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“Come in,” Bella called out.

Rehv opened the way into the nursery slowly, unsure of the welcome he was going to get.

Across a room that had bunnies stenciled on the walls, Bella was sitting in a rocking chair, her foot working against the carpet, her young cradled in her arms. In spite of the tender treatment, though, Nalla was not happy, her fussy, whimpering dissatisfaction at the world painfully apparent.

“Hi,” Rehv said before his sister looked over. “It’s me.”

Bella’s blue eyes rose to meet his, and he watched her face go through all kinds of emotions. “Hi.”

“Mind if I come in?”

“Please do.”

He closed the door behind himself and then wondered if she wouldn’t feel safe shut in with him. He went to reopen it, but she stopped him.

“It’s okay.”

He wasn’t so sure of that, so he stayed across the room from her, watching as Nalla registered his presence. And reached out for him.

A month ago, a lifetime ago, he would have gone over and taken the young into his arms. Not now. Probably not ever again.

“She’s so fussy today,” Bella said. “And once again my feet are tired. I can’t walk around with her in my arms for even a minute longer.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long silence as they both focused on the young.

“I never knew about you,” Bella said eventually. “I never would have guessed.”

“I didn’t want you to know. Neither did Mahmen.” As the words left his lips, he said a quick, silent prayer for their mother, hoping that she would forgive him for the fact that the dark, horrible secret was now known. The thing was, though, life had played out as it had, the revelation not his to control.

God knew he’d taken his best shot at keeping the veil of lies in place.

“Was she…How did it happen?” Bella asked in a small voice. “How did…you…happen?”

Rehvenge thought about how to phrase things, tried out some lines in his head, changed words and added new ones. The image of his mother’s face kept intruding, though, and in the end he just looked at his sister and slowly shook his head from side to side. As Bella paled, he knew she had guessed the gist of it all. Symphaths had been known to snatch females from the general population before. Particularly the beautiful, refined ones.

That was part of the reason the sin-eaters ended up in that colony.

“Oh, God…” Bella closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He wanted so badly to go to her. So very badly.

When she opened her lids again, she brushed away tears and then straightened her shoulders as if she were gathering strength.

“My father…” She cleared her throat. “Did he mate her knowing the truth about you?”

“Yes.”

“She never loved him. At least, not that I saw.” When Rehv stayed silent, because he was not going to go into that mating if he could help it, she frowned. “If he knew about you…did he threaten to expose her and you unless she committed to him?”

Rehv’s silence seemed to be enough of an answer, because his sister nodded tightly. “That makes more sense to me. It makes me very angry…but I can see why she stayed with him now.” There was a hard pause. “What else aren’t you telling me, Rehvenge.”

“Listen, what happened in the past—”

“Is my life!” As the young squawked, Bella lowered her voice. “It’s my life, goddamn it. A life that everyone else around me knew more about than I did. So you’d better fucking tell me everything, Rehvenge. If you want us to have any relationship at all, you’d better tell me everything.”

Rehv exhaled hard. “What do you want to know first.”

His sister swallowed hard. “That night my father died…I took Mahmen to the clinic. I took her because she had fallen down.”

“I remember.”

“She didn’t fall down, did she.”

“No.”

“Not once.”

“No.”

Bella eyes shimmered, and as if to distract herself, she tried to capture one of Nalla’s falling fists. “Did you…that night, did you…”

He didn’t want to answer the unfinished question, but he was through with lying to his nearest and dearest. “Yes. Sooner or later he would have killed her. It was him or Mahmen.”

A tear