Page 106 of Forsaking All Others

“Whose is it?”

For some reason, I decide against telling him.

“Just a woman. I think there’s something not quite human about her.”

“Well, if she’s Fae you’d feel a warning every time you tried to sip. Do you feel that?”

“No. I feel an urge to suck the fucking life out of her.”

“I see. That must be difficult. For you, I mean, given your vow.”

“It’s nigh-on impossible. I’ve tasted her twice now and each time it makes me want it all the more.”

“I don’t know about anything like that,” Falcon says quietly, thinking through his answer. “I’ll get Attracta to look through the royal records.”

“No. I don’t want your bastard sister anywhere near my house.”

“Jag, you can trust her.”

“I trust her as far as I trust her twin. The one who just shot me in the chest — twice.”

“You’ve been away a long time, brother,” he sighs. “My half-sister is part of my family now, a big part. She’s been very helpful in helping Suzume accept her role.”

“Be that as it may,” I snort at the idea of Falcon welcoming his bastard half-sister into his hearth and home, one who’d grown up in the kitchens of his castle as a second-class citizen, “I don’t want her help. As for Suzume, Wolf tells me you’re all about keeping her a virgin for life.”

“Ha, I wish,” he chuckles. “No, it’s not that. She’s been dating some low-life vampire boy, Ant, for a few years now, and no good has come from it. I want him out of her life.”

“She’s thirty, Falcon. She’s a grown woman, which means he’s hardly a boy.”

“She may be an adult, Jag, a young adult. But you won’t understand until you have children of your own. She’ll always be a baby to Angie and I — our baby bastard daughter.”

I scowl at the phone and consider a way to end the call without seeming too abrupt. We both know that at one stage I did think I had a bastard child, and so did he. In fact, he’d named the boy Tiger as a way of permanently shaming the child and I. Only it had turned out the kid was his, not mine. Not only had it been a lie that the baby was mine, but the whole basis of my relationship with his wife had also been a fabrication.

I say nothing as a wave of fury and regret washes over me.

“Anyway,” Falcon clears his throat, “I’ll get onto killing that Valentino whoever. If you want to send another blood sample I’ll be sure to keep better track of it this time.”

“No,” I turn the bullet over and over as I speak. “No, that won’t be necessary. There are only two challenges left, and then all this bullshit will go away.”

“Very well,” he says quietly, “and Jag, before you go.”

“Yes.”

“I’d be honoured to be your best man.”

77

Thorun, Sona and I stand on the balcony of our room in the small, tacky palace we’ve been housed in for this stretch of the Game, and stare at the coloured lights illuminating the pyramids.

We have three days in Egypt in this Pharaonic-glamour meets modern Mediterranean hotch-potch of a building.

I knew as soon as we stepped through the neoclassical façade with its portico supported by columns inspired by the Temple of Luxor, that this was going to be something else. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I expected better accommodation now that there are only nine of us, Aditi having come last in the baby challenge and one of the twins having drowned.

“I’ve always wanted to visit here,” I murmur. “I just never imagined I’d be staying in something like this.”

“I’ve read about it,” Thorun says quietly, “but the real thing is so much better.”

“I’ve visited several times,” Sona shrugs. “The men here have a penchant for glass tables and excrement.”