Chapter 5
Sirus held up the hem of his shirt as Rath inspected the small, raw wound at his stomach. He barely registered the slice of pain when the gūl grazed his claw at the edge.
“It will take time,” Rath said, straightening himself up to his full height, which was nearly a solid foot above Sirus. “You know, injuries from D?kk blades are harder to heal. You’re lucky he didn’t take proper aim.”
Aldor had barely gotten the chance to stick him in the stomach, let alone anywhere else. However, Sirus knew what Rath meant. The blade had lodged only in muscle. If it had struck an organ, he never would have made it out of the Hall of Reflections. D?kk weapons were rare in the world, but most creatures knew them. Unlike other enchanted weapons, injuries from their dark blades didn’t heal. Not as they should. The process was slow. Painful. If the damage was too severe, survival was unlikely. Sirus assumed the only reason Aldor hadn’t tried harder was because of the poison. He remembered the smug look on the creature’s face as blood spread over his lips. He’d thought Sirus a dead vampire standing.
Once he’d finished redressing the wound, Rath took the chair opposite Sirus before the fire of his study. Ra’thruraak was far older than the Clan of Wolves. How much older, no one knew. All that was known was that he hailed from the Shadow Dark, a vile realm beyond the mortal plane full of dark creatures referred to as gūl. He’d lived amongst the D?kk before their destruction. A slave stolen from another realm to do their bidding. With the fall of the D?kk, Rath had lost his only way home. He was trapped here. How exactly he came to be with the clan, Sirus did not know, but he’d been here nearly since the beginning. To the Clan of Wolves, the gūl was a mentor. A teacher.
“It’s good to see Niah again,” Rath began. “And your acquaintances are amusing.”
Amusing. Tiresome, more like. Though Barith and Levian hadn’t been up to their usual antics since the mirrors. No stone-shattering fights or drunken parties had ensued, at least as far as he was aware. Barith had spent much of his time watching over Gwendolyn, and Levian was locked away in her rooms or the library. He’d not seen Niah since the mirrors, but he assumed she was lingering around the upper floor of the west wing as she used to.
“You’ve not found them too tedious?” Sirus asked.
“Not at all,” Rath replied casually. “It’s been some time since I’ve had the excuse to cook. I’ve found their presence rather pleasant.”
Sirus was surprised but in part relieved. Outsiders had rarely been granted entrance to Volkov. No one outside the clan had entered its halls in centuries. Having several strangers within their walls was an adjustment, to put it mildly.
“How do you fare?” Rath asked in return.
Sirus took a moment before he answered, “I live.”
“You do, indeed.” Rath’s crimson eyes didn’t shift from his. “You wish otherwise?”
Sirus’s jaw clenched. He’d followed Gwendolyn out of the darkness. Of all the actions he regretted, that choice was not one of them. “No.”
“She is quite unique,” Rath noted. “Your Gwendolyn.” Sirus’s blood thickened at the mere mention of her; he tensed at the possessive phrasing. She was not his anything. In fact, she’d made it quite clear in the forest she didn’t wish to be anything to him. The sting of her words still lingered like a pestering insect bite, but he pushed past the memory and focused on the task at hand. He and Rath had kept their conversations brief since his return to Volkov. It was time for them to speak candidly.
“What do you know of her?” Sirus pressed him. “Of her magicks?”
Rath was a creature from another realm. Intuitive and experienced in ways he’d never divulged. Sirus had not told anyone, but after Gwendolyn’s display in London, his first instinct had been to bring her here to Volkov. To see Rath. A part of him still regretted he’d not done exactly that.
The ancient creature smirked, revealing several stark-white, pointed teeth. “I know nothing.” Sirus’s eyes narrowed, and Rath looked as if he’d expected him to react so. “I let the mage try her magicks knowing they were unlikely to succeed. When she failed and giving you blood was suggested, I refused. There was no reason to taint your honorable death with futile gestures.”
