Reaver

Fourteen

Two days later, they were still stuck in Sheoul, but at least Harvester had gotten them out of the mountain caverns. They’d been forced to run blindly from the collapse, and then from a constant stream of enemies. The sheoulghuls gave Reaver a partial recharge, but he had to constantly discharge his powers to keep his Heavenly aura muted—and to keep Harvester from going evil again. But the close confines of the tunnels meant he wouldn’t broadcast the glow very far, which had allowed him to hold a small amount of energy in reserve to handle minor threats. Like an orc he blasted while they’d been on the run. He hadn’t even slowed down to do it.

Harvester, at least, was stronger now, and she’d been able to take out several enemies with some low-level fallen angel weapons.

But she drained her powers quickly and while she was able to recoup them faster than before, she was still operating at far below her normal threshold. Worse, she was unable to either flash them anywhere or sense Harrowgates. With their powers depleted, they’d taken a dive into a swift underground river in order to lose the enemies on their heels.

Endless miles of trying to keep their heads above water later, they’d been thrown out of the mountain darkness and onto the shore of an eerie, orange-glowing realm where everything was grotesquely gaunt and exaggerated, all Tim Burton and a touch of crack.

Now, dripping wet, exhaustion making them shuffle almost drunkenly, they entered a ramshackle village teeming with tall, inky-black creatures that resembled upright Borzoi dogs, with their narrow heads and skinny bodies.

“No sudden movements,” Harvester whispered. “Walk very slowly at first, or the carrion wisps will give chase.”

“Carrion wisps?”

She nodded. “The name is misleading, because they don’t eat carrion. They like their meat still moving.”

Reaver eyed the things, which were coming out of their soot-colored smokestack-like dwellings to follow behind them as they made their way through the center of the village. “How do we keep from being moving meat?”

Her still-damp hair clung to her shoulders as she shrugged wearily. “Don’t look tasty.”

Don’t look tasty? Brilliant.

He looked beyond the village, to a forest of black, leafless trees that sprouted from the ground like skeletal zombie hands punching up from graves. Looked like they were going to be walking into a Halloween portrait.

Talk about your postcards from hell.

“I don’t suppose you know where we are,” he said.

“Sure I do.” The teasing spin on her words amused him despite the fact that they weren’t in the best shape or situation. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“How helpful.”

Another shrug. “I try.”

She was her usual flippant self, but days spent on the run with no rest was taking its toll on her. On Reaver, too, if he could be honest with himself.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” he muttered.

“Loving what? The fact that now I’m the one with all the power and knowledge?” Reaching back, she tied her damp hair into a messy knot. “Yes.” She gazed up at the sky, which was a little less bright than it had been a few minutes ago. “We need to find shelter. It’s getting dark, and in this realm, everything has to take shelter at night. Here, the darkness kills.”

“You couldn’t have mentioned that when we first washed up on the riverbank?”

She glared. “Right. Because that’s the first thing I thought of while recovering from two days of swimming and fighting off demon fish things. Also, we need to move faster.”

Reaver was on board with that. The carrion wisps were inching closer, and now there were maybe a hundred of them, all sizing Reaver and Harvester up for a meal.

They picked up the pace, their boots clacking painfully loudly on the uneven cobblestone road. The eerie quiet of the place was so unsettling he decided he’d rather listen to Harvester.

“Obviously, you know where we are,” he said. “Do you know how to get us out of here?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “No. I still can’t sense Harrowgates. But if we keep moving to the north, we should arrive at the Pavilion of Serpents in a few days. It’s one of the few places you can flash us out of Sheoul from.”

As they walked she tugged at her wet tank top, airing it out and peeling it away from places where it had molded to her body. Really, she could leave it wet and plastered to her curves. Reaver might hate her, but he’d never denied that she had a spectacular body.

Except he didn’t really hate her anymore. The thought came out of nowhere, was a surprise to him, but he wasn’t going to deny it. The slivers of memories that had come to him when she’d taken his vein had brought back emotions as well. He’d cared for her when he was Yenrieth. He might have even loved her. And before any of those memories had returned, he’d already accepted that she’d done evil for the sake of good, and he understood how she’d become what she was.

So no, he no longer hated her. But that didn’t mean he trusted her.

