He was prepared to tell her. Whatever she asked he would answer because she needed to know. All the cards needed to be on the table at this point because, as it turned out, she was an integral part in a very dangerous game. Temptra didn’t seem like the type to keep anyone in her employ, as witnessed by the way she’d ripped Robles’s throat out. Vertis was probably on his way to the same end before they intervened. Now the guy was sitting tight in a magically locked steel-enclosed office at the Towers. He’d remain there until this was over and Theo figured out what he wanted to do with him.
Even if Ravyn were to do what Temptra wanted, there was no guarantee she would live. And yeah, Steele had entertained that idea as he’d sat there in that meeting while everyone gave information and made summations, planning what would happen without considering the most important thing to him—Ravyn’s life.
“From the time I was four years old, because that’s as far back as I can remember, my father has always said I was nothing and I’d never be anything.”
She was talking so quietly Steele almost didn’t hear her. He’d been standing a few feet away, still leaning against the doorjamb as she’d walked farther into the bedroom, but all he had to do was look up and he could see her lips moving.
“I could never figure it out,” she said as she plopped down onto the bed, shaking her head. “It was just me and him. My mother died giving me life. But he hated me from the start. I used to think maybe it was because I wasn’t a boy, or maybe he just loved my mother so much that I was a constant reminder that she wasn’t coming back.” She dropped her head, shaking it from side to side before looking straight ahead.
“But it wasn’t that at all. He knew what I was or what I’d come from.”
“You don’t know that,” Steele said, hating that she was talking like her father may have been right about her. “Whatever he felt for or about you was his, Ravyn. You had nothing to do with it and you shouldn’t sit here trying to figure it out now.”
“Shouldn’t I?” She turned to look at him then. “Shouldn’t I know how I came to be and what price people had to pay for me being here? My mother died, maybe because of what I was.”
“Stop talking like you’re some kind of bad seed. That’s not what Enes said.”
“She said my mother was a descendant of a witch from Africa—a crazy witch, to be exact. Considering the one we came face-to-face with a few hours ago, I’d say that wasn’t a good thing.”
“Temptra’s not a good thing. That has nothing to do with you.” He was grateful the sweatpants had pockets and he stuck his hands in them because he wanted desperately to go to her and touch her. To hold her in his arms and promise her that everything was going to be alright, but he knew that was the last thing she needed right now.
Ravyn was a lot like him in that regard. She needed to work through her mad on her own first, before she could really listen or accept help from anyone else. He was giving her the space she needed at the moment, but he didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep from going to her.
“You can be so calm about this because you’re one of them,” she said. “I mean, you’re something other than human. You were born this way and you learned to be exactly what you are. I didn’t get that chance, Steele! Nobody gave me the chance to be whatever it is I’m supposed to be and that sucks!”
She was right, it did suck. He’d been born a Noble Drakon and had been trained to fight alongside the warriors of the throne keeping the peace on the Far Realm, but circumstances moved him from his home to a place where they became enemies to their own kind and before he knew it, he was changing into something he hadn’t prepared to be—a killer.
“You can handle this, Ravyn. You’ve proven you’re strong and resilient. You’re a leader that people have come to depend on. You can do whatever is required of you and do it well,” he told her, the same words his mother had told him after Opal’s death.
They’d seemed hollow to him at the time, but tonight they were breathing new life into him, and hopefully into Ravyn, as well.
She let her head fall back on her shoulders and sighed heavily. “I don’t know. I just...what you just did.” Her words halted as she lifted her head and stared in his direction once more. “Is that how you got into Safeside the other night? You just appeared there, didn’t you? That’s why you weren’t on any of the security cameras. But Cree knew. He said he could sense that somebody had been there.”
“It’s called fading. All Drakon can imagine themselves in a space and then appear there.”
“Nobody else can do it but Drakon?”
He stood up straight and slid his hands out of his pockets before taking a step toward her. “Upper level vampires do what they call dematerialize. It’s when their molecules disintegrate and reform in another location.”
“Could Temptra have done it? Is that how she got Cree? Or did I lead this evil to my best friend?”
“I don’t know specifically what power Temptra has. But the vampires who can dematerialize can’t do it for long distances. Drakon can fade from one realm to the other.”
“Realms? They’re like different worlds?”
“Yes.” He was close enough now that he could simply extend his arm and his fingers would touch her skin, but he didn’t. “The Far Realm where
