Hunted(39)

The silver mine, owned by the Gaines family, had taken the brunt of the attack. The silver mine was their only line of defense to protect the Tarlèans from the Avas. If they ever lost that mine—Lyle knew the repercussions would be deadly.

The Avagarian attack had been shut down with quick efficiency thanks to General Ward’s military war plans quickly being implemented in the case of such an attack. They’d been as prepared as they could’ve been. Workers were still clearing debris from the explosion site of the wall.

Alas, the wall will be rebuilt where the Avas had blown a hole in it. The engineers expect it to be completed within a fortnight. They would regroup as a people and overcome. As they always did. There was no other choice—but to give up and surrender. And that was not an option.

A two-knock tap, rapt and brisk, sounded at the study door.

Lionel Edward Richard Hargrowe, or “Lyle” to his friends, did not rise from his seat as the Duke of Gaines was escorted into his chambers. Uncommonly, the duke rested quite heavily on his cane for support, his leg appearing to be in a brace of some sort.

Reece, his most trusted personal guard, stood behind the duke, spear tall at his side, eyes forward. He waited poised, ready at a moment’s notice to strike. If necessary.

Some people, foolishly, had tried to reach across the desk to take a stab at Lyle in the past. What those would-be assassins failed to realize was that Reece’s silver-coated spear was six feet long and sharp enough to slice through human bone with little effort. All it would take was a lunge, and Reece’s spear would be in perfect position to spear the heart. Most citizens never noticed Reece’s specific position in the room, or his quite, deadly spear. They overlooked it and him. Such certainties upon which Lyle and Ryon relied.

Lyle did not rise as the duke took his seat across the mahogany desk from him. Customs dictated he should stand in the face of another royal leader. Lyle refused to stand for the bastard. And as of yet, he didn’t know just how much of a role the duke had played in the attack.

Few did he loathe more than the duke. Not that he’d let the duke learn of his hatred. That would only give the man power over him. Something which he refused to give.

The duke.

His half-brother.

A half-brother that Lyle had learned about on his father’s death-bed. Leave it to his sanctimonious father to confess all on his deathbed, when it was too late to seek vengeance. But not too late to hold on to anger.

His father had lain in his deathbed when he told a younger Lyle about the bastard son he bore in an affair with his mistress, Virginia Marmot Gaines. The duchess. Leave it to his father not to let a married woman stop him from his lascivious activities.

Nor did it stop Virginia from having an affair. After she grew pregnant, she played the child off as her husband, Richard’s, baby. It wasn’t until some twenty-eight years later that Lyle, at his father’s death bed, had been forced to hear the truth.

He had a brother, a half-brother. The then-young Duke of Gaines, though he hadn’t been an official duke yet, was a hated competitor in school, sports, and women. The duke would inherit his father’s dukedom after Richard Gaines’ death, a year later.

Lyle’s father, King Brice William Hargrowe of Tarlè, never did have much of a sense of humor. On his deathbed, a younger Lyle had asked his father to repeat what he said, certain he’d heard his father wrong. He couldn’t have a half-brother, after all. He had a mother and a father and no siblings to note. He simply couldn’t believe in his naïve mind that his father could commit such an act against the family, against his mother, and against him.

His father’s sickly thin body looked bony through the white sheets molded to his skeletal form. He coughed, a rattling, mucous-filled sound that he hacked into a yellow stained handkerchief. Speckles of pink soaked the cloth.

“I said,” his father began after catching his breath. “You have a brother. Do you remember the Duchess of Gaines?”

Lyle had nodded mutely, eyes wide.

“Her son, Patrick, isn’t Richard’s son. He’s my boy. He’s your brother.”

The door had opened, the creak so startling, Lyle jumped in his seat. Who but the young, gangly duke himself stood there? Lyle still remembered the arrogant look in his eyes, the smirk on his lips as he’d strolled in like he owned the place. Lyle found himself scrutinizing Patrick’s face for any signs of similarity. It didn’t take him long to see it. The height, for one, seemed to be a trait. Each of them were over six feet tall, and the shape of the jaw, jutting and narrow, the long, thin nose. It all painted a rather horrendous picture in Lyle’s mind.