Except then she launched herself forward and threw herself at Kane.
“Cordelhia,” he said in a strangled tone.
Standing off to the side, Nadya thought, of all the outcomes she had considered for this night… the one that hadn’t even been an option was that hisshellanwas alive.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kane knew things were actually happening because of Cordelhia’s scent. It was the same one he remembered from many years ago, and as she held on to him, the fragrance of roses was all he could smell.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she hung on so hard, he couldn’t breathe. Then again, maybe that was shock on his part, not what she was doing to his neck.
Pulling himself together, he set her down, set her back.
“Cordelhia…”
“You’re alive,” she breathed through her tears.
He felt as though he were staring at her from a vast distance, even though they were merely a foot or two apart, his brain refusing to process anything. But he knew one thing for sure: He was suddenly angry, bitterly angry.
“Stop the crying,” he snapped. Then he forced himself to calm down. “What the hell is going on here?”
“You got out of the prison. It’s a miracle. We can—”
He moved her hands away as she reached for him again. “Don’t touch me.”
“You’re free, though—”
“And you’re alive. But you left me to rot in there. For twohundredyears?”
Cordelhia’s wide, hurt eyes did absolutely nothing for him. All he could think about was the decades upon decades of time he had spent suffering while she was prima facie proof he wasn’t a murderer.
“Who the hell was upstairs in your bedroom that night?” he demanded. “Who died?”
With an elegant hand, Cordelhia motioned to the house. “May we please not do this here. I don’t wish the gardeners to hear anything.”
The last thing he wanted to do was go in that fucking house, but he stepped inside because information was the most important goal right now.
“Would you care for a libation,” she said as she indicated the parlor’s bar cart.
Which was the same one he’d taken the sherry off of.
Refusing to go any farther than the foyer, he laughed sharply. “That’s what drugged me in the first place. So, no, I’m not drinking a damn thing—who was that body? Your scent was all over it!”
It was a while before Cordelhia answered, and when she did, her voice was so soft he could barely hear it.
“I had a twin.” She put that long, lovely hand at the base of her throat. “She was an identical twin except for the fact that her eyes were mismatched.”
Ah, but of course. That defect would have been considered irredeemable byglymerastandards—and he could remember a time when, though he certainly wouldn’t have condoned such a condemnation, he’d have understood it some. Now? After having been in the prison? Been deformed himself?
That way of thinking was an affront to everything that was moral.
“She wanted to get mated. The male was a commoner. My brother andmahmenwere so upset—they knew it would ruin not only her, but our entire bloodline. My sister would not see reason, however, so theysehcludedher. It didn’t matter. She snuck out of the house. It was pure insanity.”
At this, Cordelhia went down to a display of stones that had been tumbled into the shapes of eggs. As she righted one that was off a mere degree or two, he saw her properly. She was painfully thin, twitchy as a bird, lost in a grand house with so many beautiful things.
“So you planned it all along,” he said numbly. “You mated me, lived with me for a year, long enough so that things seemed on the up and up. Then when you both went into your needings at the same time, because you were twins, your brother killed her and drugged me, and the body swap was accomplished.”
“Kane, you must understand.” She floated over to him. “It was never anything personal.”