“So what’s your plan for us when we get out of Sheoul?” Harvester asked. “You can’t take me to Heaven unless I’m bound with angel twine, and even if you have that, don’t you think the archangels are going to just toss me back to Satan?”

He actually did have angel twine tucked away in his pack, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. The dental-floss-thin thread, if used to bind a fallen angels’ wings, allowed passage into Heaven. It also bound their powers while in Heaven. Handy stuff.

“They aren’t going to send you back,” he said.

She rubbed her bare arms as if chilled, but it was a million degrees in this freakshow realm. “How can you be sure?”

He bared his teeth at a carrion wisp who came a little too close, and the thing backed off. They were getting bolder. “You’ll be the most important asset the archangels have ever seen. After five thousand years in Sheoul, not to mention the fact that you’re Satan’s daughter, you have powerful intel. They won’t be able to afford to let you go again.”

He studied the faded slash marks on her arms and shoulders, wondered if the emotional scars she bore from her time in Satan’s dungeon were healing as fast as her physical ones.

“And,” he added, “you can help them find Lucifer. That’s your ace. They need you.”

He could almost feel the wall around her fortifying itself. “I told you I’m not helping.”

“You said that so I would kill you.”

“No,” she said, her voice thickened with anger. “I said it because I don’t give a shit what happens to anyone in Heaven. Especially not the archangels.” She stopped in the middle of the road, and so did the herd of carrion wisps. Her gaze met his. “You can’t trust them, Reaver. Never trust them.”

Surprised by her vehemence, Reaver hesitated, feeling as though he should comfort her even if he didn’t know why.

“I don’t.” He hefted the backpack higher on his shoulder. “But what makes you say that?”

Her smile was bitter. “I say it because I used to trust them. If there was anyone I thought I could count on, it was the archangels.”

“Until…” he prompted.

“Until I was ordered to take you captive,” she said, and an uneasy sensation rolled through him. “You can’t trust any of them. Especially not Raphael.”

“And why is that?” he bit out.

“Because,” she said softly, “it was Raphael who ordered your capture and torture.”

Harvester rarely got a chance to see Reaver struck dumb. Now was one of those moments, and she was going to savor it a little.

And maybe she wanted to savor it because even when he wasn’t being all luminous, like now, something about him still got to her like a poisonous rash, irritating the part of her that was dark and damaged.

She so badly wanted to scratch that itch.

Her body was tight with tension and the kind of restlessness that demanded relief. Making her even grumpier, her wing anchors felt like they were on fire. They were trying to heal, but they required fuel. She needed to feed again, but damn, she was still experiencing the ragey effects of the last feeding. What she couldn’t figure out was why, when she’d fed from Reaver, she hadn’t gone evil right away, the way she had when she’d fed from Tryst, the angel she’d killed thousands of years ago.

Guilt tore at her, cozying up to the thousands of other guilt-inducing acts she’d committed over the course of her life.

“Raphael?” Reaver finally growled. “He wanted you to cut off my wings and get me addicted to marrow wine? Why?”

“He needed you out of the way so you wouldn’t stop me from doing what I had to do to stop the Apocalypse.”

A tempest brewed in Reaver’s blue eyes, making them swirl with clouds and lightning. Sexy. She’d always loved a man with a temper.

“My ass. You could have gotten me out the way without torturing me.” He narrowed those stormy eyes at her. “So whose idea was that?”

She started walking again, hoping to outrun her own deeds, but no, Reaver kept up, his scorching glare a reminder of what she’d done.

“Well?”

“Raphael’s.”

They’d met in a realm-neutral Central American cave, where she’d asked the archangel to reconsider, but he’d been dead set on making sure Reaver was incapacitated and in pain. When she’d outright refused, he’d threatened to take the one thing she cherished. The one thing she still had left of Verrine’s life: her memories of Yenrieth.

It didn’t matter that some of the memories were terrible. The majority were from happy times when she and Yenrieth were learning to hunt demons or ride horses, or when they were just lying in a meadow and watching shepherds with their sheep. Those memories were what she hung onto when she lost faith in the reason she’d started on the fallen angel path in the first place. They’d given her a purpose. And more than anything else, including saving the world and giving the Horsemen peace and happiness in their lives, her memories of Yenrieth had given her an escape when she was hanging from chains in one of her father’s many dungeons.

