Born of Vengeance Read online

  "Same here. Thank the gods for my Gyron Force training." He narrowed his gaze on the new lean and trim Jullien, who looked like he could take the Iron Hammer in a Ring match, instead of his old foppish cousin who'd relied heavily on his servants for every task. Which probably had included wiping his nose and chin.

  This was definitely an improved version. "So how the hell have you survived?"

  To become a Tavali officer, no less. That had to be one hell of a story there.

  Jullien smirked. "Thank the gods for Gyron Force training. Had your uncle and father not been such bastards those times I visited, I wouldn't have lasted a week on my own."

  Bastien snorted. "Ain't it a bitch? Barnabas had no idea he was doing us a favor. One I pray I get to return to him by planting my Gyron axe in the center of his skull."

  "Gealrewe!" Jullien clapped him on the back as he finally smiled. "Well, since you know who I am, you want me to drop you somewhere? Get you off this rock?"

  More than Jullien could imagine. But that was only a pipe dream. Sadly, this was where he was safest.

  He let out a long, tired sigh. "Yes--but no. Not unless you know how to pull a League chip out of me."

  "No." Jullien glanced at his friends.

  "Sorry," the woman said. "Not a clue."

  Thraix shook his head. "Beyond my abilities. I could try to do it with my powers, but it's as likely to explode the chip, which could cause internal damage, and depending on where it's located, that could paralyze or kill him."

  Eyes wide at the mere prospect that shriveled his gut, Bastien held his hands up and backed away. "Rather not chance death. My life sucks enough without a maiming or fatality."

  Thraix nodded. "Figured you'd feel that way."

  Which made him wonder something about the Trisani ... "Were you really going to kill me?"

  "Had you not been his cousin? Yeah. Still might. If you give me any reason to." Thraix headed for the stairs with the woman.

  "Duly noted." Bastien opened the pack and ripped into one of the meals as he followed after them. "So what brings you here. Really?"

  Jullien glanced at him over his shoulder. "Looking for the files Bredeh ran on my family back when he was trying to kill Nyk. I'm hoping I can find something to lead me to my grandmother and the rest of my cousins who've sided with her."

  Interesting ... Nyk, or Nykyrian, was Jullien's twin brother, who was supposed to be dead. From this conversation, Bastien would presume that those old rumors had been right and Grandma must have been the one to put a hit out on Nykyrian all those years ago. Somehow the boy had survived. Made sense, actually. The Andarion queen had killed off most of her family. But why she'd have it in for her own grandkid, he could only imagine.

  Then again, she was an Andarion queen. That tended to go with the crown.

  "To what end?" he asked Jullien.

  "Theirs, I hope."

  Bastien chewed, then swallowed the nasty dehydrated bar as he considered that unexpected declaration. "I thought you and Grandma were always tight?"

  Jullien froze and gave him a bone-chilling glare that caused him to take two steps back. Obviously, he'd been wrong about that and had struck one hell of a nerve.

  "Sorry," Bastien said quickly. "That's what your father always said whenever he came around. He thought it showed an utter lack of judgment on your part."

  "What in the Nine Worlds could ever make him think that? I never could stand the old bitch."

  Bastien shrugged nonchalantly. "No idea. But he was fully convinced of it."

  Jullien snorted. "Anyway, I love my grandmother as much as you do your uncle, for about the same reasons. Had my father ever bothered to have a conversation with me, he'd have known that. And if I don't stop her, she will find some way to kill my mother and brother, and retake her throne. I didn't wipe out an entire portion of my family to put my mother in power to watch that happen."

  Bastien scowled at a version of this story he'd never heard before. "No. Wait ... what?"

  "You heard me."

  He'd heard him, but that wasn't what he'd been told about the coup on Andaria that had cost Jullien his inheritance. "WAR and your aunt put your mother in power." WAR had been a rebel sect who'd been working actively against Jullien's insane grandmother who'd been a complete tyrant no one had wanted to deal with.

  "Yes," Jullien said slowly, "with the information I gave them over the years. And particularly at the end. Trust me. No one else could have brought down Eriadne. It's why I'm the only one she put a hit on."

