Born of Legend (76 page)

When it came to dealing with her, whether in politics or life, one was always better off speaking with bold honesty than trying to mislead or couch the truth. That was the only trait she shared with Jullien's father.

“It's a shame we lost that little prick,” she said as she daintily picked at her food. “Just when he could have actually been of use to us.… I swear, I think he died just to spite me. It's something that half-human bastard would have done.”

“Indeed.”

“Are you absolutely sure he's dead?”

Nyran shrugged. “There have been no transmissions from his chip. Given where I planted it, he'd have to be dead for it not to transmit. There's no way he could have found it or removed it. He's not
that
smart.”

She narrowed her white gaze on Nyran. “Then have you made any more progress on our other mongrel infestation?”

“Almost. Unfortunately, that hybrid bastard is extremely paranoid and well trained. As is Zamir. I can't get near his bitch or their children. Between the Andarions, Triosans, Gourans, and Sentella, I have no viable access. It would take an act of war and a bombing run to get to them. The one shot we had, Jullien ruined before he died. They've now doubled the security and locked down the palace so that no civs are allowed in, at all, until after she's had this new litter of brats. It'd take us a year to get another operative inside.”

“Start working on it.”

“Will do,
mu tadara.
” He took a bite of his steak. “I do have some good news, though.…”

She gave him a bored, nut-shriveling stare. “What? You want me to drag it out of you? Or reward you because you think you deserve something for managing some form of minor competency for once in your worthless, pathetic excuse of a life?”

Jullien took his drink from the waiter and tipped him as he choked on her vicious words.
Great Kadora, I have not missed being under that bitch's blistering tongue.

At all.

Sadly, though, she was in a good mood. This was her better side while dealing with the family she actually liked. And it was far kinder than anything she'd ever said to him whenever he'd been forced to endure meals with her.

In retrospect, Jullien couldn't fathom how he'd ever managed to get a bite down his throat to become fat in the first place. But then, he knew. His eating disorder had taken place during midnight binges, when the staff was cleaning up and preparing for the morning, and everyone else was either asleep or off screwing whatever hapless creature had caught their fancy.

With a temporary reprieve from his family's blistering ridicule, he'd plowed through the day's leftovers, much to the dismayed horror of their head cook, who hadn't dared to stop him. Meanwhile, the rest of the staff had been even more terrified that his appetite would spread from the food to them, and that one of them would find themselves as his next course.

But he wasn't his family. He only voluntarily mauled pastries and pot roasts. Never the sanctity of another person's personal space or body.

Nyran mustered a pained smile for his fallen queen. “I finally found what you've wanted most.”

“What? Your missing set of testicles? I do wish you'd find them soon, as I grow weary of having the only set in our entire family.”

Wisely ignoring her causticity, Nyran cleared his throat as he rudely snapped his fingers and signaled one of their bodyguards to step forward with a large, ornate, inlaid wooden case. A human might mistake it for a musical instrument of some kind.

Jullien, however, knew that the handcrafted cherrywood case that shone like a gem in the dim light contained an Andarion Warsword. Unlike the battle swords and blasters other species carried, Andarion Warswords couldn't be bought in a store. They were sacred objects that had to be commissioned, and they cost as much as a legacy, because that was exactly what they were.

One didn't simply walk in and buy an Andarion Warsword. You earned it.

By blood, valor, or inheritance.

Through families, the swords, as with male wedding rings and lineage symbols, were the sacred property of the females, and it was their utmost duty to protect and watch over them. They were the sole owners and keepers of the swords and lineages, and only the family's matriarch could decide which male had earned the honor and right to carry it in his lifetime and represent their unified family as its public voice.

Her choice. She could remove it from the warrior who held it at any time. For any reason. And pass it to another male of her blood lineage she deemed more worthy.

More rarely, Warswords were given by the Andarion tadara or tadar as rewards for high honors and offices, or for acts of great valor. That was how most families had originally come into possession of theirs, and why they treasured them as family legacies. It was how the great War Hauks had earned theirs centuries ago, when their family had sacrificed their lives to keep their species safe from foreign invaders. And how Jullien's mother had earned hers—the day she'd killed her own brother to save her sister's life.

Then the last way to claim a Warsword was through right of combat. When one warrior defeated another in battle, it was his right to take the Warsword of the fallen. But it was a harsh thing to do. Because according to Yllam tradition, only those who were deemed worthy were allowed into the paradise lands of the gods to spend eternity in battle by Their glorious sides.

As such, Andarions, male and female, were to be buried in full battle armor with replica swords laid across their bodies and their hilts placed in their hands. To arrive on the other side without your armor or sword would condemn you instantly to Tophet. Therefore, the taking of a family's Warsword wasn't simply an act of victory. It was a way of humiliating your opponent and publicly saying you bore no respect for them or their family honor, and were damning them all to hell, for eternity.

Hence why they were originally named Warswords. To save their family honor and the soul of their loved ones, Andarions had fought entire wars over those weapons.

And Jullien winced in pain at the sight of the elegant, ancient sword.
Whose family have they slaughtered to extinction now…?

Nyran preened happily. “
Mu tadara,
I give you
y'anurikriega evest
Edon Samari.”

Jullien gaped.

“What?” Her hand actually trembled as she reached for it.

Nyran wiped daintily at his lips. “I had to kill a few to get it, but it's definitely the right one. I made sure of it.”

Gasping, she lifted the ancient weapon in her hands. With a loving touch Jullien had never seen her give a living being, she fondled the blade as if it were a lover come back from the grave to visit her. Several people near them gasped in dismay. A few of the smarter ones even ran for the door. But in true regal fashion, she ignored the crowd around her completely.

