“Then you should have stayed hidden like the rat you are.”
“But I waited for you, Nico.” Evander’s silky timbre oozed like an oil stain across Nico’s mind. He wanted to cringe from the filthy residue he couldn’t scrub from his brain.
The rogue used Nicolai’s nickname like a weapon. Each time he uttered the reminder of their former bond, the word poured acid on the open wound of Bastien’s death.
“I’m glad you did,” Nicolai growled. “I wanted to kill you myself, you piece of shit.”
“Oh, I’m hurt,” Evander goaded, his black head bowing. But his onyx eyes glinted with pure evil delight. “Even after I left you such a precious gift, you still wound me. Tell me, Nico,” he crooned. “How is our little Tamar doing?”
Fury and fear blasted through Nico, temporarily deafened and blinded him. The section of his brain that clung to logic recognized the tactic Evander employed. Hell, he’d taught it to him—an opponent consumed with emotion made stupid mistakes. Yet the part of him that envisioned Tamar’s broken, ripped body after Evander would administer his tender mercies blew away logic. Fuck logic.
Nicolai wanted the bastard’s blood.
“You’ll never get near her,” he promised.
“Always so cocky, so sure of yourself,” Evander drawled before fury sizzled down their link. “Yet you didn’t know you had a rogue operating right under your nose, in your command. The great Dimios played by one of his own krinos.” He laughed, the chuckle wicked, taunting. “You killed the wrong brother, Nico,” he whispered.
Disbelief and a growing rage swelled inside Nicolai like a malignant cancer. “You lie.”
Evander cocked his head to the side, his wings flapping back and forth in a lazy rhythm as if they were old friends meeting up by chance instead of enemies intent on each other’s destruction.
“I begged you not to kill him,” Evander snarled. “But you wouldn’t listen. You’re so arrogant you couldn’t conceive you might be wrong in your conclusion of Gregor’s guilt.”
“I didn’t kill him, you sick fuck,” Nicolai rasped. “You did. You let your own twin die in your place because you were too much of a coward to accept punishment for your crimes. You’re the murderer, not me.”
But it hurt. Damn, did it hurt. He’d executed an innocent.
It scored a hole in his heart, one that would never heal.
“You’ll die for that, Nico,” Evander hissed, venom snaking down the line of their connection. The rogue pulled back, his wings almost stationary as his heavy body floated in midair. “You know,” he said, his tone conversational, but his malice buzzed against Nicolai’s skull like a swarm of bees. “Until I saw Tamar, I’d forgotten how beautiful your Pria was. Ummm…” The lascivious hum vibrated in Nicolai’s head and reached to the depths of his soul. “With the others I enjoyed the kill. But Tamar,” he chuckled, “I’m going to fuck her, Nico. Fuck her until she bleeds. And then I will tear her apart slowly, eat her entrails while she still breathes. I hope it’s your name she cries out. It’ll be sweeter knowing you can do nothing while I take her pussy and her life.”
Nicolai loosed a piercing, shrill cry that split the air and shattered the tenuous leash on his control. It popped with an audible snap that resounded in his mind and Nicolai shot forward.
The wind cut a path around him as if getting out of his way as he dove for Evander, his talons extended and aimed at the rogue’s chest.
At the last moment, Evander wheeled to the side and launched into the night, a maneuver a less-skilled hippogryph couldn’t have managed. But Nicolai had trained him.
With grim determination, he slammed to a stop as if a wall had formed and followed the rogue above the clouds. Cold mist clung to his feathers then evaporated as they soared higher.
For a moment, Evander disappeared from Nicolai’s sight, the black sky enveloping the hippogryph like a lover’s embrace. Nicolai searched the clouds, his eyes darting beside and below him. Just as he glanced up, Evander’s massive bulk plunged toward him, claws spread wide. The razor tips scraped Nico’s breast before instinct kicked in.
Pain burned as Nicolai’s legs jerked upward, blocking the death blow that would have eviscerated him. Talon to talon, chest to chest, they clashed and tumbled beak over tail, plummeting toward the ground.
Air whistled in his ears, dragged at the wings he’d folded against his sides. Light from the lighthouse perched on the small town’s shoreline flashed over their straining bodies. They would crash into the hard, unforgiving earth and Evander’s vile face would be the last thing Nicolai saw.