I stared at Irma, wondering who this stranger was, sitting beside me.

Irma's bottom lip glistened with tears, which she wiped away with the tips of her fingers. Even tearful with her dark eyebrows slashed over big mascara-panda eyes, and a blotchy nose and cheeks, she was still gorgeous. Yet, who the fuck was she? Who the fuck had I been dating all that time?

I couldn't believe that she blamed her miscarriage on me. Yet, I could.

I gripped the steering wheel tight. My voice was low and strained. "Before Gratian died he told me you were pregnant. He seemed to believe the baby was his."

Irma's eyes instantly went round and she froze like a startled deer. Stupidly, she had no fucking idea that while there was a lot of yelling and fighting going on out there in the Hemmlok Forest between Gratian and myself, a few hurtful truths had come out. Relationship obliterating truths.

She shook her head, her sleek hair ruffling with the movement. "No...no..."

I continued coldly, dropping down a gear as I advanced on a hairpin bend, "I'm guessing when he'd told you earlier that he didn't want anything further with you but a fuck, you decided to get pregnant with his child on purpose."

"I-I..."

"That's what you wanted all along, to be the matriarch of a House," I spat out callously, spinning the steering wheel and speeding out of the bend. "I'll give it to you, Irma, it was a clever way to trap one of us. And when Gratian died and I inherited the position of heir, you spun it around and suddenly the baby was mine." I tried to stop everything from spitting out of my mouth, but it was all coming out because I was done with her. I countered her attack with one of my own. "Which is it, Irma? Was the baby my brother's or mine?"

Her light brown skin seemed to lose its healthy luster. "Yours," she answered weakly.

I slapped the steering wheel. "Stop lying!"

"Yours!" she cried again, the word rasped out on a sob.

"Stop embarrassing yourself, Irma," I bit back. "You forget I can do math. And there is no fucking way that baby was mine. Because I was away, and even before then, things weren't right between us. You'd discovered that I wasn't going to inherit the position as Head of our House, and interestingly, at the same time that Gratian was named as heir, you went cold on me."

"No baby, you got it wrong, I was busy helping my sister with her wedding plans—"

But I bulldozed over top of her. "After I caught you two fucking, it all made sense why you suddenly didn't want my company before I'd even left for Horned God business. You were busy seducing my brother behind my back."

But it was worse than that, a deeper fear I'd always suspected, one that utterly appalled me. If she could fool Gratian into thinking she was pregnant, why not me? My gaze was iron and resolute when I turned it upon her. "The baby didn't even exist, did it, Irma?"

When I refused to play ball with her and acknowledge the baby as my own, she miscarried four weeks later. It was a shitty thing to suspect someone of such low deceit, but it had been there at the back of my mind from the very get-go.

"Did it Irma?" I bellowed, my icy rage swallowing up the car's interior.

Irma jumped in her seat, shocked and frightened. As soon as I saw her blanch even further and how her gaze skittered away as if she could no longer hold mine, my gut sank as the truth was revealed on her face.

Guilt was heavy in her wavering tone and ugly in her shimmering hazel eyes when they met mine once more. "No. No, it didn't... You were right, Var. I made the baby up." A shaky hand went to her mouth and she sobbed behind it. "I lost myself somewhere along the way. I fell for Gratian, but it was lust not love. When he didn't want anything further to do with me..." She shook her head and lifted a shoulder as if to say—I didn't know what I was doing.

I loosened a despondent sigh through my nose. She still didn't acknowledge the why of it all—her desire for the role of matriarch. And there was absolutely no remorse for blatantly manipulating me into a position of guilt with the fake pregnancy.

"When you walked in on us, I came to my senses. It was as if I'd woken up. I'd done something terrible with Gratian and it was you that I loved, truly loved. I panicked, Var. I hated what I'd done and become, hated that I'd hurt you and ruined everything between us. I couldn't bear it if you left me for good..." Her voice was barely a whisper when she gave me a watery apologetic smile. "I went a bit crazy."

I arched an eyebrow.