A jolt of pain spread through Sirus’s stomach near his wound as his whole body tensed. It would have been an honorable death. He’d closed his eyes and fallen into the darkness at peace. Only the pain and fear in Gwendolyn’s eyes as he’d drifted away had given him pause. He could still remember the soft scent of lilies. It was the very last thing he’d recognized. The memory made his chest grow tight.
“She pleaded,” Rath recalled without a hint of feeling, drawing Sirus back. “You were nearly gone, yet I saw it in her eyes. She was desperate to save you. Even if it came to nothing.” Levian had told Sirus that she wished he could have seen Gwendolyn’s face—that she had willed him back to life. She had, in a sense. He’d not known she’d pleaded. “I didn’t believe it would work,” Rath went on. “I let her try because she needed to.”
Sirus shifted in his skin. Skin that no longer felt wholly his, but in part hers. He struggled to understand how Gwendolyn’s magicks had done so much. How a mortal who was herself struggling to recover could have saved him. A hollowness had begun to open up inside him after she’d stormed away this morning. She regretted their encounter in Abigail’s garden. Their kiss. He regretted how he’d treated her, but he didn’t regret their embrace. The mere memory of it still haunted him.
Their time together had shaken him. The ease of it. The openness of their conversation. The way she’d so easily forgiven him. Sirus had brought her into the forest planning to pledge himself to her. He’d not expected her to confess what she had. He believed what she’d told him. That she’d manipulated time. It still agitated him to think he’d failed her the first time. That she’d nearly been lost to that vile, cursed creature. Sirus struggled with his shame at realizing how often he’d failed her. She’d saved herself, and him, and he knew she couldn’t see the truth of it. She was strength itself.
She’d caught him entirely off guard asking about the kiss. Sirus had known she still felt some kind of attraction toward him, as shocking as it was, but she’d made it clear she had no interest in repeating their encounter. It had been a mistake. A mistake. Those words were not new to him, but hearing them from her lips had cut to the bone. Sirus knew well that desire and rational sense did not always align. Gwendolyn might desire him, but she did not want him. She was the same as every other woman in that regard.
It was a mistake.
“Levian mentioned the Celestial Stars,” he admitted to Rath, focusing back on their conversation, hoping the ancient creature would have some insight into what Gwendolyn was. His focus was still to help her and find out all that he could. “That Gwendolyn might be touched by one of them.”
Rath tapped his claws on the arm of his chair in rhythm. “I believe her magicks are likely not of this world,” he divulged. “I’m far from the only creature to come to this realm from another. Perhaps she is one such creature, or simply a vessel for such magicks. I cannot say if she is touched by a Star.”
Sirus shifted to look into the fire, contemplating Rath’s words. He could not fathom that she was from another plane entirely, but he knew there was a touch of something to the idea that she might be a vessel. It gave voice to a fear he’d long held.
“She managed to manipulate time,” he confessed. “She claims that she was able to go back just before she was taken into the mirror. That she was able to take me with her only after she’d come back.” He turned to meet Rath’s gaze when he did not answer right away. The gūl’s face was unreadable, but Sirus already knew it did not bode well.
“Such magicks do exist,” he replied carefully. “There are creatures with the ability to take small steps forward or back, though I don’t suspect Gwendolyn has such a gift. Powerful magick wielders can learn such tricks with great study but those with the innate ability to distort time cannot hide it well. Their essences are distorted from shifting in time.” Rath took a long breath before he continued, “The D?kk hunted such beings for a time when I was with them. They were eager to unlock the secrets of their gifts in order to use them.”
The very notion of their dark makers possessing such power made Sirus shudder. “How could Gwendolyn accomplish such a thing?” he pressed, not entirely following Rath’s thinking.
Rath tapped one long, clawed finger on his chair. “Time is a strange thing, Sirus. What she perceived might not be the truth.”
Sirus tilted his head slightly. “Explain.”