“You already have more memories than you should,” Raphael said. “You don’t remember what he looks like, but you remember everything he did. No one, except perhaps Lilith, has even that. To everyone else, he only exists in the histories of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

She still had no idea why it was that she had memories no one else did, and Raphael never answered her when she asked. He was such a dick.

“You hellrat bastard,” she spat. “Reaver’s pain means so much to you that you’re blackmailing me to make it happen?”

“Yes.” Raphael brushed a cobweb off his shoulder. “Now, do you want me to take the memories of Yenrieth from you?”

“No.” Fury roared through her, joined by pain as her body morphed, against her will, into her demon body. She hated when she went all Hulk from rage or angel blood, but that’s what being a fallen angel was. Evil and ugly. “I’ll do it.”

Raphael shrank away from her in disgust. “Good.” He disappeared, but his voice hung in the air for a few more seconds. “Make it hurt. And don’t let me see you like that again. You’re hideous.”

Yeah, Raphael was all heart and asshole.

“Did you enjoy hurting me?” Reaver asked, his voice as angry as his gaze.

Ouch. She supposed it was a legitimate question, given how she’d done all she could to make him believe she’d loved every minute of his misery, but for some reason, she no longer wanted him to think the worst of her. Maybe there really was part of her that was still good. She’d done a lot of things for the good team, but she’d never truly felt as if she was good. Especially because the things she’d done in the name of good had been reprehensible.

Like torturing Reaver.

She looked ahead, avoiding his gaze. “Did you enjoy it when you found Gethel torturing me with treclan spikes?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go.”

They walked in silence for a while, the carrion wisps still following like sickly ghosts.

“Harvester,” Reaver said, his voice calmer now, “why did you choose to fall?”

“I needed to watch over the Horsemen.”

Reaver’s golden mane had dried in perfect, shiny waves that fell across his cheeks and jaw as he inclined his head in a slow nod. “I know. But why were the Horsemen so important to you?”

She considered her answer, but everything sounded so lame. Because I was in love with their father. Because I made a promise. Because I was an idiot. Finally, she settled on, “You wouldn’t understand.”

He cursed, low and long. “I really hate it when people say that. You have no idea what I’ll understand and what I won’t. Pet peeve of mine. So why don’t you try me.”

His tone set her temper on edge, and no matter how many times she repeated to herself that she needed to refuse to let her evil side reign and make an effort to talk instead of argue, she still spit out an irritated, “Why should I?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Maybe because I risked my wings to rescue you.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” she reminded him for what felt like the millionth time. “And if you’re going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life, why don’t we part ways now and let me fend for myself.”

Reaver closed his eyes and breathed deeply enough for her to hear. “Once, just once, can you not fight me?”

She owed him and she knew it, but being indebted to anyone, especially Reaver, was unacceptable. When she owed someone, that debt became a weapon, as she’d learned after many, many lessons. And while Reaver didn’t have anything worth blackmailing her with, he knew more about her vulnerabilities than anyone alive.

Still, she was grateful, and he deserved better than her fallen angel attitude. “I swore to Yenrieth that I would take care of his children.”

Reaver missed a step. “He was aware that you were planning to fall for the sake of his children, and he let you?”

“No one lets me do anything.” She flicked a spark of power at a carrion wisp that was close enough to have her by the throat in two bounding leaps. The thing yelped and slunk to the back of the pack.

“But he knew?”

“Not exactly,” she said and sighed. “My oath was more to myself. On the very day his children were conceived, I swore I’d watch over them. He didn’t even know Lilith was pregnant.”

Reaver’s throat worked on a swallow, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. Impossible for him to believe she had once been decent, she supposed.

“Why? Why would you swear to something like that?”

She thought about lying, or not answering at all, but she knew Reaver well enough to know that he wouldn’t let this go. And again, he’d rescued her. She owed him.

“Because.” It was her turn to swallow. And avert her gaze. “I was in love with him.”

She snuck a peek at Reaver, but his expression went shuttered, utterly unreadable. Maybe he was having a hard timing imagining that she might have had feelings for someone. “So you remember him?”

“I remember events,” she said, maybe a little harshly, but dammit, it kind of stung that Reaver would be so floored by the idea that she’d loved someone. “But I don’t remember what he looked like. No one does.”

