Born of Legend (6 page)

Ushara hated how much those words made her ache for him. Worse? She hated the fact that she'd done that to him, at all. And here she'd thought she'd been hiding her distaste for his birthright and family. Apparently, she was as bad as everyone else, and just as quick to judge.

She swept her gaze over his long, lean body. Over his clean, shoddy clothes that were so old and torn, and yet he wore them with masculine swagger and wounded pride.

Only he could carry off something that shabby and still make it look sexy and lethal.

“When was the last time you slept in an actual bed?”

The fact he had to stop and consider it broke her heart. But not as much as the answer. “I don't know.”

“A month?”

He sighed before he answered. “Longer.… at least.”

She winced at his whispered words. And before she could stop herself, her sympathy spoke for her. “Then how about you come back with us?”

He scowled up at her. “Back where?”

“To our base. You can find work there. Safe housing where no one will hunt you. Do you have any skills?”

He gave her a cocky grin. “I'm particularly skilled at pissing off everyone around me. Quite exceptional at it, point of fact. Been known to do so by merely entering a room.”

She laughed. “Anything more marketable?”

“Yeah. Engineering and mechanics. If it has a motherboard, or electronics, I can run it, design it, or repair it.”

Impressive. If he wasn't lying. “We can always use those skills. Ever worked on ships?”

“Custom-built my first fighter from the ground up.”

She gaped at him. “Seriously?”

He slid his link into his pocket and gave her a bemused stare. “Given how many individuals passionately hate my guts, most of them very close relatives in line for my throne, you honestly think I'd trust anyone to touch something with mechanical moving parts and fuel injection systems that could horrendously explode with me trapped inside it, and it look like an easy accident where I'm burned beyond all recognition? Really?”

“Paranoid much?”

With an arrogant arch of his brow, he snorted derisively. “Second most hated being on all of Andaria. Most hated prince in the
entire
history of the Triosan empire—that's not my boasting, they actually took polls and wrote articles about it. I won. Hands down. No contest. Ten years straight on Andaria. And let me reiterate that my own grandmother murdered my grandfather during a PMS hissy fit, the majority of her family, my twin brother when we were only five—or at least tried to, and my mother slaughtered a number of her own siblings, including my doppelgänger … Paranoia, insomnia, and an overly high degree of extreme flexibility and peripheral vision are the only reasons I'm still breathing. Go me.” His tone was drier than the Oksanan desert.

But it left her with one question. “What did you do to the Triosans that they would hate you so much?”

He sighed wearily. “I have the grave misfortunate of being born to an Andarion mother.”

Yeah, right. “Seriously, what did you do to them?”

“I have an Andarion birth mother,” he repeated in a slow, steady tone. “Seriously. They embrace Nykyrian because he looks like our father and somehow that allows them to see past his fangs. I have dark hair and favor no one they know. Just enough red in my eyes that it throws them. Somehow that makes all the difference to remind them that I'm Andarion, and therefore am unfit to be part of the Triosan royal family.”

“And your father?”

He lifted his head to pin her with an irritated smirk. “Is this my therapy session? Yes, Dr. Tavali, I have father issues. And mother issues. I didn't bond with either parent during my formative years. Brace yourself. I had no positive role models growing up, and therefore I react badly in most situations. Tend to act out in extreme, self-destructive ways. In short, I'm an abrasive, unlovable asshole with antisocial tendencies. It's all my fault that I ended up like this. I accept it fully. I don't blame my parents for how I turned out. There's no need. Since they weren't there during my childhood, I don't see how they're responsible for my adulthood. I'm the one who raised me and I sucked at it. Never could keep a pet for long either. They always bonded to someone else and left me. Even my pet fish jumped from their bowls to commit suicide rather than suffer my boorish company.”

Vasili opened the door and brought in another tray.

Instantly, Jullien's entire demeanor changed. And for the first time, she realized that he always buried his stern glower whenever Vasili was around. He softened his features to a much kinder expression. Brotherly and tolerant.

