but don’t hold Caillen accountable for what he said. You mean the universe to him. You’re the best friend he’s ever had.”

“Big whoop.”

“Fine.” She held her hands up in defeat. “Whatever. I don’t care what the three of you do anymore. I’m sick of it.” She headed for the door. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

And with that, she was gone.

But Nykyrian remained.

“What?” Syn snapped at him.

“I know what you feel right now.”

“No, Kip, you don’t. You have no idea what it feels like to be betrayed like I was.”

His expression held its usual stoicism. “After Kiara’s
father almost killed me and I barely survived, I went to see her. Like you and Shahara, we were both hurting and we both said things we shouldn’t have.”

Syn curled his lip in disgust. “What has marriage done to you? Turned you into a woman? In case you missed it, we don’t share stuff like this. So can I have my surly, nasty assassin friend back?”

Nykyrian grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him up until their gazes were locked.

Well, the nasty assassin was definitely back.

“All right, asshole. You want to wallow, wallow. It’s no sweat off my balls if you crawl inside a bottle and pickle yourself solid. I’ve got other things to think about now. But let me remind you of something a good friend once said to me when I was being eaten alive by feelings I didn’t understand. ‘Even when my marriage was bad, it was good.’ I had no real idea what you meant that night, but now I do and I’m grateful to the gods I can finally believe in that I took a chance on something that almost killed me. The life I have now . . . no, the
woman
I have now is worth every rotten moment of my worthless existence that led me to her door, and I would relive it all to have one kiss from her lips. You’re the one who told me that the right woman was a shelter from the storm.”