It was a long time before Reaver replied. “Was he… were you two…”

“No.” This was so humiliating. “I pined for him for decades, but to him I was only a friend. Then, one day, he kissed me.”

That had been the best day of her life. She and Yenrieth had been practically inseparable, best friends who honed their fighting skills together, who pulled pranks on humans and other angels, and who even skinny-dipped in crystal pools together. He’d never looked upon her with lust, but she’d been unable to see his magnificent body naked without practically drooling.

“I was a virgin,” she said hoarsely. “I was saving myself for him, but when he finally pulled his head out of his ass and kissed me, I panicked like a lamb in a storm and fled. And he ran straight to Lilith’s bed.”

Well, bed of grass, anyway. He’d fucked the demon on the bank of one of the pools he and Harvester had swum in, and Harvester had come upon the aftermath. She’d been gutted by what she’d seen, and to this day the memory still had the power to cut deep.

Reaver muttered something that sounded like fucking idiot as he kept his gaze focused on the forest ahead, never looking in her direction. He was probably disgusted by her stupidity, just as she was.

“What happened then?”

“I sensed that the succubus was pregnant.” Looking down at her boots as they walked, she wondered what would have happened if she’d handled things differently. Some angels possessed the gift of clairvoyance, but she wasn’t one of them. How handy that would have been. “I should have told Yenrieth right then, but I was afraid he’d chase her into Sheoul and get himself killed. He was so damned impulsive and hotheaded, and he was still a novice battle angel. Even with the kind of power he had, he wasn’t experienced enough to enter most of Sheoul by himself. Plus, it was sometimes dangerous to upset him.”

He stiffened. “What do you mean, with the kind of power he had?”

“He was the most powerful battle angel I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Hell, I think he could have given Raphael a run for his money, and Raphael is a fucking archangel.”

She allowed herself the smallest of smiles. Yenrieth was always getting himself into trouble, and her with him. But the fun they’d had had been worth the lectures and menial labor they’d been given as punishment.

“So I decided to wait to tell him about the pregnancy until I could find the children myself.” Unfortunately, that plan got derailed when she found Lilith first… and the bitch had threatened the children’s lives if Harvester spilled the beans. “But it didn’t really matter, because the encounter with Lilith changed Yenrieth. He became bitter and angry. Even his already considerable powers seemed to expand.”

Finally, Reaver turned to her. “Expand?”

She contemplated how to explain this without sounding crazy. “He could do things I’ve never seen any other angel do when he was battling a demon. It was almost as if he could absorb the demon’s abilities and use them himself.”

“How?”

“I have no idea.” She took a deep, weary breath. “I used to follow him into Sheoul to keep him from going anywhere novice angels were forbidden to go. I was sure he’d get killed while he was looking for Lilith—”

“Wait… why was he looking for her? He knew she was pregnant?”

She shook her head. “He hadn’t known she was a demon when he slept with her, and he wanted to kill her for using her succubus tricks to seduce him. His pride was one of his biggest flaws.” In the distance, a lone howl rang out, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Hellhound. Nasty things. “Obviously, he never found Lilith, but he slaughtered a lot of demons while he was searching, and I swear he was able to recharge his powers down here.”

Reaver’s blond brows shot up. “That’s impossible without a sheoulghul.”

“I know that,” she said, not bothering to conceal the duh tone in her voice. “Maybe he had one, but they don’t allow for that much power. It was very strange.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

Her belly growled, and she realized they hadn’t eaten in days. Worse, her wing anchors were throbbing reminders that she needed blood. Maybe she could feed from one of the carrion wisps, because there was no way she was taking Reaver’s vein again. That had caused way too many problems, and the idea that she might hurt him… she didn’t want to think about it.

She nodded at him… and had to force herself to not look at his throat. “He claimed he didn’t know what was going on. So… I went to Raphael.”

Reaver’s eyes widened. “Behind Yenrieth’s back?”

“That’s a little harsh,” she said, a little too self-defensively. She’d felt like she was betraying him at the time. Maybe she still did. “I was worried about him. He was on a self-destructive path that was going to land him on the wrong side of Heaven.”

