J. Ward - Lover Avenged

“All right, then.”

Ehlena walked Lusie out and then came back to the lawyer. “Will you excuse me a minute?”

“Take your time.”

“Would you…ah, like something to drink? Coffee?” She hoped he said no, as the best she could offer him was a mug, and he looked like the kind of guy who was more familiar with Limoges teacups.

“I’m fine, but thank you.” His smile was genuine and not sexual in the slightest. Then again, no doubt he only went for the kind of aristocratic female she might have been if finances were different.

Finances…and other things.

“I’ll be right back. Please have a seat.” Although those precision-pressed slacks of his might well rebel if he tried to take a load off on one of their grotty little chairs.

Down in her room, she went under her bed and got her lockbox out. Carrying it upstairs, she was numb, just totally fried from the drama that had been dropping around her life like flaming airplanes falling from the sky. Christ, the fact that a lawyer had turned up on her doorstop looking for lost heirs seemed…ho-hum. Whatever. And she wasn’t getting her hopes up at all. With the way things had been going, this “golden opportunity” was going to go in the direction everything else had lately.

Right into the shitter.

Back upstairs, she put the lockbox on the table. “I’ve got everything in here.”

When she sat down, Saxton did as well, putting his briefcase on the pitted floor and focusing his gray eyes on the box. After putting in the combination, she flipped open the heavy top and took out a creamy business-size envelope and three rolled parchments, each of which had streaming satin ribbons flowing from their coiled insides.

“This is the incompetency paper,” she said, opening the envelope and taking out a document.

After he looked the missive over and nodded, she unveiled her father’s bloodline certificate, that illustrated a family tree in lovely, flowing black ink. At the bottom, the ribbons in yellow and powder blue and deep red were affixed with a black wax seal bearing the crest of her father’s father’s father.

Saxton got his briefcase, flipped it open, and took out a set of jeweler’s glasses, sliding their weight onto his face and peering over every inch of the parchment.

“This is authentic,” he pronounced. “The others?”

“My mother and myself.” She unrolled each one and he did the same inspection.

When he was finished, he sat back in the chair and removed the specs. “May I look over the incompetency papers again?”

She passed them to him and he read, a frown tightening the space between his perfectly arched brows. “What is the precise medical situation with your father, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“He suffers from schizophrenia. He’s very ill and needs round-the-clock care, to be honest.”

Saxton’s eyes traveled slowly around the kitchen, noting the stain on the floor and the aluminum foil over the windows and the old, on-their-last-legs appliances. “Are you employed?”

Ehlena stiffened. “I don’t see why that’s relevant.”

“Sorry. You’re absolutely correct. It’s just…” He opened his briefcase again and took out a fifty-page bound document and a spreadsheet. “Once I certify you and your father as Montrag’s next of kin-and based on those parchments I’m prepared to do that-you’re never going to have to worry about money again.”

He turned the document and the legal-size spreadsheet toward her and took a gold pen out of his breast pocket. “Your net worth is now substantial.”

With the nib of his pen, Saxton pointed to the final number in the lower right-hand corner of the sheet.

Ehlena glanced down. Blinked.

Then bent all the way over the table, until her eyes were no more than three inches away from the pen tip and the paper and…that number.

“Is that…How many digits am I looking at?” she whispered.

“That would be eight to the left of the decimal point.”

“And it starts with a three?”

“Yes. There is an estate as well. In Connecticut. You can move in anytime you want after I finish the certification papers, all of which I’ll draw up during the day and pass immediately on to the king for his approval.” He sat back. “Legally, the money and real estate and personal effects, including the art and antiques and the cars, will be your father’s until he passes unto the Fade. But with your conservatorship paper, you will be in charge of everything for his benefit. I’m assuming you’re his heir vis-à-vis his will?”

“Ah…I’m sorry, what was the question?”

Saxton smiled gently. “Does your father have a will? Are you in it?”

“No…no, he doesn’t. We don’t have any assets anymore.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No. It’s just me. Well, him and me since Mahmen died.”

“How would you like me to draw up a will for him in your favor? If your father dies intestate, it will all go to you anyway, but if we have that in place, it makes things easier for whatever solicitor you use, because you won’t have to get the king’s signature on the transfer of assets.”

“That would be…Wait, you’re expensive, right? I don’t think we can-”

“You can afford me.” He tapped the spreadsheet with his pen again. “Trust me.”

In the long, dark hours after Wrath had lost his vision, he fell down the stairs-in front of everyone who had gathered in the dining room for Last Meal. The banana-peel move took him ass-over-headache all the way down to the mosaic floor of the foyer.

The only way it could have been more of a loser move was if he bled all over himself.

Oh…wait. As he put his hand up to his hair to push the shit back, he felt something wet and knew it wasn’t because he was drooling.

“Wrath!”

“My brother-”

“What the fuck-”

“Holy-”

Beth was the first of the cast of thousands to get to him, her hands going to his shoulders as warm blood dripped down his nose.

Other hands reached him through the darkness, the hands of his brothers, the hands of the shellans in the house, all gentle, worried, compassionate hands.

In a furious punch, he shoved them all away and tried to get to his feet. Without any orientation to ground him, though, he ended up with one shitkicker up on the last stair-which pitched him wildly off balance. Grabbing for the handrail, he somehow managed to get his boots level and shuffled backward, unsure whether he was heading toward the front door or the billiards room or the library or the dining room. He was utterly lost in a space he knew very well.

“I’m okay,” he barked. “I’m all right.”

Everyone went silent around him, his commanding voice unmitigated by his blindness, his authority as king unassailable even though he couldn’t see a fucking thing-

His back slammed against a wall and a crystal sconce above him twinkled from the impact, the delicate noise rising up into all the quiet.

Jesus…Christ. He couldn’t go on like this, bumper-car-ing around, slamming into things, falling down. But it wasn’t like he got a vote.

Ever since his lights had gone out, he’d been waiting for his eyes to start working again. As time passed, though, and Havers had no concrete answers, and Doc Jane was mystified, what he knew to be the truth in his heart started to make its way up to his brain: This darkness he found himself in was the new earth upon which he strode.

Or fell all over, as the case was.

As the sconce stilled above his head, every part of him was screaming, and he prayed that no one, even Beth, tried to touch him or talk to him or tell him everything was going to be all right.

It wasn’t going to be all right ever again. He wasn’t getting his vision back, no matter what the doctors might try to do to him, no matter how many times he fed, no matter how often he rested or how well he looked after himself. For shit’s sake, even before V had laid out what he had foreseen, Wrath knew this was coming: His sight had been declining over the centuries, the acuity washing out gradually over time. And he’d been getting the headaches for years, with increasing severity over the last twelve months.