Cassidy. His naïve, innocent Cassidy had deluded him into believing that she was different from anyone else he’d ever known. Artless, guileless, steadfast. Milena’s opposite, without even a trace of Rowena’s bitterness or Quentin’s blithe irresponsibility. Someone with whom he might relax his control for an hour, or a day. Someone impervious to treachery.
He would never have believed her capable of this. He had left for a few weeks, and even- that was too long to hold her devotion. She knew what Rowena meant to the Cause. She had known from the start that the Cause was his life.
And she asked for his understanding.
He felt his way to Rowena’s bed and curled his fingers around the carved bedpost, pressing until he felt the designs imprinted on his flesh. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Yes.” No apology. “I know. But—”
“Where has she gone?”
“To a place where she can live her own life,” Cassidy said, and he wondered distantly how she could speak so calmly of disaster. Of the undoing of his careful plans, the trust given him by Tiberius so many years ago.
And the destruction of his hope. The stupid, gullible hope that Cassidy was what Milena could never be: the other half of himself.
His… love.
He released the bedpost and turned toward her again. “You will tell me where she’s gone,” he said in a voice bereft of expression. “I’ll bring her back.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I promised Rowena. She has a right to find her own happiness, just as I have. With you.”
The irony of her words filled him with scathing amusement. “You should have given more consideration to your happiness before you helped her. Do you think you can withstand my will if I choose to use it?”
“But you won’t,” she said softly. “I know you won’t.”
Was she so certain of him—so sure he’d accept her faithlessness simply because he’d married her? Because they’d shared a bed and a few hours of passion?
Milena had been that sure of him, confident that he’d never open his eyes to her infidelity or take action against her, no matter how flagrant her licendousness. She’d used his love for her against him time and again, and laughed at his metaphorical blindness.
How she must have laughed, even from beyond the grave, when metaphor became reality and plunged the earl of Greyburn into perpetual darkness.
But he’d learned to adapt. His other senses had grown keener, his intuition sharper. In all but one respect.
His strongest defenses had not been enough to keep Cassidy from invading his heart. And breaking it all over again.
What a fool he had been to give her the power to hurt him.
The lightless void behind his eyes seemed to take on colors he still remembered, scarlet flame and blood red that pulsed to the rhythm of unreasoning rage—rage to drive out the pain. He grasped her wrist.
“You were happy with me,” he snarled mockingly. “Do you know why I married you? Because we’re both useless to the Cause and the werewolf blood. You cannot Change, and I could not waste Quentin’s blood on marriage to such as you. I am sterile. I took responsibility for you, and in all honor I could not disown you when you proved more human than loup-garou. What more convenient solution than that we should marry?”
He felt shock run through her body. “But… in the wood…” she stammered. “When you came after me and Quentin…”
He knew what he was doing to her, doing to himself. He wanted her to feel his hurt, even as he was deeply ashamed of his weakness. Contradictory emotions tore him apart, and he couldn’t stop the words of rage and pain that burst from him like fatal venom.
“I wanted you,” he said. “Yes, Cassidy, I desired your young, untouched body. You were eager and willing and ripe for the plucking. As my wife, you would be mine to bed whenever I wished, all proprieties satisfied. Surely you didn’t think it had anything to do with love?”
The blow left Cassidy breathless and shattered, as if Braden had struck her to the ground with fists rather than words.