  Bastien's jaw went slack at the injustice. And at a fact he hadn't known. Jullien had a League warrant out on him? Damn, that was harsh. Especially if half of what he said was true. And he had no reason to doubt it. "Do they know that?"

  "They never bothered to ask. But one would think, with their brilliant intellects, they'd have discerned it by now. Again, doesn't take much to figure it out, since I'm the only one from the coup my grandmother has come after with a vengeance. Everyone else was spared her wrath. Kind of makes you wonder why, huh?"

  Indeed. 'Cause Eriadne wasn't known for her mercy or forgiveness. That alone told him that Jullien wasn't lying. "Damn, brother. You got screwed."

  "Don't we all?"

  Bastien nodded in total agreement. "So why you want to help them?"

  Jullien shrugged nonchalantly. "Cairie's still my mother. Nyk's still my brother. My grandmother's done them enough harm in their lives. I'm not about to let that bitch do any more. Be damned if I'm going to let her win, after everything else she's done. I'm a bastard that way."

  Bastien grinned at something that could easily define them both. "And here all this time, I thought you were nothing but a vindictive asshole."

  "Oh, you were not wrong about that. I am a vindictive asshole. This is all about payback to the whore. Just the whore, in this case, isn't my mother."

  Ouch ... As they entered the room where he kept the electronics, Bastien sucked his breath in sharply at an insult he'd have never leveled at his own mother, and one he'd have killed anyone else for making against her. "That's harsh."

  "I am the callous bastard they raised me to be." Jullien scowled at Aksel's system. "It's booby-trapped?"

  Bastien stepped around him to enter his password so that Jullien could use it. "Yeah ... sorry about that. First thing when I found this place and moved in was secure everything so that if one of the League bastards happened upon it, they couldn't use anything to figure out if it belonged to me or not." He opened the files Jullien was looking for to make it easier for him. "There you go."

  Bastien drifted back so that he could eat while Jullien and his crew went through the data in search of something they could use.

  And as he watched Jullien searching through Aksel Bredeh's database with an expertise he'd never realized his cousin possessed, he was impressed. This was not the useless piece-of-shit prince his Triosan uncle had railed against. Bastien couldn't count the hours he'd listened to his father and Uncle Aros as they discussed what they needed to do to block Jullien's inheritance.

  Had Jullien wanted to, he could have seized the Andarion throne and then taken his father's empire in the blink of an eye. Hell, with the turmoil that rapidly followed on Kirovar, Jullien could have even made a play for theirs, too. Since Bastien's mother was the younger sister of Jullien's father, Jullien had as much blood right to it as Barnabas did.

  More so, really.

  But that wasn't the cousin Bastien remembered from his childhood. While they hadn't been close, the Jullien he recalled had always tried to stay low and in the shadows. Off everyone's radar. True to Aros's words, his studious and portly Andarion cousin had been sullen and quiet. Extremely reserved, and at times rude. Bastien had assumed it came mostly from the language barrier and Jullien's frustration with their strange "foreign" customs, which were seldom explained to him until after he'd unknowingly violated them and he was mortified and ridiculed when his father or another relative made a grand show of publicly correcting him for it.

  It was why Bastien had attempted to learn Andarion. That had given him a whole new appreciation for Jullien's intellect. God knew, Andarion was one screwed-up language. Hard to pronounce and harder still to comprehend if you weren't born to it.

  Their grandfather had been even more critical and cold toward the boy. Mostly because he couldn't stand the Andarions, and he'd been infuriated that his grandson and future heir was one of their dreaded breed. Furious at Aros, he'd taken his rage out on Jullien. Every time Jullien came to visit, Quinlan had gone to war on both Aros and Jullien, making both their lives hell until Jullien was returned to Andaria.

  Now Bastien shook his head in sympathy as he watched his cousin searching through files.

  Yeah, Julie knew an entirely different Triosan grandfather than the doting old man who'd bounced Bastien and his siblings on his knee. And that made him saddest of all. As with his uncle, Bastien had a hard time reconciling how his grandfather could be so kind to him and so hard on Jullien, who'd never deserved such harsh treatment. It'd really screwed with him as a kid to see those different sides of his family.

