"Tell him to let me meet Father once."
For a moment, Aiden simply stared at Arina.
The night air was cold, but the tension between them was colder still.
Aiden's exhausted face hardened as her words sank in. His first instinct was to tell her to get lost. Arthur was not even here, and even if he were, Aiden had no intention of going to him with a request from the Imperius family.
Not after everything they had done.
Not after what Arthur had been forced to endure.
Aiden still remembered the day he and his friends had been captured by the Imperius family guards. The suffocating pressure. The humiliation. The fear that they might never escape alive.
And yet, compared to Arthur, Aiden knew they had only seen a small part of the cruelty hidden behind the Imperius name.
Aiden narrowed his eyes.
"Tell me one good reason why I should help you," he said. "Why should I trouble Arthur after everything your family put him through?"
Arina's body stiffened.