Rath braced his elbows on his chair and folded his long fingers together in front of his chest. “Time can be an illusion of sorts. It works differently depending on the plane of existence. Even in the Shadow Dark, time is not as it is here. Our plane moves more slowly than your own. In the Abyss, time is nothing. Perhaps she reversed time, or perhaps she merely saw a glimpse into an unfolding future and changed her fate.”
Sirus shifted in his seat at the notion. “You believe she could have merely seen the future and altered it?”
Rath tapped his index claws together contemplatively. “I cannot say for certain. There are many possibilities. Though I believe that to be the most likely, especially given her history of foresight.”
Sirus let out a deep breath and glared back down into the fire. It seemed with each passing day they only managed to uncover more questions than answers about Gwendolyn’s magicks. Knowing that Aldor might know more about her than Sirus grated beyond reason.
“If she is a vessel,” he pressed on, “how would that affect her as a mortal?”
Rath made a light rumbling noise that sent the little hairs on Sirus’s skin standing up at once. He met the gūl’s eye. “Even if she is a powerful conduit, using too much magick could break her apart.” Every bone in Sirus’s body went rigid. Rath held his gaze. “If she is a vessel, the power within her will seep out if she does not use it. She will need to learn how to control and release it so it doesn’t simply find its own path.”
Sirus only realized he was gripping the arm of his chair when his knuckles began to ache.
If…
There were too many ifs for Sirus’s liking. They needed answers. Soon.
“Levian has written to the dryads,” he admitted.
“To see if they will accept her into the Veil?” Rath deduced. “Interesting. And you would let her go?”
Sirus bristled. “Yes.” Of course he would. She was not his to keep. “I will see this finished,” he added.
Gwendolyn was safe within Volkov for now, but the castle was not impenetrable. Beyond that, Sirus knew she would be happy in the Veil. She would be safe there. Once accepted, the dryads would take her in as one of their own. They would nurture and nourish her. She would undoubtedly have her pick of suitors as well. Sirus imagined her soft body wrapped in white linen, her belly round with child, a wood fae male with his arm wrapped lovingly around her. The image made an involuntary growl seep out of him, and he realized his nails were now digging into the wood trim.
“I see,” Rath replied with a strange inflection, his expression entirely bland.
Sirus cut him a look but had little time to ponder the reply before he heard footsteps approaching. He looked up the moment Niah stormed through the open door of his study. He’d not seen his sister since that night with the mirrors. She looked harried and quite angry.
“So be it,” she bit out. “I’m through waiting. I challenge you. Do you accept?”
Niah couldn’t see the corner of Rath’s mouth kick up in dark amusement since the gūl’s back was to her.
“Yes,” Sirus responded, not bothering to stand. She’d given him little choice with such a direct challenge in front of another. Rath, no less.
“An hour,” she clipped, then disappeared back down the hall as quickly as she’d come.
Sirus’s brows furrowed in confusion, and he looked to Rath expectantly.
“I’m surprised it took her this long,” the gūl admitted after she was gone. “She won’t be satisfied until blood is drawn.”
“On what grounds does she call a challenge?” Sirus demanded, his blood growing hot with irritation.
“She believes you to be furious with her,” Rath clarified with an uncharacteristically soft expression that made Sirus uneasy. “The woman’s blood might have saved you, but you live only because it was Niah who wouldn’t let you die.”
A chill spread through him, squelching the heat of his frustration. Levian had told him Gwendolyn had been desperate to save him. He remembered the panic in her eyes as she’d tried helplessly to stifle the bleeding. All this time, he’d thought Rath had been swayed by her. The truth cut him to the bone. It had been Niah who’d pleaded for his life.
“And she challenges me to the death?” Sirus hissed, not following the logic.
Rath looked at him as if he were daft, and Sirus gritted his teeth as understanding dawned. She’d been expecting him to challenge her, and she’d gotten tired of waiting. Niah assumed Sirus would want revenge for robbing him of his clean death. A death they’d all known he’d wanted. A death he had wanted, until he felt Gwendolyn’s magick calling to him in the darkness. Sirus bit out a curse and ran his hand over his face, a rare raw display of his emotions. He’d not known, or he would have spoken to Niah already.
