“You’re very forgiving,” I said, feeling all the anger he didn’t over the greedy guards’ actions.

“They didn’t betray me.” Steel edged his voice now. “I reserve my anger for the ones who did. I didn’t accidentally end up at the prison the night of the switch. I was led there under false pretenses. You see, my father was also Ian’s father, but Viscount Maynard only considered Ian worthy of saving since he was his legitimate heir. I was merely the regrettable result of a dalliance between him and his former scullery maid. Still, we were nearly the same age and we looked similar enough, so Viscount Maynard knew he could get away with the switch.”

I closed my eyes. Such cruel class distinctions had faded in recent centuries, but I well remembered when they had meant the difference between life and death. “I’m sorry. That was unforgivable of him.”

“I thought so, too,” he said dryly. “Especially when he convinced my mother to go along with it.” At my sharp intake of breath, he added, “Her initial betrayal was at least understandable. My father threatened to turn her and her new husband out into the street. They were his tenants, so he had the power to evict them, and it was winter. If the cold didn’t kill them, starvation would, and she was pregnant to boot.”

“What a monster,” I said with hatred. One of the true joys of my job was serving justice to people like Viscount Maynard.

“Yes, which was why my ma stayed quiet.” He paused for a moment. When he spoke again, his tone was rougher. “What I didn’t find out until much later was that after the switch, she couldn’t bear it and told the magistrates. My father dismissed it as the ravings of a madwoman and spent more money silencing anyone who might believe her. Then he evicted them as promised. She died from pneumonia before the babe was born. I didn’t know, of course. I was shipped away by then. For nearly two decades, I hated her for her betrayal, and that whole time, she was dead because she’d tried to save me.”

I closed my eyes. Few things were as crushing as the weight of a loved one’s death. That weight was only made heavier when compounded by guilt. I’d ripped myself to pieces wondering if there was anything I could have done to pull Tenoch back from the darkness that caused him to take his own life. From the pain in Ian’s tone and the way his body braced as if absorbing invisible blows, he was still punishing himself over his mother’s death and his mistaken hatred of her.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Those words had been said to me many times about Tenoch. I hadn’t believed them, but I’d still needed to hear them. Maybe Ian did now, too.

A scoff left him. “I didn’t throw her out to die, but I did almost everything else. I should have been the one screaming about the switch all the way from the jailhouse to the penal colonies. But my father told me no one would believe me, and I was cowed by his position, the guards in his pocket, and the belief that I, a commoner, couldn’t triumph over my ‘betters,’ as the gentry was seen back then. So I stayed quiet.”

“You might not have been able to win,” I said gently. “Courts favored the rich and powerful then.” They still did, far too much. “Plus, your father was a ruthless man. He probably would’ve had you silenced if you’d spoken out.”

“What did playing it safe and deferring to those in authority get me?” he countered sharply. “A murder sentence, a hellish imprisonment, and a dead mum I’d hated before I found out that she’d been far braver than I.”

So many things about him made sense now. I’d wondered how someone so loyal and honorable at his core could also be such a hell-raising, law-breaking, manipulating bastard. Now I knew. Ian had molded himself into the exact opposite of the man he’d been back then because he blamed that man for his imprisonment and his mother’s death. Was that also why Ian would die for his friends, but he continually kept them at arm’s length? Did he not believe that he deserved their love, too?

I wasn’t going to push by asking. When someone showed you their scars, you didn’t poke at them to see which one hurt the most. “Tell me your father paid for what he did,” I said instead. “Tell me he died violently and painfully.”

He let out an appreciative sound at the vehemence in my tone. “Two decades later, when I returned to London, I interrogated him to find out the rest of what happened. Then I tore his throat out.”

Good. “What about your brother?”

He sighed. “I didn’t have to kill him. Oh, I wanted to since he was thrilled about the jailhouse switch despite our being friendly for a bastard and an heir. But Ian’s brush with the law and our father shipping him to relatives in France wasn’t enough to curb his sadistic ways. Eventually, he murdered the wrong prostitute and was killed by her lover.”

Justice served, I thought, but kept that to myself, too. “After you escaped the penal colony, you decided to keep the name that had been forced on you. Why?”

He was silent for so long, I was about to withdraw the question. But then he said, “I suppose for the same reason my mate Charles calls himself Spade—the tool he was assigned back then. Some things, you never want to forget lest you lose the lesson learned with them. My lesson was realizing who I was. Thought I knew when times were easy, but it’s who you are when things are at their worst that’s the real truth. It’s why I enjoy pain, in point of fact. You either feel it or you don’t—no lies, no broken trust, and no self-delusion. Back then, I thought I wasn’t a murderer like my brother. Turns out, I was. When I accepted that, I kept Ian’s name as a reminder.”

“Who did you murder?” I asked softly.

I felt him rest his head on his arm. I wanted to turn around, but I stayed facing the other way. Maybe he needed the illusion of privacy now the way I had before.

“The prison colony overseer. He fancied me, and he was a nasty sod who didn’t bother about my failing to return his interest. After the third or fourth rape”—his shoulder lifted in a shrug, as if the number no longer mattered to him—“I decided to kill him. Knew I’d hang for it, but I didn’t care. One night, I lured him outside the camp under the guise of wanting his attentions. Then I slit his throat and ran. Thought the other guards would catch me, but when days passed and they didn’t, I knew I’d gotten away. Then I knew it didn’t matter. I was going to die anyway. You’ve heard the rest of the story.”

Yes. Mencheres had found him and Ian’s boundless loyalty to his sire had been born. “Thank you for answering my question,” I said in a steady voice. “But I disagree with your reason for keeping your brother’s name. You weren’t a murderer like he was. You were an avenger of wrongs. If I were the one choosing your name back then, I would’ve picked Aequitas.”

“The Latin concept for justice?” I felt him laugh, then I felt the brush of his lips on my back. “Sometimes, little Guardian, you are truly adorable. I am as far from ‘just’ as a person can be. I would have only agreed to that if I were being ironic.”

“Like me calling myself the Latin word for truth, when everything about me is a lie?” I noted.

His laugh was lower now. “Yes, and I take my hat off to you. I thought I was a rebel, but you are the very definition of the word.”