Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [173]
She should have known. Just as she could sense his mhis . . . he could feel and find hers.
And how she wished he had just kept going. The last thing she needed was another round of a male figure of “authority” telling her what she had to do. Besides, the king had already laid down the law. It wasn’t as if Wrath’s decree needed buttressing from the likes of her brother.
She put her hand up to stop him before he said one word about Manuel. “I am not interested in your telling me what our king already has. And I was just leaving.”
“Is he scrubbed.”
She kicked up her chin. “No, he is not. He took me out and there was an . . . incident—”
The snarl her brother released was louder than the wind. “What did he do to—”
“Not him. Fates, will you just . . . stop hating him.” As she rubbed her temples, she wondered if anyone’s head had actually ever exploded—or whether everybody on earth just felt that way from time to time. “We were attacked by a human and in the process of disarming him—”
“The human?”
“Yes—in the process of that, I hurt the man and the police were called—”
“You disarmed a human?”
Payne glared at her twin. “When you remove a gun from someone, that is what it is called, is it not.”
Vishous’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. It is.”
“I could not scrub Manuel’s memories because he would not have been able to field the questions put to him from the police. And I am here . . . because I wanted to see him home safely.”
In the silence that followed, she realized she had just backed herself into a corner. By having to protect Manuel, she had just proven her twin’s point that the male she wanted could not take care of her. Oh, but what did it matter. Given that she was prepared to obey the king, there was no future for her and Manuel anyway.
When Vishous went to open his mouth, she moaned and put her hands to her ears. “If you have any compassion at all, you will leave me to mourn here alone. I cannot listen to all the reasons I must needs separate myself from him—I know them all. Please. Just go.”
Closing her eyes, she turned away and prayed to their mother above that he would do as she asked—
The hand on her shoulder was weighty and warm. “Payne. Payne, look at me.”
With no energy left to fight, she dropped her arms and met his grim eyes.
“Answer me one thing,” her twin said.
“What.”
“Do you love the bas—him. Do you love him?”
Payne looked back through the glass at the human on the bed. “Yes. I am in love with him. And if you try to dissuade me by the fact that I have not lived yet enough to judge, I say unto you . . . fuck off. I need not know the world to realize my heart’s desire.”
There was a long silence. “What did Wrath say?”
“The same thing you would. That I must erase myself from his memory and never, ever see him again.”
When her brother did not say anything further, she shook her head. “Why are you still here, Vishous. Are you trying to think of what to say to get me to go home? Let me save you the effort—when dawn comes, I shall go—and I shall abide by the rules, but not because it is good for you or the king or myself. It is because it’s safest for him—he does not need enemies such as yourself and the Brotherhood to torture him just because I feel as I do. So it will be done just as you wish. Except”—at this, she glared at him—“I will not scrub him. His mind is too valuable to waste—and it cannot withstand another episode. I shall keep him safe by ne’er coming here again, but I will not condemn him to a life of dementia. That is not going to happen—he has done nothing but help me. He deserves better than to be used and discarded.”
Payne returned her eyes to the glass.
And after a long while of silence, she assumed that her twin had left. So she nearly screamed when he stepped in front of her and blocked the view of Manuel.
“Are you still here,” she snapped.
“I’ll take care of it for you.”
Payne recoiled and then growled, “Do not you dare think of killing him—”
“With Wrath. I’ll take care of it. I’ll . .