“You did not tell me,” he bit out. They’d not spoken much since that night of the mirrors, but it wasn’t as if Rath hadn’t had the opportunity to mention something this important.
“I did not,” Rath confirmed.
It was clear he’d known Niah was in a state far before she’d come storming in to issue her challenge. Rath had let this happen on purpose. Sirus glared at the gūl. “Why?”
“Neither of you have ever done well with words,” Rath pointed out. “And it is time you talked.”
Sirus grimaced. He was not wrong there. “Does she think so poorly of me?” he spat. “Does she really think I would have challenged her?” Of course she did, he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He’d given her no reason not to. He’d done nothing but chastise her and express his disappointment for decades.
“She does not think poorly of you,” Rath replied with his usual calm. Sirus looked up to meet his cool red gaze. “Not truly. She merely believes she’s disappointed you once more. This is the only way she sees to make amends.”
Amends. Sirus’s jaw clenched as his teeth ground. It was still absurd. “I thought she hated me,” he confessed, still reeling from the shock of discovering Niah had been the one to sway Rath to attempt to save him.
Rath let out a deep breath and crossed one long leg over the other. “You are changed, Sirus. You are different since that night and what unfolded.”
Hearing it sent a jolt through him. Knowing Rath had sensed it made him fight the urge to squirm in his seat. He fisted his hands instead. “The clan is finished,” he told him. How could he not be changed?
Rath nodded softly. “In a sense, yes. The old ways are now in the past. Yet you still live. As does Niah. You have always been different creatures, but you are connected by bonds beyond tradition. You are her family.” Said as if it explained everything. “She is yours. Perhaps it’s time to make peace. Perhaps it is time you accepted her as she is.”
The statement struck true, like an arrow to the perfect middle of a target. Sirus had never understood her, but neither had he ever really tried. She’d been close to Kane and a few of the others, never him. He’d only ever spoken to Niah as if she were an arrogant child. It was a damning thing to realize. Even more damning was how false it was to how he truly felt.
Family. The word rolled in his mind. Rath was right. Sirus was changed in so many ways since that night in the mirror. The weight of traditions he’d held up on his own was now gone. Instead of feeling at sea, he felt strangely calm. Sirus knew what his future held, and that was keeping Gwendolyn protected. His chest tightened as he remembered the tenderness and care in her touch as she’d stood next to him in front of the den this morning. How she’d recognized how much he’d missed his clansmen. His family.
He supposed it was time he began to treat Niah as such. As long as she didn’t kill him before he got the chance.
Only among vampires would peace be forged with blood and blades.
Niah stood at the end of the training ring wearing the same outfit she had when she’d come to him before, a basic black T-shirt tucked into a pair of tight pants, which he assumed stretched, and thick high-heeled boots. A harness of knives was strapped over her chest, her fiery red hair spun into elaborate plaits and pinned at the top of her head. Her eyes hadn’t shifted from him since he’d entered the room, her expression severe and deadly. Sirus stood opposite her, his swords strapped and waiting at his back. He’d spent the hour before cleaning what remained of Aldor’s blood off of them until they glistened.
Gwendolyn rested on the other side of the castle, sleeping as a mortal should in the middle of the night, oblivious to what was unfolding. Levian and Barith sat on a bench off to the side. Both kept looking between Sirus and Niah, the mage’s expression filled with schoolgirl delight at the prospect of witnessing a real vampire challenge in person. The dragon was simply agitated.
“Yer both eejits!” Barith yelled out.
Levian elbowed him in the ribs. “Shh!”
“Ye too,” he growled, rubbing his side.
The mage rolled her eyes. “As if dragons don’t have stupid traditions,” she reminded him.
“Nae this daft,” he grumbled.
Sirus wasn’t sure how they’d found out about the challenge, or if they knew the extent of the rules, but it was obvious they were both nervous as to how it would unfold.
