“Can we get on with this already?” Jac puts in. “The night is waning.”
“Agreed.” Vaughn’s large fist bangs the table like a gavel, making all our glasses jump.
Soren’s voice is fluid as ever, but there is an uncompromising current running through it as he stares at Arwen. “Rhya has earned a seat at this table. She has as much right to know the history as any of us. If you do not want to relive it, sister, that is your liberty. Feel free to take your leave. But do not make the mistake of demanding she take hers.”
“You would have her stay?” Arwen sounds outraged. “Over me?”
His head cants to the side—a deceptively passive look, designed to mask feelings that are anything but. “You assume your role in my affairs carries more weight than Rhya’s. Why? Because you have been around for longer?” His eyes glitter. “Do not ask me to choose between you and her. You may not like the results.”
I bite my lip to contain a bleat of surprise.
Penn stiffens in his seat. A sound comes from low in his throat—one that makes me too nervous to look at him. If the displeased emotions rolling down the bond are any indication, he is not happy about Soren’s declaration of loyalty to me.
Nor is Arwen. She scowls mightily, but says no more.
“Right!” The glasses jump again with another fist-pound. “Now that that’s settled…” Vaughn’s bright green eyes find mine. “Our stepbrother is a monumental prick.”
“I’ve gathered that,” I say dryly.
His mouth tugs up in a half grin as he leans back in his chair. The wood groans under his weight. “He always had a dark side, even before he perverted himself with blood maegic. The difference is, now he’s a kingdom away. Out of sight, out of mind. But those of us who grew up with him here on these very grounds…” All levity flees his face. “It was like being raised alongside a snake. A poisonous one.”
Soren takes up the threads of the tale. “His mother, Duvessa, brought him from across the North Sea when she came to marry our father. She possessed great beauty and supposedly ensnared the king within the span of a single meeting. He did not even know she had a son until her ship arrived here in Hylios.”
“Doubt that came up in conversation when she was seducing a proposal out of old Manawydan,” Vaughn mutters. “Sorceress that she was, the old man never stood a chance.”
“We were children. We did not yet know how to recognize evil, even as it walked among us.” Soren runs a hand through his hair, mussing the strands. “We welcomed him in with open arms. One more sibling to swim and sail and spar with.”
Arwen’s scoff is sharp.
My apprehension mounts.
“From the first moment he stepped within these walls, Efnysien was unnaturally fixated on those of us with special abilities,”Soren goes on. “Be it Vaughn’s Titan strength, or Melité’s and Tethys’s siren song, or my and Arwen’s water powers. He coveted that which he did not have, for he was born with not a drop of fae blood flowing through his veins.”
“So far as we know,” Vaughn notes.
“Mmm. His bloodline, his parentage…if our father learned of it, he never revealed it to us.” Soren’s sigh is one of frustration. “And though I have ordered scouts across the sea several times over the years, they found no records of either him or his mother.”
“He watched us. That’s what I remember most.” Vaughn shudders. “Always creeping in shadows, peeking around corners. Those odd eyes peering from the darkness. Foul little lurker.”
“We all intrigued him, to an extent.” Soren’s voice turns flat, dispassionate. “But it was Arwen who fascinated him beyond reason.”
My eyes move to her automatically.
“Tell me there’s more gin,” she pleads, desperation in her voice.
Alaric slowly slides his arm along the back of her chair and tugs her closer. His voice is inaudible, but whatever he whispers in her ear makes some of the tension bleed out of her stiff shoulders.
Vaughn reaches under the table and produces a fresh bottle, twice the size of the last. “I always bring reinforcements.”
“You are my favorite sibling.” She manages a smile, but it lacks the saucy self-confidence I am accustomed to seeing.
“His fixation only grew as we got older,” Soren continues. The glass in his hand is gripped so tightly, I think it is in danger of shattering. “As we matured into adults, he made it clear he felt things for his stepsister that were…Not the way a brother should feel for his sister.”
“That’s putting it politely,” Vaughn says gruffly. “He attacked her. He came close to rap—”
“Hetried,” Arwen snarls. Her face is furious, but her eyes hold a weak sheen of silver. For the first time, I feel a trace of her maegic swell in the air—not nearly as strong as Soren’s, but there all the same. “I stabbed him through the hand before he could do more than tear my nightgown.”
My stomach turns to lead. All my previous assumptions about the bad blood between Efnysien and his siblings pales in comparison to this. Suddenly the gin in my glass does not feel strong enough to endure the rest of this evening.