Cass wanted to be the one to reach out and hold him, to wrap her arms around his strong shoulders and ask him to tell her about the pain he was holding caged in his heart.
All this time around her, he had looked strong, almost invincible, even when pain had shone in his eyes. Now, he looked so vulnerable, and she couldn’t bear it.
“Is she waiting for you back home?” she murmured.
“No.” A shaky inward breath. “Yes.”
Which was it?
She looked at the ice littered around his feet and it dawned on her. His home was the Underworld. The woman was dead. That was why she was there, waiting for him still.
Her experience of consoling people boiled down to taking care of Mari when they had lost Eric, and Eric when Mari’s mother had died during childbirth. She wasn’t sure she had done a good job on either of those occasions. She wanted to console Daimon, but feared she would only make things worse.
That fear held her back, had her keeping her distance when all she really wanted to do was hold him.
She looked down at the melting ice. Had Daimon’s woman died in childbirth?
“She was beautiful.” Cass wasn’t sure whether hearing that from her would make him feel better or worse.
He was silent for so long that she was on the verge of leaving him alone when he finally spoke.
“It wasn’t a true representation of her.”
Maybe the woman hadn’t been so beautiful.
He lifted his head, his pale eyes hollow and cold, bleak and edged with darkness. “She wasn’t showing when daemons killed her and our unborn child.”
Before she could ask about it, before she could even think to reach for his hand to comfort him, he was gone, only swirling black smoke left behind.
Twin emotions filled her heart. Jealousy that he had loved this woman and still mourned her, clearly wished she was still alive and he’d had the family they had been building together.
Sorrow that he had gone through something so terrible, still lived with the pain it had caused, allowing it to fester inside him.
Gravel crunched off to her right and she looked there.
The lights from the mansion threw Marek’s bulky figure into silhouette, stealing his features from her until he drew close enough that the slender moonlight revealed them to her.
“Keras wants to talk about potentially closing another gate.” His dark eyes slid to the lingering ribbons of smoke. “Where’s Daimon?”
“He left.” She meant to leave it at that, but then she blurted, “What happened to Daimon’s wife?”
Marek’s dark eyebrows knitted hard. “Wife? Daimon has never been married. There was Penelope. She was killed before Father sent us here. Why?”
She told herself not to say anything more.
Her mouth moved anyway. “I found him making ice sculptures, one of them was of her, I think. She was pregnant, right?”
Shock danced across Marek’s face. “Pregnant?”
She nodded and inwardly cursed. How many times tonight was she going to reveal things that were unknown or clearly a secret in this case? She needed to learn to watch her mouth.
“You never knew,” she said.
Marek shook his head. “None of us did. Daimon never told us. He’s never spoken about what happened. Penelope lived in the mortal world, and I knew he’d been seeing her, but nothing about his behaviour ever led me to believe things were serious between them. He would go and visit her from time to time, leaving weeks between each trip. Normally, it was when he grew bored of the females who regularly visited Father’s estate. I always thought he had just been mixing things up.”
Mixing things up? Was Marek right and Daimon hadn’t been serious about Penelope? Maybe his brother was wrong. Daimon had clearly loved this woman, mourned her still, and Cass had figured out Penelope was the reason he kept guarding his heart, refusing her advances. He had said his heart belonged to another.
“He never seemed serious about her?” Cass couldn’t stop that question from leaving her lips, need to know more about Daimon and this woman pushing her to discover all Marek knew about the two of them.
Marek shrugged. “Perhaps. Towards the end. Maybe in the month or so before her death.”
After Penelope must have told Daimon she was pregnant.
Someone called to Marek.
“I’ll make excuses for Daimon. Keep this between us?” Cass didn’t want the others discovering the things Daimon wanted to keep secret. It was his place to tell his brothers, not hers.
Marek nodded and went back inside.
Cass lingered on the bridge, her gaze lowering to the boulder where Daimon had sat. She replayed what she had seen, how he had looked at her.
This was the reason he took care of the children in Hong Kong. Another secret he kept from his brothers.
A shiver chased through her.
Beneath his frosty exterior, there was a warm heart, and it was broken—shattered just like the ice sculpture.
And all this time she had been pushing him, hadn’t taken his rejections seriously, had kept prodding and poking him and trying to tear down his defences, unable to believe there might be a reason other than the manifestation of his power behind why he didn’t want to get involved with her.
A reason that had been festering inside him all this time.
She straightened as resolve filled her, the need to make amends a driving force behind it.
She was going to help him come to terms with what had happened to the woman he loved and his unborn child, so one day he would finally be able to love again, to live again, without remorse or guilt.
Not for her sake, but for his.
She would be long gone by the time he was finally ready to take the leap and be with another woman. She could only hope that he would be happy at last.
That one of them could be happy.
She looked down at herself, sorrow and sickness washing through her, stirred by a wish that she cast aside before it could fully form, because it was impossible.