Rath stood next to the dirt ring to oversee, as he had on the other rare occasions a challenge had been called. “Niah,” Rath began, loud enough that his deep voice echoed through the hall. Levian’s gaze moved to him with pure wonder. “You have challenged your brother to the death. Do you confirm?”
“You were there,” Niah snapped. Rath gave her a withering glance, and she straightened her posture. “Yes.”
Rath nodded with satisfaction and turned to Sirus. “Sirus, do you accept your sister’s challenge?”
He had no wish to fight his sister to the death. He doubted she wished to fight him to the death either. But Rath had been right. Niah was wound up, and he could tell she wouldn’t be satisfied until this was done. “Yes,” he replied, only loud enough to be heard.
Rath nodded once more, Levian sucked in a breath, and Barith grumbled curses under his.
Sirus readied himself and pulled his swords. He knew what he must do, but there was no doubt in his mind that Niah would not hold back in this fight. The air in the room turned stilted and heavy as Rath looked between Sirus and Niah one last time, his expression not nearly as serious as it should be given the circumstances.
“Commence!”
Before Rath could finish the word, a knife came hurtling toward Sirus like a bullet from a gun. He tilted himself just enough to avoid being pierced and turned when the second came whizzing by his ear a moment later. He used one of his swords to deflect the third. Barith pulled Levian out of the way with a curse as it went flying past her nose and stuck into a post that held training weapons.
Niah came forward with silent speed, not a crunch of her footsteps audible despite her heavy shoes—as he’d taught her. More thrown knives preceded her. With precision, Sirus deflected each one. He heard Barith swear again and Levian gasp. His eyes were locked on Niah.
Metal clashed in flashes of silver blurs when she came upon him. He parried the first five strikes of her hooked karambit blades before she sliced his arm. She’d improved her speed. She struck his thigh next. It was obvious she’d been training while she was away. When she only missed striking his stomach by a hair’s breadth, he recognized her sharp movements. With renewed vigor, he managed to capture her two blades between his swords and shove, sending Niah’s boots sliding backward several feet along the dirt ring.
“You’ve been training with Sabien,” he accused, ice laced over each word, ignoring the sting of the fresh cuts on his skin, the invisible one in his chest. She had actually gone to the Clan of Serpents. The betrayal cut deep.
Niah’s eyes narrowed. “He wasn’t so quick to discard me,” she hissed.
Sirus’s blood grew hot. “You left,” he reminded her, keeping his tone cool after centuries of practice. Even after she’d disgraced herself by taking freely given blood, he’d not forced her to go. She’d chosen to leave.
Her nostrils flared as she released a knife toward his eye. Sirus raised his sword to deflect it. “You left Sabien as well,” he observed with targeted precision. Another knife. He shifted in time to save his skin, not his shirt.
She came at him again, her movements sharp and furious. Blade met blade in quick succession; he knocked one of her daggers away. Niah only doubled her efforts, slicing and feigning and moving more like the wind than a living being. Sirus kept up with her until he was forced to drop one of his swords in order to grab her wrist before she stabbed him right in his gut. If it wasn’t for his renewed strength, she might have succeeded. Niah snarled at him in her fury, both of them breathing fast and short. Beneath the rage in her bright eyes, Sirus could see the raw truth—the pain. Niah was well-schooled in concealing her emotions, but Sirus had always known she felt more than most of their kind. He thought it her greatest weakness. When their numbers had begun to dwindle, she’d become more and more absent and removed. After Kane’s death, she’d withdrawn completely. Not long after, she cast aside their clan’s traditions and set out on her own, determined to save vampires from their fate. He’d thought her young and foolish, that her emotions had gotten the better of her. He’d been wrong. He’d been the fool.
Sirus shoved Niah away, knowing her impulse would override her control. She spun and sliced him clean across the stomach on the opposite side of his bandaged wound. He’d left himself open on purpose. He kneed her the moment her blade touched his skin. Niah fell to the ground and tried to recover. Sirus’s blade was already under her chin.