Bit crazy? More like mentally disturbed.

"You pretended you were pregnant."

"I know," she wailed.

"Again," I reminded her. "You pretended this time to be pregnant with my child."

"I thought that if you believed you were going to be a father, you'd forgive me for my affair."

"All that shit just now..." I really couldn't believe it, but at the same time, I could. She really was a piece of work. "You tried to guilt trip me into taking you back with a fabricated pregnancy and miscarriage."

She clasped her hands together, pleading with me. "I love you, Varen. I know what I did was wrong, but I do love you."

There was one thing I didn't doubt about Irma, and that was that she did love me. For some perverse reason, she really did. But it was a twisted kind of love, shallow and bland, the only type of warped, insipid love someone like her could possess. And fuck it, I deserved better than Irma Szarvas.

"Gratian might have been an utter asshole for having an affair with you, but he didn't deserve to be manipulated into marriage." Nor did he deserve to die. I rubbed a hand over my face, a bone-tired weariness sinking through me.

"I love you Varen," she cried again in desperation. When I didn't respond, she went on hurriedly to say, "I know that this is all my fault. But I'm not giving up on you, on us."

"I don't want anything to do with you."

"You don't mean that."

"My brother died, Irma. This," I said, waving a finger between us, "what we had, what you did to us, that kind of pain and betrayal was nothing, nothing to losing my brother." I slowed down as we approached the gates to her family's estate. "And lying about being pregnant,"—for fucks sake—"you need fucking help. You also need to accept that we are over," I said quietly and firmly.

I came to a halt in front of the Szarvas's imposing iron gates. They slowly swung open, a grating noise competing with the low purr of the car engine. I shifted gears and coasted through, briefly acknowledging the guards on duty.

A long straight road cut through the forest and we drove through the cool gloom the trees cast over the gravel driveway. The Szarvases were closer to the Heart of the Hemmlok Forest than the other estates, and this part of the forest was old, very old. The trees here were more gnarled and clawed-looking, with moss and lichen creeping up their fissured trunks.

As we traveled closer to her home, silence settled between us, and for a moment I stupidly thought I had her all in place.

Irma finger-combed her hair and dabbed the tears from her face with her handkerchief. Fiddling with the sun visor, she flicked down the mirror and used it to inspect her appearance. Wiping away the mascara tracks from her cheeks, she reapplied lipstick. Pushing the sun visor back up, she smoothed her skirt down and adjusted her posture in the leather car seat. She'd calmed and collected herself to the point it unnerved me.

My gaze shot her way when she began to speak. Not an ounce of trembling emotion remained in her voice that had been there when she'd been outed for her fake pregnancy. She kept her line of sight straight ahead. "This is inevitable, baby. You and me—we're going to marry." She turned toward me and smiled her megawatt smile. "You'll be the Head of Upper House Crowther and I'll be the Matriarch and rule by your side."

I gave her a worried glance.

Irma was acting fucking delusional.

"Get used to disappointment, Irma. It's not going to happen."

"We were meant to be together, baby. No one else can make you as happy as I can." Her eyes shone brightly, too brightly. Her smile got broader and a touch crazier as she patted my upper arm and gave a wistful sigh. "You'll see, Varen. Everything is going to work out just fine between us and we'll go back to the way things were."

Oh, she was fucking delusional.

There was no fucking way I was going to marry her. After I found out what I needed to do for Sirro—whether or not this lingering afterlife, this Kinslayer, remained in the hole in the ground—I was going straight to my father and inform him that under no circumstances was I going to marry Irma Szarvas. Ever. If he wanted to pursue an advancement for our House, we'd find a way of doing that without me being forced to marry.

I was simmering with anger and sorting through a plan of attack when Irma's home came into view. The Szarvases' home was a kastély, an old Hungarian castle they'd transported over here from the old world to be rebuilt when they became a Lower House. The car tires crunched through gravel as I slowly pulled up outside the stately entrance to their home and killed the car's engine.