“I brought you some food,
Alte
 … J-J-Jullien?”

He smiled. “Jullien's fine. Thanks,
luden
. You shouldn't have troubled yourself.”

“No trouble. Do you like cookies?”

Jullien sat up. “Are you kidding? They're the best. You're going to share them with me, though, right?”

“Um, sure.” Vasili sat beside him and picked up a cookie from the tray.

Ushara took a moment to watch the two of them. Jullien was far kinder with Vasili than anyone else. Though there was still a trace of the regal tiziran in his movements, he was much more approachable.

“So are you interested in the job?” she asked, turning their conversation back to her offer.

Vasili glanced up with wide eyes. “Job?”

“I offered the tiziran work at the base.”

Jullien hesitated as he ate. Swallowing, he reached for his drink. “I have to be paid in hard notes or cronas. Nothing traceable. Same for housing.”

“Understood.”

Vasili blinked with a hopeful expression. “Please come work for us! You'll love it there!”

Jullien gave him an adorable grin. “Okay. I'll try it.”

“Good. Let me tell Gavin to change our course. You two stay out of trouble.” On her way out the door, Ushara didn't miss the sight of Jullien handing the last cookie off to Vasili for him to eat. Even though she knew Jullien was starving, he still gave it to her son who had no idea how ragged the male's clothes were. How long the tiziran had gone without anything to eat.

Mystified and touched by Jullien's unexpected kindness toward her child, she headed for the bridge to tell them.

While she expected some resistance from her cousin, the all-out anger from him was rather unwarranted.

“Are you out of your mind, Shara? Do you know he is?”

“I know.”

“No, I don't think you do.” Gavin pulled Jullien's warrant file up on the monitor.

“I already saw it.”

“Did you see
this
?” He showed her Jullien's Andarion criminal court records. And she had to admit, it was quite a lengthy file. “He's been in and out of lock-up since he was ten years old. Only reason he hasn't done time is his last name. Apparently, Mummy spent a lot of time pulling strings and dragging his entitled ass out of trouble.”

Ushara scrolled through the charges and Jullien's old mugshots. She barely recognized the young tiziran as the same grown male in her infirmary. Ignoring the fact that he'd been extremely overweight back then, his face was battered in most of them. Black eyes. Busted nose and lips. Scratches. His skin sallow, and eyes sunken. While he stood with an arrogant pride, the boy in those pictures appeared haunted, soul-weary, and bitterly angry.

And though he apparently had liked to brawl at a very early age, this was not the lethal, wary male who'd cut through trained killers while wounded to save her son.

As for the arrests … most were for fighting and public intoxication, but the rest were possession, destruction of public property, perjury, breaking-and-entering into government buildings, vandalism—he'd once defaced his grandmother's image on the capitol building at Eris—resisting arrest, misuse of public vehicles, indecency, and one charge for urinating on law enforcement equipment.
That
she could almost respect, depending on the events that had led up to it. “You know, your juvenile records are worse than this.”

“Yeah, but I didn't graduate to murder, treason, espionage, and kidnapping.”

She noticed Gavin made no mention of his own theft charges. But then, they
were
pirates.

Frowning, she read through the file until she saw the specifics of his current warrant.

Damn. Jullien had aided in the kidnapping of his sister-in-law. That was also part of his treason charge. He'd murdered a cousin and several Andarion guards while escaping custody. Had given out information on the former queen that had led to her arrest and overthrow so that his mother could take the throne, hence the rest of the treason and espionage charges. Ratted out some cousins named Merrell, Chrisen, and Nyran to the rebels and Sentella, and had helped another named Parisa escape. Then he'd set her up to be captured by the new regime.

Yeah, it was all rather bad. None of it made him particularly sympathetic or trustworthy.