She glared up at him, her eyes full of fire. “Do it,” she snapped without a hint of fear. Sirus pressed the blade close enough to apply pressure but not cut skin. “I’m ready.”
To his shock, neither Levian nor Barith said a thing as the silence stretched.
The vivid memory of Niah’s rebirth flashed in his mind as he looked down into her young face. She’d fought disguised as a man during the eighteenth century uprising in Scotland. Even when she was young and small she’d been skilled beyond what was natural. The ferocity in her eyes had been striking. When she’d been dragged broken and dying from the field of battle and given the choice to become a vampire, she’d hesitated for only a moment. “Yes,” she’d told them, without a trace of fear. “I am ready.”
For the first time, Sirus felt like he saw Niah for who she truly was. A fierce and passionate warrior. A woman who’d not been cowed by traditions in her previous life or this one. A woman determined to fight for her people up to her dying breath.
Sirus pulled his sword from her neck, and Niah glowered up at him.
“Perhaps it’s time to take our leave,” Rath said to Barith and Levian. The mage gasped, but Barith managed to keep her from speaking.
Once the others were gone, Niah hissed up at him with pure venom, “I don’t want your pity.”
Sirus threw a knife of his own then. It thunked into the dirt next to Niah’s neck. A small trickle of blood fell along the porcelain skin it’d passed. “You stole nothing from me, Niah,” he declared, his breathing finally steadying.
Her expression shifted to one of harsh confusion. “I pushed Rath,” she confessed. “Pushed Gwendolyn.”
“Why?” he demanded. He wanted to hear it from her own lips.
Niah’s face tightened, her lips pressing into a hard line. She looked sharply away from him.
“Tell me.”
Her eyes snapped to his once more, with utter loathing at being forced to say the words aloud. “Because I didn’t want you to die, you ass.”
Hearing it struck him harder than he’d expected. The emotion laced along each of her clipped words was so raw it startled him. Niah had always been different. She and Sirus were like oil and water. His predecessor, Kane, had forced him to train her because of it—to break them both. It hadn’t worked.
Sirus sheathed his sword and reached down to help her up. She didn’t take his offered hand at first but ultimately accepted. He held her forearm after she rose to her feet. “We both drew blood,” he told her. “The challenge is satisfied.”
She narrowed her eyes. Niah had never witnessed a challenge of their clan, as they were quite rare, so he was not surprised that she was unschooled in all its particulars. “A challenge can be to the death or until both have drawn blood,” he explained. He knew she’d come into this fight prepared to die.
“Rath wouldn’t have relented if not for me,” Niah said again, to make sure he understood.
Sirus let out a deep breath through his nose and nodded. “We all made a choice that night,” he told her. “Including me. I am not sorry to be alive.” Her actions hadn’t cost him an honorable death or led to the end of the clan. Sirus had done that all on his own. The hypocrisy was not beyond him.
Niah eyed him skeptically. “Why did you agree to my challenge then?”
He cut her a look, and she recognized its meaning. Rath had been right; she’d needed to get this fight out of her system, and now that she had, she understood as well.
“You’ve improved,” he observed. In truth, he was quite impressed.
“Unlike Deckland, I have not been pissing away my time drinking and fucking,” she clipped with disdain.
Sirus hadn’t kept up with his brother since he left Volkov. He was disappointed to hear it, but not surprised. Deckland had left, making it fully clear he planned to enjoy what remained of his life, though Sirus doubted he was enjoying anything. Deckland did not like to be idle any more than the rest of them.
“And Sabien?” he pressed.
Niah’s face hardened. “I went to seek access to their archives. Sabien was not accommodating at first, but he came around. He wished to recruit me.”
Of course he had. Five of the remaining vampires belonged to the Clan of Serpents. Sabien had spent the last hundred years trying to pull under his leadership all who remained, to grow his ranks of assassins. He’d never had the gall to ask Sirus.
“I didn’t accept,” she pointed out for the sake of it, her own way of reminding him where her loyalties lay.
“And returning? How do you fare?” he asked.
