Betrayals Read Online Free Page B

ruined.”
    “You seem to think that ignoring the truth will make it go away,” Rion observed, wishing it were possible to throw off the lethargy holding him in place. “Your former ‘darling boy’ has ceased to exist, and the man he has become detests you and all you stand for. If not for whatever I’ve been drugged with, I would walk from this house without a single backward glance.”
    “To do what?” Mother challenged with a sound of ridicule. “You haven’t a single copper of your own, and you’re completely incapable of earning anything to support yourself. You would be reduced to begging in the streets, and everyone who saw you would laugh. Do you want to be laughed at? As a child, you hated when it happened….”
    “Do you mean when you arranged for it to happen?” Rion said, taking advantage of the way her voice had trailed off in an effort to humiliate him without words. “Yes, Mother, I have finally figured out that all my difficulties with people were caused by you. It left me no one but you to turn to for companionship, which was precisely the result you were after.”
    “You don’t need anyone’s companionship but mine,” she grated, once again less than pleased. “But that doesn’t mean I caused those incidents. It’s painful to say this to you, my dear, but your… clumsiness and lack of personality precipitated those discomfitures. You simply weren’t able to cope, and all I did was sympathize and support you. If that’s the sort of thing you wish to blame me for, please feel free to do so. A loving mother is always willing to be of whatever help she can be?”
    “I find it difficult to believe that at one time I would have been swayed by that sort of nonsense,” Rion remarked, ignoring the nobly suffering expression on her face. “This drug allows me nothing in the way of strong emotions, of course, but even beyond that your claims are patently absurd. Someone who is incapable is incapable all the time, not simply when one particular person is about. Tell me what has become of my friends.”
    “I forbid you to mention low, vulgar peasants in my presence again,” she said coldly with a gesture of dismissal. “If it had been up to me, those who ruined my darling boy would have suffered a good deal more than they shall… And I will have my darling back again, even if I must use something other than persuasion to see it done.”
    “If you’re waiting for me to ask what that something is, you’re being absurd again,” Rion said, trying to find the energy to at least think about struggling against the drug. “Your threats will never frighten me again, so you’d best resign yourself to not having your own way this time.”
    “Indeed?” she said, the sleekness enough to have made Rion extremely uneasy had he been free of the drug. “But I always have my own way, unless some vindictive sneak exercises his greater power behind my back. If I’d known Embisson Ruhl was behind your having been stolen away from me … but no matter. I’ve already taken steps to even the score with him. He’ll have as much pain as I had at your loss … But we were discussing methods other than gentle persuasion for gaining what I refuse to do without.”
    This time Rion said nothing, principally to underscore his lack of interest. He truly felt that being dead would be preferable to remaining a prisoner for as long as his mother lived, something she needed to understand and believe.
    “The physician told me something rather interesting,” Mother continued in the purr that showed she was at her most vindictive. “The sedative you’re being given is called hilsom powder, and I was warned not to keep you on it too long. Another day or two will be enough to be certain that your Air magic talent is ruined beyond repair, but then you must be taken off it or there could be … mind damage. Are you able to appreciate what that means?”
    “Mind damage,” Rion echoed, a faint chill actually touching