"You won't let me live to get out of here. Might as well tell me. Satiating my curiosity could be… fulfilling my last wish." Even as I said it, I knew he wasn't stupid enough to fall for it. He didn't have a pathological need to gloat over his impending victory.

He stood and paced leisurely behind his chair, then to the fire. There was a cut-crystal decanter of amber liquid on the mantel. He poured a glass and offered it to me.

I declined with a motion of my head. "I need to stay dry. I hear you can be dangerous."

"In more ways than you know." He moved toward me and pressed the glass into my palm. "Drink it."

I took the glass. "Is it poisoned? Spiked with holy water?"

"I wouldn't do such a nasty thing to you." He poured himself a drink, as a show of good faith, probably, and sank into his chair. "I do remember you. I remember when you knelt beside my coffin and put your devious hands on it. And I remember how wounded you were when I did not fall into the same trap that my son did. How naive you were, how refreshingly stupid."

"I can't say Cyrus was much better." I couldn't help glancing at the floor. We sat in the very room where I'd first encountered Soul Eater, The room in which I'd killed his son.

"No, Simon was always too headstrong. From the time he killed his brother, I knew it. He could never accept that he wasn't my first choice as fledgling. He would never see the larger scope of my actions, only how they affected him." The Soul Eater shook his head ruefully.

"Talk about not seeing the broader scope! You killed his wives, you didn't care when the only maternal figure in his life burned to death, your goons killed the girl in the desert—"

"What girl in the desert?" Jacob leaned forward, clearly intrigued and… amused? "I hadn't heard about any girl."

"I won't be the one to tell you." The fact I'd even mentioned it disgusted me. "But you can't blame him for becoming blinded to betrayal. After living with you for so long, it probably felt natural."

"Very good, my dear." The Soul Eater laughed, a deep, seductive sound that didn't have the callow edge of his son's. "Well, I did kill a few of his companions. But his first two wives, they killed themselves. And his stepmother, what a useless woman. I suppose he told you his suspicions of me." I glared at him. "Never. When I knew him, he was blinded by his loyalty to you. He acted like the sun shines out of your ass."

"Do you have to be so crude?" Jacob clucked his tongue. "I must say, I'm proud he never spoke ill of me to you. It showed he had at least some sense."