“Do you think maybe he wouldn’t have gone as nuts if you’d told him he was a father instead of hiding such a critical secret from him?” Reaver’s voice dripped with accusation, as if he was the one she’d lied to.

“Fuck you, Reaver.” She punched him in the arm the way she used to do to Yenrieth when he pissed her off. “It’s easy to cast judgment when you’re five thousand years in the future and looking back on the should-haves, isn’t it?”

He cursed on an exhale, and when he spoke next, he’d managed to moderate his tone. “So what did Raphael do when you went to him?”

“He told me to keep an eye on Yenrieth, which I did, in between my Justice duties and looking for his children.”

“And you found them?”

“I found all but Limos,” she said. “I knew where she was. I just couldn’t get to her.”

Lilith had farmed out three of the four children to human parents, swapping their human infants for hers. Years later, Harvester learned that Lilith had sold the human babies to demons. For what purpose, Harvester didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know.

The fourth child, Limos, had remained with Lilith. Limos had been raised to be evil and had been betrothed to Satan as a youth. It wasn’t until Limos left Sheoul to find her brothers that Harvester had finally seen Yenrieth’s daughter for the first time.

“Raphael told me you saved Reseph’s life once. Is that true?”

“Maybe. There’s no way of knowing if he’d reached immortal maturity at that point. But yes, I took him from a burning building when he was a child. His human mother was a worthless priestess whore who left him to fend for himself for days at a time.”

Reaver’s jaw clenched, but what he’d just gotten angry about, she had no idea. He was pretty attached to the Horsemen, so maybe he didn’t like the idea that Reseph and Limos had gone through tough childhoods. Ares’s had been brutal as well, being raised as a warrior, but his parents had, at least, cared for him. Thanatos had been the lucky one, gifted with wonderful parents in a tight-knit community.

Too bad he’d gone crazy and killed most of his clan after being cursed as a Horseman. Thanatos might have had the best childhood, but he’d been given the worst curse and had suffered the most because of his actions.

The carrion wisps were closing in again, their agitation growing as the orangeish light that gave the region its extra-eerie atmosphere began to dim for nightfall. She picked up the pace as much as she felt she could.

“So,” Reaver said, his square jaw still tight, “when did Yenrieth finally learn he had three sons and a daughter?”

She shivered despite the arid heat in this horrid place. “Not until after they were cursed as Horsemen. Limos told him. I’m still not sure if she did it to be cruel or if something deep inside her really wanted a father. At the time she was still very much under the influence of her evil upbringing.”

Again with the tightness, except now it was Reaver’s entire body that had gone as taut as a Darquethothi hide bow string.

“What did he do?” Reaver’s voice was little more than a growl.

“Today’s humans might say that he went… ballistic.” The memory made her sweat, not because of the fact that he’d practically gone into orbit with rage, but because that was just the beginning. “Raphael tasked me with trying to calm him down, and it worked… until I admitted that I’d known about Lilith’s pregnancy since conception.”

Reaver’s footsteps became heavier, striking the stones under his soles with such force that the ground shook. “Was he angry with you?”

Her shiver turned into a full-body shudder. “He would have had to come down a hundred notches to be merely angry.”

“You knew? All this time you knew I was a father, and you didn’t tell me? I trusted you. I’ve trusted you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.”

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “At first, I didn’t want you to get yourself killed. Then I found Lilith seducing a human. I tried to force her to tell me where the children were, but she was furious that I knew about them in the first place. She threatened to kill them if I told anyone. I had to wait until they were old enough to take care of themselves. But then Limos wreaked havoc with the boys and it all went so badly. She told you before I could.” She fell to her knees in front of him, tears streaming down her face. “It was all for you. I wanted to tell you sooner, but—”

“But what?” He seized her biceps and lifted her roughly to her feet. “You had no right, Verrine. None. I would never have betrayed you like that. This is payback, isn’t it? Payback for fucking Lilith instead of you.”

“He hated me,” she whispered. “He was so cruel.”

“What did he do?” Reaver stopped in the middle of the road as if there weren’t hundreds of demons slinking closer and closer. “Harvester? What did he do to you?”

She kept walking. It was stupid to have told him any of this. Now all that shit she’d worked so hard to bury was surfacing again, and it hurt more than anything Satan’s torture crew had done to her.