  Made him extremely suspicious of people in general.

  Sadly, not suspicious enough. If he'd been a bit more, he might have seen Barnabas's treachery coming before it was too late. But in all the attacks that had come right before his uncle's coup, he'd never once suspected Barnabas.

  Or Jackson.

  That level of treachery and maliciousness had been beyond his experience or comprehension.

  Jullien scooted the chair back from the desk for Thraix to lean in. "This is it. But it's not really helpful. Venik has a secured base that's unknown to The Tavali outside of his Nation. He had it built for my cousin as a precaution should something happen to him, so that Malys wouldn't be able to kill Nyran or Parisa in a jealous rage. I will lay odds that's where my grandmother is."

  Thraix studied the schematic. "That's so deeply in their territory ... and Phrixian. We go near that, they'll know."

  Jullien raked a frustrated hand through his hair. "We've got to do something. I can't let them kill my family. She's not going to stop trying for my mother's throat."

  The woman with him rubbed his shoulder. "At least your immediate family is safe from them."

  "That's not good enough."

  "You know..." Bastien moved forward to access another database of old smuggler routes he'd once used. "There are some ancient trading wormholes that aren't in use anymore in that sector. They don't really appear on most maps." He showed it to Jullien. "I stumbled across this one back when I went through a teenage phase we won't talk about."

  Jullien snorted. "I remember that phase."

  "We're not talking about it."'Cause basically, he was lucky he hadn't gone to prison for some of the stunts he'd pulled. It was, however, how he ended up in the military against his mother's protests. His father had insisted on it to keep him out of trouble.

  And out of prison.

  Bastien pointed to one of the routes that paralleled the station's orbit. "That would drop you in, clear of their surveillance."

  Jullien nodded as he studied the map. "Mind if I take a copy?"

  "It's all yours."

  He quickly downloaded it. "Thoky."

  Bastien's eyes widened at his use of the Kirovarian term for thanks. It'd been way too long since he'd spoken his own language. Even with that Andarion accent, it was a welcomed treat. "Glad I could help."

  Jullien jerked his head toward the door. "Want to see about that shower?"

  Sadly, he got an actual hard-on at the thought of being clean again from the use of a real shower, with hot running water. "You know I do."

  "We can also drop you somewhere else. Really, I don't mind."

  How he wished, but Bastien shook his head. "As much as I would, I better stay put. This place plays havoc with League tracking equipment and most electronics. Not sure why Aksel's shit works. But this is the safest place I've found to bed down. While it's not much, it gives me peace of mind at night. I know I don't have to tell you what that's worth."

  Having been on the run from a League warrant himself, Jullien was the one person who would fully understand the nightmare that was Bastien's life.

  Thraix glanced around Bastien's run-down home. "You want me to make the place a little more hospitable?"

  Bastien frowned at the offer, not sure what he meant by it. "How do you mean?"

  "I have some skills that can clean this place up and make it more solid and habitable ... if you want."

  Bastien couldn't stop himself from smiling at some of the things he'd kill for. "A solid roof that doesn't leak during the rare rains we have would be incredible. But don't make it too inviting. I don't want it to attract any undue attention. Only things I want crawling in here are the spiders and insects."

  "Got it."

  With that, Jullien gestured for Bastien and the woman with them to follow him out toward their ship.

  As soon as they neared it, Bastien bit back a laugh at the name of Jullien's ship. "Pet Hate?"

  Jullien grinned as he lowered the ramp. "Seemed fitting for me."

  Yeah, given that Jullien had been everyone's pet hate at home, it made sense.

  At least he'd managed to keep his sense of humor over it.

  Shaking his head, Bastien laughed. "Damn, Julie, you look so different from the last time I saw you."

  "Yeah, I'm surprised you recognized me."

  "I would always know my favorite cousin."

  He arched a brow at that. "Not how I remember our relationship."