Ushara winced as she saw that his aunt Tylie, as acting tadara, was the one who'd signed the orders for him to be arrested originally on Andaria and exiled from their territory, and that his grandmother was the one who'd sent the orders to The League with a request for an execution warrant and bounty. As well as the orders for his Outcast status.

But the form that made her sickest of all was the one his Triosan attorneys had filed on his behalf, requesting political asylum and protection from his father anywhere within the Triosan empire.

Anywhere
. Even on one of their colonial outposts.

One word, in bold red letters from his father's personal royal office, carrying the emperor's royal seal.

Denied.

Tears stung her throat as she tried to imagine how badly that had to have burned for his father to refuse any semblance of safety. There were more denials from other family members in other empires, including Kirovar. Not one single aunt, uncle, or cousin would allow him shelter.

No one.

She scrolled back to the pictures of Jullien as a battered child and remembered what he'd said to her about his parents not being there, and how they had failed to raise him.

No, his family hadn't spared him a moment of their cruelty. From the looks of it, he'd been in the center of their backbiting madness, and their uncaring depravity had been his normal everyday routine and diet. An unprotected child left to fend for himself, while no one gave a single shit about him at all.

“Are you safe from harm,
akam
?”

No wonder he'd been so adamant to ensure Vasili's welfare before he passed out. Why he'd given the last cookie to her son, even while he starved. Because he knew the cost of it all. How much it hurt to be alone in the universe, without friend or family. With no one willing to look out for you when you had no one else who cared.

And in that moment, her mind was set.

“Jullien stays.”

A solid tic started in Gavin's jaw. “Trajen will have a shit-fit when he hears of this. You'll be lucky if he doesn't strip your Canting over it.”

“I'll deal with Trajen.”

“And what are you going to do when that royal viper prick strikes us all down?”

“You're being ridiculous.”

“Am I? The entire history of our race has been written in the blood feuds of the Anatole family. Their insatiable quest for power and their willingness to cut the throat of anyone who got in their way. They chased us at blasterpoint to the farthest corners of the universe and now you dare bring one of them into our last place of refuge? Forget Trajen, it'll be the Fyrebloods who skin you alive for it.”

Now
that
 … that was a very real possibility.

And her own father would most likely be the one who led the lynch mob for her throat.

 

C
HAPTER
3

“You don't have to be afraid of me,
mi tana
,” Jullien said softly to the boy beside him. The kid was so nervous, he was practically shaking in his chair. He half expected him to wet his seat at any moment. “You know I'd never hurt you, right?”

Grimacing, Vasili scratched at his nose. “You're really gigantic. Are all darkhearts as big as you?”

Jullien cleared his throat at the innocent question. Darkheart was a nasty little dig against his breed that the humans had started using centuries ago. It stemmed from humanity's disdain and condemnation of Andarion culture. Because Andarions were a warrior species, they used to carve the hearts from their enemies and dry them out to keep as strung trophies for decoration in their homes and for their weapons. The process they used for it would turn the hearts black and leathery—hence the term darkhearts.

And once Eriadne had begun her Purging against the winged and blond Andarions, it became applied solely to his specific subspecies as a vile insult for them, meaning they were soulless and cruel.

However, the boy, unlike the others who used the term to demean his kind, meant no offense to him and Jullien didn't take any from it.

“I'm larger than a lot of Ixurianir, but there are some bigger than me. Yet that being said, none of us can breathe fire like the Pavakahir. So that gives you a distinct advantage over us, no matter how big we are.”

Vasili gasped. “You know about that?”

“The blond hair gives you away.”

“If you knew I was a Fyreblood, why did you help me? I thought all darkhearts hunted and killed us.”

Jullien handed him the last bit of cookie Vas had dropped. “Can I let you in on a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I have a fraternal twin brother. He has white-blond hair, just like yours.” At the mere mention and thought of his brother, grief and guilt racked him so hard that for a moment, it stole his breath. God, how he regretted much of his life. But nothing as much as he regretted what he'd done to his brother.