Reaver grasped her arm and swung her around, and she clenched her teeth at the stab of fire that shot through her wing anchors. “Tell me.”

“Why? Why do you give a shit what happened?” She jerked out of his grip, earning another searing blast of pain. “Are you getting off on knowing I lost the only male I’ve ever loved? That he crushed me under his boot like garbage? Is that fun for you?”

“No.” Reaver reached for her again, this time to brush his knuckles over her cheek. “I just want to know what kind of person he was. He sounds like an asshole.”

She slapped him. She slapped him before she even knew what she was doing, and when the crack of flesh on flesh echoed through the village, everything stopped. The creatures froze, and so did she and Reaver.

“Don’t say that,” she rasped. “You didn’t know him. He trusted me, and I betrayed that trust.”

“You did it to protect him.”

She barked out a bitter laugh. “Or maybe I did it to have power over him, like he said. Or maybe he was right when he told me I did it to punish him for fucking that demon bitch instead of me. I am Satan’s daughter, after all.”

“Harvester might have done that, but not Verrine.”

She snorted. “You didn’t know Verrine. How can you say that?”

“Because Verrine sacrificed herself for Yenrieth and his children. She wouldn’t have done that if she was the kind of person who would betray him out of a power trip or revenge.”

“Whatever.” Suddenly feeling the weight of the last four days without rest, she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms as she started down the road again. “Can we just drop it?”

Reaver fell in beside her. “We can’t drop it. I want to know what he did to you.”

“You really are a hellhound with a bone, aren’t you?” He didn’t reply. Not that she expected him to. “Fine. You really want to know? Yenrieth, that bastard, after he was done ripping me a new one, disappeared for months. When he finally came back, he was his normal self again.” She grimaced. “That should have been a clue.”

“How so?”

“He… pretended to want me. I still loved him, so I gave in.” She closed her eyes, trudging blindly on the bumpy road.

God, she’d been a fool. Yenrieth had found her in her quarters. There had been no talk. Yenrieth had simply blown in as if he’d belonged there, swept her up, and kissed her until she opened up like a night-blooming rose. She’d been so happy, so filled with love for him that she hadn’t even considered any possibility other than that he’d finally come around and realized they were meant to be together.

What a fucking stupid, blind twat she’d been.

“I gave him my virginity. And he…” Heat scorched her cheeks. She opened her eyes, wishing she’d done the same thing back when Yenrieth had come into her room to seduce her. But truly, would anything have changed? She’d wanted it, and like a spineless fool, she’d been weak enough to take it any way he’d give it. “I’m done with this conversation.”

Reaver ignored her. Shocking. “He used you and threw you away, didn’t he?”

I’ve fucked demons who were less disgusting than you.

Pain lanced her, as fresh and raw as the day he’d said those words to her.

“What a bastard,” Reaver growled, taking her nonresponse as a yes. “After what he did, why would you have been willing to fall? Why would you have given up everything for a jerk like him?”

“I told you,” she said quietly, “you didn’t know him. He wasn’t always like that.” They were almost to the village boundary. The forest beyond would provide some cover and escape routes. “And I made a promise. Pathetic as I was, I loved him in spite of everything. He came to my rescue so many times when I got in over my head with demons. And he always brought me my favorite rare irises to cheer me up. And once, when I caught him mourning a child he was too late to save from a demon, he told me that every child who died on his watch took a piece of his soul. I think I fell for him that day.”

She inhaled a shaky breath. “He loved children… and I should have told him about his own sooner. If I had, maybe he could have saved them before the curse was cast upon them.”

She’d waited until they were adults for their own protection, but by then Yenrieth had forgotten about his vendetta against Lilith, and he’d also seemed to have lost a lot of his powers. Harvester had kept putting off telling him out of fear that he’d go crazy again, and this time, he’d truly end up dead. She shouldn’t have allowed her fear to rule her head. How many people had paid horrible prices because of her actions?

She searched Reaver’s face for judgment, but his expression was blank. Scarily blank. “So what it comes down to is that I kept my oath to watch over his children, and I volunteered to become a spy. After I was cast into Sheoul, I never saw him again. I don’t even remember what he looks like.” The tears she’d been trying so hard not to shed stung her eyes. “Reaver? How can I remember every cutting word he said, every warm touch of his fingers, and not remember what he looks like?”