Obsidian: Retribution (Book 2)

Thirty Six: Different Temperaments

'My sons will kill me for what they need, for what they desire, and I will do the same to mine, to them. That,' Ranveer had said, 'is the blood that runs in my veins.'

Leandras wondered, if the man had killed both his traitorous sons with more pride than anger at the heart of it. 'Ranveer Borkhan is a man of principle and reason,' his mother had said. 'He would kill to set an example, stab you in the back over principle, and leave you behind if it's practical.'

'A cold, heartless man, then,' he'd concluded.

His mother had made no reply. She'd smiled a smile he didn't understand. A long, complicated history there, carried by a gesture so simple most people would have missed.

Not by him, however. Not by a son who had been looking for that history.

'What would you rather hear?' The man who might be his father had asked. 'That your mother killed your real father who'd used and abused her for twenty years, or that your real father was never here to begin with because he had other agendas more important than you?'

What, he'd asked himself a hundred times since then, would have been the less painful truth? Did it matter if he knew what happened when the end result wouldn't change?

It probably didn't, but dead bodies needed to be discovered before one stopped searching, and some questions needed answers before they were left behind. He wondered if he would live to find the answer after tonight. It was likely that he would survive, but guessing what Fate had in mind was like shooting at birds blindfolded with a bow you didn't know how to use. Death, like life, arrived with no warnings. If you were wise, you'd see time like sand in an unmeasured hourglass with one end open. His mother's last husband had, lest one forget, died relatively young in his sleep.

Which was why he was paying attention to Ranveer Borkhan when he should be thinking of the fight that lay ahead, while the man––not that he was surprised––might have already forgotten he was there.

"He won't notice you."

He turned to see his mother standing with her arms crossed over her chest, looking at the same man who seemed to be reading something in the wind from behind the empty wooden crates that shielded them. "I'm not––"

"Niroza used to say," she said, ignoring the vain attempt of a son trying to conceal his motives from the mother who'd raised him, "that the only things Ranveer Borkhan ever sees are his enemies and those who get in the way. If you want to live through a fight with him in it, expect to see only his back, or you will be dead by his blade."

"And yet people will follow him into battle, and die for him in battle."

There was no moon in the sky, not enough light for him to see, but he thought he saw her smiling. She said, "Some people are like fire, and most insects follow the light to die in its glory."

"Are we to be insects then, in this war to come?"

"To him, we all are."

If there had been bitterness in those words, he didn't hear it. He imagined her smiling, still, with the way she sounded. "It's a waste of time to look for a father figure in that man. Ranveer Borkhan leaves no room for friends or family, he never had."

Or lovers, he wanted to add. Didn't. Too much history there, too much pain, and lingering memories of betrayals. No room, she had said. But Ranveer Borkhan had brought a bodyguard who had been an old friend, and a woman who had cost him the throne.

Which meant there were rooms, after all, weren't there? For lovers, for friends, perhaps, also, for family. He didn't know why he wanted to look for a father in this man, but when you were given a chance to choose a father, and the last man had failed, and Ranveer Borkhan was who he was, and was also a choice...