After all,
they
didn't matter. She was always the most important being in the universe. Everyone else was merely an insignificant tool, nuisance, or target.

How glad he was that he hadn't inherited her way of viewing others.

In response to the panicking diners, the café manager stepped forward to tell Eriadne to put her weapon away.

Without a word, she angled it at him. And pressed the tip against his throat.

He withdrew instantly.

Ah yes,
that
was his grandmother. Little did the man know, he'd barely escaped a near-death experience.

But it did piss her off enough that she got up and, cradling the Warsword, headed for the nearest exit while leaving Nyran behind to pay her bill.

Also vintage Eriadne.

As she and her entourage passed by Jullien's outdoor alley table, he rose and followed them at a discreet distance. This actually was working out even better than his original plan. He could use that sword to his advantage.

And he planned on using it to slice her treacherous head off.

Her guards escorted her several blocks away, to an elegant hotel that had seen better days. Even so, it still held a certain faded dignity to it. And it was a lot better than the squalor she'd forced Jullien to endure in his exile. While she would no doubt argue, she wasn't hurting at all in her fallen grace.

With his new powers, Jullien didn't have a difficult time slipping past the lax security guards—who were probably hoping someone would knife their charge and liberate them from her acerbic tongue—through the hotel, and into Eriadne's dimly lit suite of rooms.

It was as coldly sterile as the female who lived here. Nothing out of place.

Eriadne reverently knelt before the antique sofa and returned the sword to its case, but she didn't close it. Rather, she continued to trace the engraving of the hilt.

In that moment, Jullien would kill to know her thoughts. If she remembered his grandfather …

Was she even capable of regret?

With that question came a violent flashback of when he was seven … to the day he'd told her that he wanted to leave Andaria and live with his father.

Jullien had been in the palace courtyard, clutching one of Nykyrian's action figures—which he'd found lurking in his own closet, where his brother must have dropped it during a play session—and trying his best not to cry over it. Andarion tahrs didn't cry. They held their emotions in. Their heads high. They never let anyone know when they suffered.

But the pain inside him was more than he could bear at his young age. He missed his brother so much. Every single minute of every single day.

Instead of getting easier, every day without Nyk was harder. More miserable. Longer and more grueling.

And he was bitterly alone. Haunted with a soul-deep sorrow he dared not express to anyone. Because their own grandmother had murdered the better part of them.

His breathing ragged, he didn't know what to do. He had no one he dared confide in. No one to even talk to.

“Why did you leave me, brother?” he'd whispered to the doll, wanting to hate Nykyrian for abandoning him to this life. They were twins. They weren't supposed to be separated. Not for anything.

And on that fateful day when Nykyrian had headed off to school, Jullien had begged his brother not to go without him.

Nyk had laughed in his face.
“I don't want to stay here. Study harder and stop being so stupid, Julie, and maybe you'll get out one day, too.”

“What are you doing!”

Jullien had gasped at the sound of his mother's furious growl. Eyes wide, he turned to see her descending on him like some vengeful
kybbyk
out for his blood. He'd forgotten that her room, like his, looked out onto the courtyard. Mostly because she never left her room.

Her face flushed by anger, she snatched the toy from his hand. “This isn't yours!”

“I know.”

Tears had streamed down her face as she looked from the toy to him and rage contorted her beautiful features. “Is this why you killed my baby? You wanted his things?”

Horrified at the accusation, Jullien had gasped. “W-wha—? No! How could you think that?”

Hysteria had overtaken her then as she grabbed him and started slapping and hitting him. “It is, isn't it? Admit it! You killed him because you wanted to replace him. You wanted to be heir! You're just like the rest of them! Selfish! Ruthless! Monster! You have no feelings for anyone but yourself!”

Covering his head, Jullien had been too stunned to answer. He'd tried to escape her wrath, but in spite of her madness, she was a fully trained, decorated warrior and he was just a frightened boy.

By the time Tylie had finally pulled his mother off him to calm her, his lip had been busted and his nose bleeding.

His entire body shaking, Jullien pushed himself to his feet and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.

Tylie had sneered at him. “What did you do?”

Gaping, he'd stared dumbfounded at the question as his mother showed Tylie the toy and sobbed about Nykyrian.

“He killed my baby!”

“I know, Cairie. Shhh. It'll be all right.”

Jullien had felt his own tears stinging his eyes as he watched Tylie hand his mother off to her nurse for care. When he went to get the toy from his aunt, Tylie had shoved him away.

“This belongs to your mother. Not
you
!”

Unshed tears choked him. “It's mine!” His mother had a room full of things Nykyrian had left behind for her to hold on to, but that toy was all he had left of his brother. It alone had been something they'd played with together.

Desperate to keep one precious memento for himself, he'd reached for it.

Tylie had slapped him for the effort. “You selfish little brat! I hope someday someone takes something from you that you love and gives you exactly what you deserve!” And with that, she'd stormed off.

“But it's mine,” Jullien had whispered as his tears finally came in a violent burst of sobs. He just wanted
one
thing of his brother's to hold in comfort.

Just one.

He'd rather have Nykyrian. He'd give anything, his own life, his soul—anything of his worthlessness—if he could have Nykyrian back for one heartbeat. But the gods were mean and uncaring.

Like everyone else, they'd abandoned him, too. And he hated them. He would always hate them for what they'd taken. So he cried like he'd never cried before.

“What is this?”

Jullien had opened his eyes to see his grandmother standing over him.

She curled her lip. “Are you
weeping
? Like a girl?”

Suddenly, he'd had enough of them all. He hated this place. Hated his mother and his aunt. This courtyard. That palace.

Most of all, he hated the bitch glaring down at him like he was garbage.

Sniffing, he stood to boldly face her. “I'm not living here anymore. I'm calling my father to come get me.”