When one is the rightful heir and the other wants everything just for himself. Josephine realised that she was caught in the middle of a succession war.
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Hero Fiennes Tiffin stared at a face he'd not seen in eight long years.
A face he hardly recognized. When last he'd looked at it, he'd seen nothing except the unmarred countenance of a life untried—features that revealed an absence of lines, character, and depth. A face that had yet to be written upon. Unfortunately, it now told an incredible tale of unbelievable cruelty.
The deep creases spreading out from the corners of the eyes and mouth had been shaped by agony, agony brought on not necessarily by physical discomfort, but rather by emotional upheaval—which could carve just as deeply, and in many instances, more so, leaving the mark of its visitation visible to any who dared to look. Yes, the physical and emotional torment suffered was as clearly evident as the passage of time.
Black whiskers that had been as fine as the downy hair on a newborn's head were now thick, coarse, and scraggly. The skin was pale to the point of almost appearing sickly, but then how could he expect it to look any differently when it had not known the direct touch of the sun in years?
That unhealthy pallor might cause a bit of a problem.
But in studying the visage before him, Hero decided it was the eyes that shocked him the most. Not the color, a green that matched the hue of a rainforest. No, the color remained exactly as he remembered, but the pathway the eyes offered to the soul had changed considerably.
They reflected a journey of devastating betrayal. And that, too, might cause a bit of a problem, because a man could seldom hide the truth of his character revealed by his eyes. Well, not a good man anyway.
Hero shifted his gaze away from the reflection in the mirror he held to the man he'd secured to the bed with silk sashes he'd taken from several dressing gowns hanging in the wardrobe. The man's eyes were the same brilliant green, but they burned with fury mingling with hatred. He wondered why he'd never recognized the emotions before when he'd looked into
those eyes.
And he had looked into them—for the first eighteen years of his life. Surely during one of those glances, he should have seen the monster who dwelled within.
"Why, Eros?" he asked, his voice scratchy from lack of use after years of not being allowed to speak. "Why did you have me locked away? What did I do to deserve such abuse?"
The monogrammed handkerchief that Hero had stuffed into Eros's mouth prevented him from doing anything more than growling, and perhaps that was a bit unfair, but Hero didn't want to risk his brother calling out and rousing the servants. He doubted Eros would provide a truthful answer anyway.
Yet the questions had haunted Hero for more than three thousand days: while he'd paced his cell, while he'd lain in his hammock, while he'd listened to the screams of men as they'd succumbed to insanity's tantalizing promise of freedom.
