Eluria's Enforcer (The Argadian Heart Trilogy Book 1) by Adrianna Dane Read Free Book Online Page B

been no hint of recognition in his eyes. She’d
wanted to touch him, to force him to remember her. Instead, she’d hurried away
before desire won over commonsense. The blank, unemotional look in his ebony
eyes haunted her for months afterwards.
    Now she watched a myriad of emotions flitter
across his face. He looked at her, his blue eyes blazed through her. “When?
How?”
    She squared her shoulders, prepared to accept
the full brunt of his anger. “Because of me, Devon. All of it, because of me.
You. Alekos. Kierra. Taeryl. The terrible fate that has touched your lives is
my fault. I have brought your family to this terrible end.”
     
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
     
     
    Devon tried to absorb what Eluria was telling
him. Feelings of love and hate threaded through him. It wasn’t the same as the
Killing Frenzy—that was a different kind of single-minded aggression
manufactured by Nanus modification. These two emotions were real and were
melded together with a sense of impotence—a feeling he’d never experienced
before.
    His hands balled into fists as he tried to
grasp the realization that his father was terminated, his mother and sister
exiled, and his brother—Alekos, the younger, could very well be terminated as
well. Only the Tribunal had the power to force exile and command termination.
     Memories of a happy, secure Before in the
heart of his family flared and was reduced to cold ash in an instant. Duty. All
the years that had passed with no memory, no feeling, no purpose other than
duty to the Tribunal flashed through him.
    And somehow Eluria was involved? In his
memories of her, he found it hard to believe she could have done anything to
harm his family. But she’d become a twilighter. It didn’t mesh with his memory
of her. Why had she done it?
    He lifted his gaze and studied her as she
faced him, poised like a young, wild kyrle awaiting termination, with no way of
escape. Twelve years had passed since he’d sought to court her. She had
changed.
    Eluria had been a good friend to Kierra, his
sister. That was how he’d first met her. She’d accompanied Kierra home after a
dance celebration and Kierra introduced them. He’d recognized in the brief
innocent glow of her radiance, the bonding that would come to their future. Her
soul blazed out at him through her beautiful violet looking-glass eyes. The
plans he’d made for the future from that moment had been with the view of union
and balance with Eluria Zydon. But somehow their lines to the future had been
altered.
    He’d lived and breathed his responsibility to
the Tribunal for twelve years. How did he reconcile what she was telling him
now with his duty to contain…and destroy? Always in allegiance to a government
made up of people who didn’t merit loyalty. He knew his family wouldn’t have
deserved persecution by the Tribunal. Devon remembered his father as a good man
of wisdom, unlikely to become affiliated with a rebellion without sufficient
cause. Pain shot through him at the knowledge of his loss.
    With his memories no longer splintered, he
knew she spoke true. Like pieces of broken mirror restored, full knowledge
brought him not hate for Eluria, but self-loathing for what he’d become.
    Eluria was no longer the young Maigin who
honored him with her devotion. But nor was he the same naïve youth who’d
envisioned a future with her as his balance. Twelve years of bloodshed covered
his hands. A manufactured being created for the sole purpose of termination.
Pure and decisive destruction. And he’d been very good at it. The best. How to
come to terms with that knowledge? With the understanding he’d served a
government that nurtured a force of killers, a tool used to subjugate and
maintain control?
    So new to him, his hidden memories were now
at the forefront in his mind. All he’d felt and wanted Before were as though it
had all happened yesterday—fresh and urgent. His desire for Eluria a living
thing, winding around and through his