Page 149 of Threaded

“I wish to speak with Lord Laurent!” Andrian’s roar echoed throughout the manor. His hands moved to the blade at his hip, palming the hilt as his heart pounded in his chest.

He waited. One, two, three heartbeats, servants scurrying away from the entryway the only acknowledgement of his arrival. A growl was low in his throat before he moved for the right arch of the stairway. If his father wouldn’t face him himself, he would track him down.

But the second his right boot touched the first, gleaming step, a low, drawling voice sounded behind him.

“Now, there is no need to yell, Andrian. After all, I do believe this was once your home. Unless all the time these past years spent with those savages who now call themselvesArmaturehas caused you to forget even the most basic of decencies.”

Andrian froze, his blood ringing in his ears. He turned, slowly, until he met the gaze of his father. Julian Laurent stood in the hallway to the foyer, his stance too casual, his shoulders loose and his hands in his pockets.

Andrian’s answering voice was one of deep, glinting steel.

“Don’t youdarespeak to me of decency,” he said. “I …I know what youdid.”

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific,boy,” Laurent said, his voice airy and bored. He tilted his head, the nonchalance of the movement driving Andrian further into rage-fueled madness. “I have done many things, and I suspect I will do many more before I die.”

“Mother.” Andrian’s answer was soft, a deadly whisper. His father’s tawny gaze flashed to meet his. “Iknow. I know it wasn’t an accident.” He took a step forward, off the stairs. “I didn’t realize it until I heard the way you spoke of her to Mariah.” Step. “You despised the fact you had to marry her, someone who was notpureOnitan, someone who wouldtaintthe blood of your line.” Step. “So, the second she gave you an appropriate number of heirs, you had her murdered. Or maybe, you grew the balls and did it yourself. Either way, her death wasyour fault. Wasn’t it?”

Andrian now stood no more than a few feet from his father, his chest heaving. Julian Laurent watched him thoughtfully before huffing his breath out in a chuckle.

Andrian flinched.

“By the gods, you have developed quite an imagination during your time away from my household, haven’t you?”

“Do you deny it?”

Laurent’s gaze turned cold, colder than the ice often freezing the ground of Antoris, the same cold Andrian had grown up in and had just recently learned could be melted.

“No. No, I do not.”

Andrian’s vision flooded with darkness as his grip tightened around the hilt of his dagger, ready to draw it, to spill blood there on the smooth tile of his cursed family’s home.

But his father wasn’t done talking.

“I don’t deny that I killed your mother. I did it myself, in fact. You are right; I always despised her, and after the birth of your brother … well, she had outgrown her usefulness to me. So, I slammed her head into the kitchen counter and left her there to bleed out, alone. I think I may have even spat on her savage Leuxrithian face after I watched the light fade from those disgusting purple eyes.”

Andrian’s voice, when he was able to find it, whispered of a slow, painful death.

“You willdiefor that.”

Julian regarded his son with a contemplative look that had Andrian’s shadows snapping and twisting in the air around him.

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Then, before Andrian could react, Laurent’s gaze darted behind his son. In a too-fast movement, multiple sets of arms banded around Andrian, wrestling his wrists behind his back. He whipped his head around to see the faces of the men who held him, their expressions blank and empty. Andrian let loose another roar, his shadows coiling up like vipers ready to strike …

… Until shackles clamped down over his wrists, and that magic snuffed out, the familiar movement in his veins he’d finally come to accept as a part of him vanishing in a breath.

Deistair. Sunstone. Beyond illegal to possess, and the only substance that could nullify the magic of one so gifted.

Andrian went limp at the loss, at the severed connection to the soul he’d forgotten he had.

“It is time you were brought back into the fold, my son. You’ve spent too much time away, but that doesn't matter. You will just need a”—he paused—“change of attitude, so to speak, and all will be well.”

Something blunt struck the back of Andrian’s skull, and the world faded into blackness.

Distantly, just before the terror and darkness took him, he heard his father’s voice, one last time.

“You should have remembered my promise, Andrian. Ialwayskeep my word.”