Grace Goodwin - Ascension Saga - 6

“Yes. Your daughter will not fare well in our care, I’m afraid.”

I glanced up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“She was a traitor who seduced Thordis Jax into bringing her into his bed and his home where she poisoned his parents. Her plan was to set up his well-respected family to fall and it worked. She will answer for her crimes, Celene.”

Faith, poison people? Maybe with her horrible cooking. People would go hungry because it was always burnt, but kill them? Impossible. And so I said as much.

“She did not poison anyone.”

A new voice came from the doorway and the scar-faced man stepped aside. It grated on my nerves even more now than it had when we were both young. My cousin, Lord Wyse, now leader of the Optimus unit, if his clothing was any indication, stood before me with the same emotionless face I remembered. “Faith Jones Herakles is a traitor and a murderer, Celene. I will make sure to send her your regards.”

“No!” I didn’t want her to worry about me if she were held by the Optimus unit. She had enough on her mind as it was.

The cleric rose and walked out the door, leaving me with my cousin.

“I should have tried harder to kill you, Celene. You’re like a needle in my boot, a constant irritation.”

“You haven’t changed, Coburt. Still sneaking around in the shadows like a snake.” We’d grown up together. While he was a decade older, royal circles were small.

“Where is Destiny?” he asked.

I froze. Shit. How did he know Destiny’s name? I shook my head and stared at the wall, giving him nothing. If he didn’t know where she was, then she was still safe.

“I had men on Earth, Celene. They asked around. I know you have three daughters. I know Faith and Destiny are half-human twins. I know your pathetic human male is hiding from your own government, waiting for word from you.”

“Don’t you touch him, Coburt, or I will send you to the depths of the lowest hells myself,” I hissed, my hands clenched in my lap. He had lived with me for over twenty-five years, knew Aleran ways, at least tangentially. But he was still an Earthling.

His laugh was not reassuring. “As of an hour ago, you are no longer my problem.”

The door slid closed behind him.

What the hell did that mean?

I dropped onto my side on the thin cot, pulling the blanket up over me.

Damn him.

Damn him to hell.

I hoped my daughters killed him slowly.

And they would succeed. Coburt Wyse would die.

I simply could not think of anything else.

Thordis Jax, Jax Mountain Lodge

The Aleran male I had bound to the chair bled, not from any torture or abuse he’d suffered at my hands, but from his attempts to claw his way through the metal binding cuffs that held him. He’d been here for a day and had told me nothing.

That was about to change.

“Where is the queen?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he spit out. “Release me. You’ll rot in the Optimus unit’s dungeons for this. Let me go. I demand it.” Of course he did.

“Yet you are the one tied up. This isn’t a dungeon,” I glanced around the servants’ room on the top floor of the lodge. We only used the retreat a few weeks a year and there were only two servants who remained year round. They lived in a small house elsewhere on the property. This room was sparse. A bed, a table and chair. A chair that the bastard was tied to now. On the wall behind me was a vid display, recording everything that was happening. He glanced up often, saw himself on the screen.

“But I promise you, I will be ruthless with you if you don’t begin to talk.”

He was noble. Rich. A spoiled son of a wealthy family. And my mate’s distant cousin. I took a moment to think of the royal family tree. Queen Celene’s mother had one sister, Zetta. She had a son, Coburt, now known as Lord Wyse. Lord Wyse and his mate had Radella. When Queen Celene disappeared decades ago, Radella moved into the palace with her mate, Danoth. A few years later, they had a son. Pawl. The little fucker before me.

It seemed the evil didn’t fall too far from the tree, for I’d grown to hate Pawl’s grandfather, Lord Wyse, Inspector Optimi of the Optimus unit, who I now suspected of trying not just to arrest and interrogate my mate but murder her in cold blood. My mother, with her dying breath, had given him up.

He was my enemy. An enemy to all Alera, and yet he held one of the most powerful positions in the land.

He would kill Faith—and her sisters—if given the chance. He’d had several now, and fortunately, they had not been successful.

My purpose in life changed the moment my mother confessed her sins and then died in my arms. My one goal now was to make sure Faith was safe. My mother had tried to poison my mate, the female I loved beyond all thought or reason, and then confessed her sins as my father lay dead in Faith’s stead.

I’d lost everything in a matter of moments. My family. My honor. The wealth and status of the Jax family would be stripped from us. Even if I did not spend the rest of my life rotting in a prison cell, I would be a disgrace to the entire planet. The only Jax who remained alive, to carry the burden of my mother’s sins. All of Alera would judge me for my bloodline, if not for my deeds.

And Faith. Fuck, my heart ached for my mate. My cock longed to sink into her warmth, to fill her again with my seed as she came, milking it from my balls. She deserved more than just a skilled fuck and a male whose soul was not stained by such a terrible legacy. And children who wouldn’t be tainted. She was a fucking princess. While she was not direct heir to the throne—Trinity would become queen after their mother—she was royal through and through.

I was not worthy of Faith. But I could protect her. And that is what I would do—at all costs. If that meant torture and murder of the lying bastard before me—her fucking cousin—then I would bury my disgust and do what was necessary. I was not a killer, I was a noble, a man of business and law.

But for Faith, exceptions must be made. I didn’t give a shit if Pawl’s murder was recorded for the queen’s guard to discover. My life was over without her. As long as she was safe, nothing mattered.

“Where is Queen Celene?” I sat in a chair facing the young idiot, watching his gaze as he looked at me with the eyes of a liar and a cheat. They narrowed as I reclined in my chair, arms crossed, completely at ease as far as he could see. Inside, I seethed with the need to rip his head from his shoulders and unleash the pain within me as violence against my enemies.

That didn’t work well when one of those enemies was my own mother.

Fuck me. Pawl may be the grandson of a traitor, but I was the son of one as well.

“I told you, I don’t know,” he repeated. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Lies. Lies. Lies. I sighed and lifted a comm sphere from my pocket. Holding it into the air, I activated the holographic images I had stored there for this purpose and made sure to hold it up to be clearly within line of sight of the recording device on the wall.

As soon as I had walked away from Faith I’d made the call to Nix to ensure her safety. But the moment I watched the assassin’s arrival and stepped foot off Jax property, I’d been on a mission. Get to the truth, to the mastermind. My mother, while guilty, had been a pawn. Just like Zel. I’d known where to go, to dig. I’d paid some very large bribes to some lower level members of the Optimus unit who didn’t care for Lord Wyse’s style of leadership, but I’d finally found what I needed—Lord Wyse’s orders to Pawl, giving him instructions just a few weeks ago to leave the planet and go where?