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“You loved that place”

“I’d worked in the kitchen since I was ten It washis hand over hers where she’d placed it on his heart, he took a breath infused with aching memory “Not that it mattered—by that point, the debts were so substantial that a sale would’ve left us homeless paupers”

Tears wet on his sisters’ cheeks

White-faced shock in the faces of those of his brothers who’d been old enough to comprehend the dire reality

His rief-stricken wails

“As the eldest son, I had to make the choice, and the only choice I could make that would save the alone in the inn’s kitchen, the accounts open in front of him and his heart cold with realization

“How?” Holly frowned “Vaet a payout until after the century of service”

“Neha was a fa for Venoave the inn such cachet that, had the inn been rim financial straits “I spoke to her about our situation in the aftermath of my father’s death—”

“Hold on” Holly’s eyes ide “You just rocked up to speak to an archangel while you were still a mortal? Funny, you don’t look demented”

His lips kicked up “The first ti at the inn because she’d heard good things about it from her squadrons, I’d just turned seventeen and I’ainst each other” Never in his life had he been near anyone who burned with such violent power “But when she kept dropping bywell, a chef has his own arrogance—and what seventeen-year-old boy wouldn’t be puffed up with self-iel’s open pleasure in his creations?”

Laughing in an affectionate way that told him she saw the boy he’d once been, Holly said, “So by the ti with her?”

Venorief—I had become a person to her, not just another mortal who’d exist then die in an immortal heartbeat” He wasn’t so certain she’d been truly aware of anyone else in his family “When I told her our situation, she reiterated her invitation for me to become a vampire—and offered to advance me three quarters of h to cover the debts and keep the inn going”

The Queen of Poisons had also authorized the Making of the woed by Venom’s father just teeks prior to his death And that choice, to become a vampire or not, had been solely Aneera’s No one would’ve held a broken betrothal against her, not in those circuered for near-immortality, been ecstatic at the chance

“Say what you will about Neha,” Veno of the horrific torture of his actual Making, “but she is not ungenerous Not human in any sense, but not evil, either”

“And after you sold yourself into bondage for your family,” Holly bit out, “they turned their backs on you?” It was a cutting denunciation

Shaking his head, Venoh her hair “They weren’t sophisticated folk, Holly They didn’t know so like me could exist”

“Bullshit” Holly’s tone took no prisoners “My parents didn’t know My sister didn’t Neither did my brothers And yet you’ve witnessed how they treatand you’re allowed to be angry”

Venom went motionless

All this time, all these centuries and he hadn’t adrief that he carried deep within, but a prier that the people he should’ve been able to trust without compunction had forsaken him in his darkest hour

Releasing a shuddering breath, he gripped Holly’s hip hard and said, “Yes, I’ heat inside hi ones, I don’t blame Mohan was only five Later, when he was an old man, he made overtures He wanted to see his bhai, introduce o”

Venom fisted his hand in Holly’s hair as the h him “I’d seen too h the decades and I watched their pyres burn one by one, until one, and I was the only one left”

Tears burned his eyes, tears he’d never allowed to fall

Holly tucked his head gently down to her shoulder, saying nothing, just holding him And then, the ht as cold as the snakes that marked his eyes, cried tears that were very much human

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