  Bastien grinned as old memories played through his mind. Memories he hadn't thought about in a long, long time. And it was nice to think about something other than the horror that was the last couple of years and basic daily survival. "I will admit that you intimidated me."

  Jullien gaped. "What?"

  He didn't know why it surprised his cousin so. "Honor to the gods. Yeah. You were massively tall and huge. Twice my size, and you always wore a frowning expression that said you were contemplating the death and dismemberment of the next person who made the mistake of speaking to you."

  The woman passed a curious look at Jullien. "Did you?"

  "No. Honestly, the frown came from my confusion as I tried to understand what they were saying to me. Triosans speak fast, and their accents are incredibly thick and unlike the language files we were given in school. The court dialect was completely different from what I'd been taught."

  Ah, that explained it. And made a lot of sense. "He's right. It took me a few minutes to reacclimate every time I visited. But man, Julie, that's not what it looked like on your face." He laughed at the memory of their childhood. "Your expression was one of perpetual pissed off. Not that I blame you for it.... Yet even so, I always looked forward to seeing you."

  "Why? You mostly ignored me."

  "I always sat by you, if you remember.... I just always thought you had some kind of secret knowledge the rest of us lacked. And I wanted to know more about Andarions and if they were as different from us as everyone claimed. Because honestly, you didn't seem like you were all that strange to me."

  "Thanks ... I think."

  Bastien winked as the woman laughed before she headed down the hallway that led toward the bridge. Sobering, Bastien narrowed his gaze on Jullien. "In all seriousness, though, you look really good now, and not just more fit and trim. You look happy. Like there's a weight missing from your shoulders. I don't know what happened to you, but I hope it's as good as it seems. You deserve to have some peace from the hell they gave you."

  Jullien pulled the glasses down past his eyes so that Bastien could see that they were no longer the hazel green they'd been. Now his eyes were a vibrant red.

  A rare color for Andarions, and one Bastien remembered hearing stories about.

  "What's the Andarion term for that?"

  "Stralen."

  "Means you're married, right?"

  Jullien nodded as he replaced his glasses. "To an amazing female. Like your Alura."

  The mere mention of her name made him fume and pierced his heart with a pain so profound that for a moment, he could barely draw a single breath. Jullien had no idea of the nerve he'd just stomped.

  Bastien curled his lip. "For your sake, I pray she's nothing like Alura. That faithless bitch is one of the reasons I'm here."

  "I'm sorry, Bas. I didn't know."

  "Yeah. Neither did I. Until it was too late." And he cursed himself every day of this wretched existence for being an ass and falling for her lies. Lil had been right. He should have divorced her that day in the hospital and never looked back.

  So many regrets. So many things he'd do differently if he could only go back in time.

  His gaze filled with sympathy, Jullien took him to his room and showed him where the shower was. He pulled out some of his own clothes for him. "Take whatever you need."

  More grateful than mere words could express, Bastien stepped into the bathroom and closed the door so that he could finally have a decent bath again.

  The moment the hot, fresh water touched his skin, he wanted to weep. This was what he missed most on his makeshift home.

  Well, this and someone to talk to. But the water pumps had burned out completely a long time ago so all he had now was what he'd managed to dig out of the ground as a well for himself. Though he'd tried everything, he had yet to get full running water back in the base.

  Closing his eyes, Bastien let the miraculous wetness cascade over him and ease the soreness in his muscles.

  And for reasons he couldn't even begin to explain, an image of Ember popped into his head. She'd always loved to share showers. He hadn't thought about that in a long time, either.

  Alura had despised it. She thought it was intrusive and gross.

  But Ember ...

  She'd lived to corner him right after he'd rinsed the soap off and then give him a whole 'nother reason to have to bathe again. His body went rock hard at the thought of her mouth sliding over his skin until he begged her for mercy.

  Desire hit him like an Andarion Ring fighter and left him breathless. Squeezing his eyes shut, he savored the memories of Ember and the way she used to hold him. The way she'd laugh and tease. No one had ever loved him the way she did.

  No one had ever hurt him the way she had either.

  And that was the double-edged axe that slit him to the core of his soul every time he allowed himself to think about her or to remember his past.

  -->