Casadin led Hades back down to his penthouse one floor below. Once they were inside, he went straight to the liquor cabinet, took out a bottle of rum and two glasses, then returned to the living room where Hades was already sitting on the couch, tense and silent.
Casadin poured rum into both glasses, handed one to Hades, and took the seat across from him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Casadin looked down at the amber liquid in his glass and finally broke the silence.
"I told her not to tell you about the mate bond," he said.
His voice was low, but there was no softness in it.
"I told her that if she told you about us being bonded while she still had no idea what triggered her to mark me, it would only cause problems. I told her to hold on to that information until we learned what the trigger was or until she figured out how to do it on her own." Casadin lifted his eyes and looked straight at Hades. "Because I know you, Hades."
He leaned back, his jaw tightening.
"Even if Vee gave you all the valid reasons in the world, you still would not believe her if she could not mark you too. You would think it was her choice not to mark you. Because your brain is fucked up that way. You only see what you want to see. Most of the time, all you can see is what you do not have, without even bothering to look at the good behind anything."
Hades' face darkened, but Casadin kept going.
"You hated Gramps because he was always strict with you growing up. You thought he was suffocating you. You always wished... though you kept it to yourself... that he had never adopted you. That you had never become a Falcon. You thought you would have been happier."
Casadin laughed once, bitterly.
"But you never stopped to think about how many children in that orphanage... and even people in our own circle... would have made a deal with the devil just to be given the life you hated while growing up. You never saw that Gramps was hard on you because he wanted you to live up to the Falcon name. Because he wanted you to be worthy of it. Because he wanted you to stand tall in front of the people who would one day try to tear you down and use the fact that you were adopted to hurt you."
He took a drink from his glass, then slowly swirled the rum after.
"All you ever saw was your own suffering. You never bothered to see the struggle of the people around you who were trying their best for you. That is why I was so sure you would never be able to accept it if you learned that Vee and I were bonded."
Casadin stared into his drink for a second before speaking again.
"But despite everything I said, Vee still wanted to be honest with you. Because she trusted you. Because she trusted that you trusted her. And because she believed you would be hurt even more if we kept it from you until we learned the truth about what triggers the marking." His mouth curled in a humorless smile. "Because she thought that if we hid the mate bond and you found out later, you would start overthinking again. You would doubt yourself again. So she took the risk and held on to the fact that you knew how much she loves you... and that if she could, she would have marked you already."
Casadin let out a mocking little chuckle.
"But I was right. Because the truth is, Hades… you do not trust Vee. You do not trust her love."
"That's not true," Hades cut in sharply.
His voice rose at once, his jaw clenching hard.
"I love her more than anyone else in this world. You have no right to question my love for her."
"I am not questioning your love," Casadin shot back, his own voice rising now. "I know you love her. But love is different from trust. You love her, but you do not trust her."
"No..."
"Yes!" Casadin shouted, slamming his glass down on the table so hard the liquor splashed. "That is the truth, Hades, and you cannot see it because you are too busy doubting yourself. Too busy questioning your place in her life. But what you never stopped to realize is that every time you doubt yourself, every time you question your place in her life, you are also doubting her."
Hades shot to his feet.
"You do not understand what I'm feeling, that's why you can say all this," he shouted. "You are not in my shoes."
And with that, he hurled the glass of rum across the room.
It shattered violently against the wall.
Casadin rose too, fury already burning in his eyes.
"She chose you, Hades!" he shouted back. "She chose to be with you! She chose to forget how much of an asshole you were to her the first day you met! She chose to forget how much you hated her even when she never did anything wrong to you! She chose you despite the fact that there was a time you tried to hurt her for another woman's sake! She chose you because, to her, you were worth choosing! Is that still not enough reason for you?!"
Then Casadin threw his own glass at the wall too.
It exploded beside the first one, shards and liquor splashing down together.
"Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm not in your shoes. Maybe I don't know what you're feeling." Casadin's voice rose again, sharp and shaking with anger. "But what about you, Hades? Did you even stop for one second to think about what Vee is feeling?"
He took a step forward, fury pouring out of him now.