She huffed. “It’s frustrating,” she admitted, as if getting the words out was painful. “To realize how much I missed this damned place.” Sirus watched her as she took in their surroundings. “How much I miss them.”
All their lost brothers and sisters.
“As do I,” he told her. Niah eyed him as if she wasn’t sure she believed him, but the fire in her pale green eyes seemed to calm the longer she held his gaze. “I am glad you are back,” he added. “It is good to have you home.”
Niah took in a sharp breath, her eyes widening a fraction at his words. Soon she let out the air from her lungs, and with it a weight he suspected she’d been carrying for a long time. “I’m glad to have returned,” she told him, the words clipped.
A silence fell, and an understanding seemed to be shared between them. A truce. A new beginning.
Niah walked over to his fallen sword, picked it up, and handed it to him. “Shall we commence training then? Tomorrow?”
It was her olive branch. Sirus nodded as he took the sword and sheathed it with the other. “You’re still too impulsive,” he critiqued, looking down at the cut across his stomach.
Niah cocked a brow. She only had one small cut at her neck, while his sweater was in tatters. “You’re still a nag,” she bit back, bending over to gather her karambit and several of her knives.
“That doesn’t make me wrong,” he pointed out.
She scowled as she stalked over to the rack that held the training weapons and fished out the lodged knife he’d deflected. Already he could sense her walls coming down. It was encouraging.
“You talked with Gwendolyn,” Niah threw out as she hunted the last few knives nearby. “How did it go?”
Sirus stiffened, not entirely sure how to answer. Not yet entirely comfortable speaking so candidly.
Niah turned to face him when he said nothing. “That well?” she prodded a bit too acutely.
He clasped his hands at his back. Not long ago, he would have simply turned and left, but he wanted to try and be more open, even if he was struggling with the concept. “It went as well as could be expected.”
She cocked a brow. “I expected her not to wish to speak to either of us anytime soon,” she replied in earnest.
It seemed she’d assumed as much as he had. That Gwendolyn would be leery of their kind after what she’d experienced. Niah twisted her lips, as if she were not sure she should speak what was on her mind.
“She likes you, you know.”
His spine straightened.
Niah smirked at his physical response. “I don’t understand it either,” she added. “Just don’t fuck it up if you can help it.”
Sirus bristled at that. “What?”
Niah sauntered closer and crossed her arms over her chest, looking at him as if he were the one in need of training. “It’s clear you’re interested in her as well,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You cannot help but stare at her every chance you get. And there’s no mistaking that dark look in your eye when you do.”
Sirus scowled down at her, which only seemed to amuse her that much more. It was true that if anyone would have noticed his attentions toward Gwendolyn, it would have been Niah. He feared Levian and Barith were beginning to suspect as well.
“There’s nothing to fuck up,” he made clear. “Gwendolyn is my charge. I will see this through.” It was just as he’d told Rath.
Niah raised a skeptical brow. “So you didn’t kiss her?” A flash of raw surprise flared, and he tamped it down in an instant. But not fast enough. His sister’s eyes widened. “You did kiss her.”
There was no way she could have known such a thing, unless Gwendolyn had told everyone, which Sirus doubted. She’d been regretful of their embrace, not boastful. Which meant Niah had been simply guessing, and he’d thoughtlessly let the truth slip out. Sirus turned on his heel, frustrated at himself for being so careless.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, brother,” she called out behind him with satisfied amusement. “Or anytime you’re ready for advice when it comes to the fairer sex.”
Her words were like nails in his ears, and he began to second-guess the benefits of this whole peacemaking business. He did not much care for the haste with which Niah felt comfortable doling out playful, sisterly prodding. He needed no advice. Especially not in regard to Gwendolyn. No, what Sirus needed was to rid himself of these thoughts and desires. To purge Gwendolyn from his blood, once and for all. For her sake and his own.
Now all he had to do was sort out how in the hell he was going to accomplish such a thing when she was living under his roof. Only 637 paces from his own bed.