Page 75 of A Soul to Embrace

“It felt... wrong. Being the one to explain all this to her, it didn’t sit well with me. It’s not a male’s place. You were the onlyperson I could think of who I trusted enough to reveal I’m still alive.”

“Is it because she likes you?”

His face twitched in a subtle flinch, and he darted his gaze to her. “What makes you say that?”

Her lips thinned. “Don’t play coy with me, young man. She explained what she can remember from her heat cycle, how you held her. You knew then, didn’t you?”

Jabez rolled his eyes away from her. “Young man, old man. Pick one.”

She reached up and dared to grab one of his horns, yanking him to look at her. “Do you feel the same?”

His nose wrinkled as his features twisted into a cringe. “Absolutely not.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, the red of them much brighter than his own. “Then why did you bring her here? Had you truly been indifferent, you would have boasted your knowledge like a suave fool. You remember, I wastherewhen you taught Merikh. You know Mavka better than anyone.”

He opened his mouth to refute her, but closed it. He couldn’t deny it. He also wouldn’t admit to anything possibly damning.

“I have my reasons.” At the fucking look she gave him through her lowered eyelids, he palmed his face. “What do you want me to say? That I’ve seen what happens when a Mavka isn’t taught? That withholding the information would only lead her to danger, and being unable to explain it would just be pure negligence on my part?”

“Well, that’s a start.” She looked down at her lap before lifting her gaze to her garden, then shifted it to the left to scan the trees.

It was obvious she wanted to ask him something but held back because it would upset him.

“Oh, just ask,” he sneered. “You have no problem being a nosy little pest, so why start now?”

“Does...” She paused to nibble at her bottom lip. “Does this have anything to do withKaterina?” Fayren whispered her name, as if that would make it less impactful.

His mouth flattened into a hard line as he narrowed his eyes into a deep glare. But not at her, at the damn tomato plant.

Oh, screw it.It was better he talked about it, and if it had to be someone, at least it was her. She had been a sort of councillor for him, since she was one of the very few he’d sharedsomedetails with pertaining to his crazed thoughts.

Making sure his tone came across as deadened, he answered, “Yes, it has to do with her.”

“Because of what happened to her?”

That was one way to put it, but also entirely inaccurate. “It’s more what she did.”

“How so? From what I understand, she was rather outspoken about how that Mavka traumatised her.”

“What happened between Katerina and Orpheus is far more complicated than that.” With his hands between his spread thighs, he tossed his palms up. “There’s no denying how she was hurt. What happened was unfair to anyone. She was taken from her home, kept within the Veil, unable to escape, and was essentially stuck with someone she despised. I spent a hundred and eighty-seven years helping her through it, and she truly never healed. Nothing could save her mind from it.”

Jabez looked up at the night sky and let a sigh fall from him. He wished the stars held answers, but they’d always been silent and unchanging.

“But she wasn’t innocent. She was a victim, while also being a perpetrator who refused to accept her own wrongdoings.”

“I don’t understand,” Fayren said, her brows furrowing. “From what she told everyone–”

“It’s only half the truth, and her version of what happened,” he said to cut her off, refusing to look away from the stars. “Likeyou said, I know Mavka. Merikh taught me all I needed to know about the earlier stages of their life cycle. They’re essentially bumbling, uneducated morons who don’t know their tail from their damn horns. And it’sworsewhen they lack humanity.”

He finally turned away from the sky with a frown marring his features.

“Consenting to something when you have no idea what you’re doing is no consent at all. If Orpheus was anything like Merikh, he’d likely never seen his own dick before, let alone known where to fuckingstickit. And I know... I watched them for a long time before I took her away from him, and he was only a little more intelligent than Merikh when I first met him.”

Orpheus had obtained far more humanity than when Jabez had met Zylah, enough to talk in somewhat broken and simple English. Someone had been teaching him, and he was sure Katerina had a small hand in that, but his knowledge had been limited.

Maybe Jabez was a little sensitive to this due to being a male himself, but he had his own thoughts regarding what happened – and because of the truth she’d shared with him.

“Whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not, or just simply couldn’t accept that she’d done it, Katerina essentially groomed Orpheus by denying him that knowledge, by refusing to educate him. If he was anything like Merikh’s earlier stages... then his mind was the equivalent comprehension level of a child, or at the very least, an intelligent dog.”

---