Irma's family was gathered on the weathered stone steps beneath the graceful arches, alerted I guess as soon as I'd entered the estate. Half of Irma's sisters had married, and there was just Irma, an elder, and younger sister still living at home. I opened my car door and got out, intending to greet her family.

I heard a pointed cough from within the car. Irma sat there, actually waiting for me to round it and open it up for her like a gentleman. It would be a cold day in hells before I did anything chivalrous for Irma Szarvas. I slammed my car door down.

Shooting me a surly look, she pushed up the scissor door to the Bugatti and hastily made her way to her family. Irma fell into Kiran's open arms. "Poppy," she cried into her grandfather's chest as he squeezed her in a tight hug.

Kiran was older than my father, and both he and Jeroen were cut from the same cloth. His rich brown eyes were sharp and calculating when his gaze landed on mine. A smile alighted his thin lips. His complexion, as well as his daughter, Hira's, was a deeper brown than Irma's. Deep grooves in his cheeks bracketed his mouth, which was surrounded by a silver goatee.

Kiran had a special relationship with his granddaughter. He doted on Irma, spoiled her rotten, and in my mind was the reason for the way she was: entitled and expecting everything to be handed to her—like me.

Irma went next to her parents, Hira and Marton, and her sisters fussed over her as well.

I shoved my hands in the pockets of my armored jacket, feeling uncomfortable because I'd pretty much dumped Irma's family when I'd dumped Irma. Though in the past, I'd spent a lot of time here with her family and we got on alright, they'd never been especially fond of the idea that Irma was set on marrying a Crowther. And Kiran had always been a little harder on me than Marton. So it surprised me when he strode right up to me, gripped my hand in a warm handshake, and gave my shoulder a heartfelt slap. "It's good to see you back here, Varen," he said, beaming. "Congratulations."

I squinted at him, the word rolling around in my head.

Congratulations.

My gaze shot to Irma and both of us shared a brief, bewildered look.

"Huh?" I said to Kiran because I could be an obtuse idiot at times.

"On the union of our two Houses," he explained, his bushy silver eyebrows nudging together. "I suppose..." he said, glancing over his shoulder at his granddaughter and leaning his upper body forward as he said a little quieter, "that it wasn't the right time for you two to announce it to everyone at the Deniauds'. Not with that dreadfulness that went on with Jurgana."

And still, I blinked and looked at him as if he was speaking a different language. I wasn't grasping what was going on, but I fucking felt how off it was.

I darted a look at Irma, who seemed to put two and two together faster than I did. A cold feeling spider walked down my spine as I watched her puzzled expression morph into understanding and then a flare of victory made the blue hues in her hazel eyes glow almost luminescent. Her mouth curved up with a smug smile that rounded her cheeks. And she gave me a look that said—she owned me.

"If you'd arrived an hour ago, you'd have met your father," Kiran said in his gritty voice, dragging my attention back to him as he started heading up the stone steps to the grand entrance of his home. "We could have celebrated properly, a small informal gathering of course before you hosted a grand affair and invited all the Houses."

I hurried to catch up. My mouth went dry, and when I swallowed it was like choking down sandpaper. "My father was here?

Why the fuck was my father here?"

He stopped walking and frowned at me as if perplexed why I'd be asking. "To sign the Contract of Intention of course. There was a lot to go through and agree upon. There are still a few finer details to go over between Marton and Jeroen, but it's a beginning at least." He swiveled around to his daughter, Hira. "Seems you're going to be busy planning yet another wedding, Hira."

I think my heart stopped right there and then.

And then my pulse erupted into a panicked beat that grew more maniac and wild when Kiran placed his weathered hand upon my shoulder and squeezed. "I couldn't be more pleased to have you as a grandson-in-law, Varen."

He let go of me as soon as Irma ducked into his side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, leaned down, and placed a kiss on the crown of her head. "Congratulations my dear, you'll make a beautiful bride." And to us both he said, "I have no doubt at all that you'll have a splendid life together."

It seemed as if the ground tipped and rolled and pitched beneath me as I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that my father had gone behind my back and sold me out.

I was going to fucking kill him.