"Did it ever occur to you that while you were in pain, she was in pain too? That even while you were literally hurting her, she was hurting even more because she knew you were hurting and she couldn't do anything about it? She didn't know how to ease your pain." His eyes were blazing. "But of course you didn't see that. Because the only thing you cared about was that you are in pain. You never stopped long enough to look at her pain."
Casadin laughed once, bitterly, then dragged a hand through his hair.
"She's being torn apart between the two of us, Hades!" he shouted. "She's different when she's alone with me. She's different when she's alone with you. And she's even more different when all three of us are together. She can't laugh as much as she wants when you're with us because she's worried you'll feel out of place. She can't talk to you too deeply about certain things because she's worried I'll feel out of place."
His voice cracked with rage and grief.
"We are tearing her apart, and we're both too selfish... too much of a pair of assholes... to let her go!"
He moved so fast Hades barely saw it.
Casadin grabbed both sides of Hades' shirt collar and hauled him forward. Now taller than Hades, stronger than him, Casadin nearly lifted him off his feet.
"You're supposed to be the smarter one between us," he hissed. "So why can't you see it? This is what we wanted, remember? You begged me so you could have her too. I told you I would never let her go, so we agreed not to make her choose between us."
His grip tightened.
"So why?" Casadin demanded. "Why are you making her choose now? We were supposed to make this easy for her. We were supposed to keep our pain to ourselves because there are two of us in her life. We were supposed to suck it up." His voice thundered through the room. "So tell me, Hades... why are we tearing her apart?"
Then his voice dropped.
It was lower now. More dangerous. More wounded.
And when Hades looked at him, he saw tears gathering in Casadin's eyes.
"Tell me," Casadin said again, almost pleading now beneath the anger. "Why are we hurting her? Why are we making her doubt herself? Why are we making her question her love for us? Why is she blaming herself for our pain?"
With a hard shove, Casadin pushed Hades away. Not enough to send him sprawling, but enough to make him stumble back.
"Do you know what happened to me when I felt her pain earlier?" Casadin asked.
Hades said nothing.
"I thought I'd been hit by a wrecking ball out of nowhere. No warning. I thought I was going to black out. I doubled over from it." Casadin wiped at his face roughly, angry at the tears falling anyway. "That punch I gave you earlier? That was nothing compared to the pain I felt."
His voice broke.
"And it was her pain I felt, Hades. The pain you caused because your narrow, fucked-up brain refused to accept that marking me was not her choice."
The tears fully spilled then, and Casadin stopped fighting them.
"I thought we were going to make her happy, Hades," he said hoarsely. "There are two of us loving her, so shouldn't all she feel be happiness? Then why is she crying right now just because she was able to mark me but couldn't do the same for you?"
He laughed bitterly through his tears.
"Do you know what the first thing she asked me was after we realized the mate bond?" Casadin demanded. "She asked me what I felt about her being with you."
He pressed a hand against his own chest.
"We're bonded, Hades. Bonded. And yet the first thing on her mind was what that bond would do to the three of us. I should have been the only one in her heart and mind. Like she was the only one in mine. That's how a mate bond is supposed to feel."
He shook his head, smiling without humor.
"You were not even bonded to her, and yet you still had that place in her heart... when the mate bond should have erased it. She should have been all over me, the way I wanted to be all over her. But no. She wanted to go to you. She wanted to tell you about the bond."
Casadin stepped closer again, his voice raw.
"So why? Why did it ever enter your head that she loves me more than she loves you?"
His eyes locked onto Hades'.
"Marking me was not her choice. It just happened. She didn't even know it was happening. But coming to you? Spending time with you? Choosing you again and again, even without a bond forcing it?" He pointed a trembling finger toward Hades' chest. "That was her choice."
His final words came out almost like a curse.
"So why can't you see it? Why can't you see that the mate bond between me and her changed nothing between her and you?"
Hades had no answer.
No defense.
No anger left.
Because every word Casadin had said was true.
He had only ever felt his own pain. Not once had he stopped to truly think that Evadne was in pain too.
Evadne was not the selfish one.
He was.